culture combined with cross-disciplinary expertise, all intersecting with biology. Research on the biohacking community shows that a disproportionate number are employees of university or research and development-focused institutions or government agencies. A disproportionate number also have advanced degrees. Moonlighting biology, computer science, and engineering professionals dominate this portion of the biohacking community. Some, like one of the founding executives at Fertilab, is a relatively new Ph.D. in biology who preferred an alternative career, which is a pedestrian way of saying he was in the pursuit of wonder and creativity, and avoided the business of institutionalized science. Nevertheless, research shows that the bulk of biohackers are just fascinated and highly motivated hobbyists. Passion and a viscerally American instinct of freedom are driving the hope and promise of biohacking forward. They are united by a belief unique to their sub-culture, that the tools and discoveries of scientific research should belong to everyone and anyone is welcome to participate. Credentials mean nothing; the measure of members is their contribution. As the internet and mobile business sectors have become institutionalized, the wild west has moved to do-it-yourself biology.
Government is somewhat and – I might add – understandably unsettled by the
development of better, commercializable inventions accelerated; the economy transformed. Enormous new market value was created from nothing. All benefitted.
Investors know and remember this, too. The question for us is whether these many Ben Franklins-in-the-basement will produce more proof validating the new business sector concept, especially in the area of biohacking the body, the most audacious part of this movement. If so, they will unloosen the floodgates of investment. It is not hard to imagine that just one successfully commercialized project, like any of those mentioned above, would blow up the biohacking image in the public eye, and convert it into the hottest space in the mainstream of business research and development. Nothing gets the attention of institutional investors than proof of passing the market test. The grinders present the most ambitious, wild-eyed vision of the future in the biohacking community. If they can prove that their vision is actually viable, success will create new revenue flows that will professionalize the hackers, stimulate massive new investment, and attract more curious souls to biohacking. We have seen this pattern repeated before, and with increasing frequency, most notably, in the railroad, automobile, computer and internet sectors. Biohacking the body is a possible candidate for the Next Big Thing.
Biohacking is do-it-yourself maker culture combined with cross-disciplinary
For a new vertical market to grow from virtually nothing to $3-5 billion over the next decade is not too bad.
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