Not sure when or how I wandered away, but I’ve recently missed writing so am resurrecting a monthly newsletter for friends.
After a fun summer with everyone home, and some family travel, two of my boys are back to college, one finishing up in MN and the other starting his run in CA. For that reason, September was kind of a sigh. I also sat out much of the month after hand surgery and weeks without wind kept me off the lake.
I used the time to build a handful of small software utilities for myself. The first is Windblock, a little script that automatically monitors the wind forecast for a given zip code and then schedules time in Google Calendar when the wind meets your threshold (and removes the holds if the forecast changes). This keeps those hours free for the invaluable days when the wind does turn up :)
Listening-wise, I’m decades late but have become a big fan of Radio Paradise the past couple of months. It’s a free, non-commercial, listener-supported internet radio station run by a father-daughter team who curate mixes across a handful of channels. When my wife isn’t blasting Studio 54 🛼 radio, I’ve got it streaming in our main living area all the time. Great place to discover new music and unexpected old favorites.
I just finished my multi-year effort with the Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson’s engrossing three-volume set on WWII in Europe. How challenging and unsettling it can be to read about the events of those years. “Thirty thousand Belgians bade them adieu from the Antwerp docks, while pledging to look after the 61,000 Americans who would remain in those ten European cemeteries, ‘as if,’ one man vowed, their tombs were our children’s.’” I hadn’t appreciated enough the American “prodigy for organization” nor the British “genius for cozenage.”1
My son and I recently watched the documentary Race To Alaska, which was an entertaining history of a little-known boat race 750+ miles up the coast from Port Townsend, WA to Ketchikan, AK. The only rules: no motor and no support. The film profiles a few unlikely contenders over the years - eg, a guy on a paddleboard, a Frenchman who rows the distance, and a team of brothers who learn to sail en route. It made we want to sign up for something adventurous and challenging!
Speaking of which…I’m getting close to what I want to do next. With some friends, I’ve been working on a new med/healthtech project to get more inventions by university faculty and staff into patients’ hands, faster. More on how we plan to do that soon.
Relatedly, I’ve recently been digging into how a few ambitious funding experiments are underwriting misfit research, making early bets on biotech tools, and figuring out new ways to get ideas off the ground. Renaissance Philanthropy is matching bold donors with unconventional bioscience and healthtech projects. Arcadia Science is building a company around open, curiosity-driven research. And Convergent Research is creating focused research organizations that look like startups + public labs. Together it feels like first moves toward a new model for discovery. Here’s an account from someone stepping into the thick of it:
I’m still happily managing a portfolio of work with LifeArc, SHS, and board and advisor roles. Some recent company highlights: CLM launched Wedosify, a tool for personalizing the dosing of GLP-1s, and Ozlo announced a partnership with Calm.
My friend Amber Vodegel, previously the founder of Pregnancy+, is back at it building 28x, a privacy-safe period tracker that’s free-to-use. As you’d expect, she’s been deliberate about funding the business so she can prioritize trust and safety rather than advertising. It’s launching later this year, but you should sign up for the waiting list now.
Sven Dethlefs has been named CEO of Celea Therapeutics, a new PureTech company focused on transformative treatments for serious respiratory diseases. Celea is advancing deupirfenidone (LYT-100), a Phase 3-ready therapeutic candidate with the potential to set a new standard of care for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Bringing his experience as former CEO of Teva North America, Sven says the company will “offer something truly differentiated for patients in a treatment landscape that hasn’t seen enough meaningful change.”
And, I’m heading back to London mid-November. Let me know if you’re around and want to meet up!
For example: “Deception complemented the camouflage. The greatest prevarication of the war, originally known as ‘Appendix Y’ until given the code name FORTITUDE, tried ‘to induce the enemy to make faulty strategic dispositions of forces,’ as the Combined Chiefs requested. Fifteen hundred Allied deceivers used phony radio traffic to suggest that a fictional army with eight divisions in Scotland would attack Norway in league with the Soviets, followed by a larger invasion of France in mid-July through the Pas de Calais, 150 miles northeast of the actual OVERLORD beaches. More than two hundred eight-ton ‘Bigbobs’- decoy landing craft fashioned from canvas and oil drums-had been conspicuously deployed beginning May 20 around the Thames estuary. Dummy transmitters now broadcast the radio hubbub of a spectral, 150,000-man U.S. 1st Army Group, notionally poised to pounce on the wrong coast in the month.”