Summary

The primary focus of our discussion with Ken revolves around the mission of Bioforge, which seeks to revolutionize the manufacturing processes of precision biological medicines, particularly cell and gene therapies. Ken articulates the vision of making these groundbreaking treatments more affordable and accessible, addressing the unsustainable costs that currently range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars per treatment. Throughout our conversation, we explore the intricate dynamics of innovation and the translational journey from scientific discovery to practical applications that can significantly enhance people's lives. Ken shares his insights on the pivotal role of leadership in fostering a culture of innovation and the necessity of aligning technical advancements with tangible capabilities that meet market needs. This episode provides a profound understanding of the intersection between technological advancement and societal impact through the lens of Ken's vast experience in various high-stakes environments.

Story

The conversation with Kaigham, affectionately known as Ken, delves into his extensive background in innovation and the founding of Bioforge, a pioneering venture aimed at revolutionizing the manufacturing of precision biological medicines. Ken articulates the mission of Bioforge, emphasizing the necessity for breakthroughs in the production of cell and gene therapies. He highlights the staggering costs associated with these treatments, which can range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, rendering them unsustainable and inaccessible for broader populations. By harnessing the resources and research capabilities of the University of Pittsburgh, supported by the R.K. Mellon Foundation, Bioforge is poised to enhance manufacturing processes, thereby democratizing access to life-saving therapies. Ken's approach reflects a profound commitment to translating scientific discoveries into practical applications that significantly impact people's lives, a theme that resonates throughout the discussion.

The dialogue navigates the intricate landscape of innovation, focusing particularly on Ken's philosophy regarding the translation of scientific research into capabilities that genuinely enhance societal welfare. Drawing from his rich experiences at DARPA and other institutions, Ken articulates a critical understanding: the true value of scientific inquiry lies not merely in advancing knowledge but in creating tangible benefits for society. He reflects on formative experiences that shaped his perspective, such as a pivotal lesson on the importance of articulating the 'so what' of technological advancements. This narrative serves as a foundation for his work at Bioforge, where the objective is not only to innovate but to ensure that innovations are scalable and affordable, ultimately addressing the pressing challenges within the healthcare sector. The conversation further explores the interplay of leadership, innovation, and the dynamics of incubating new ideas within institutional frameworks, underscoring the role of visionary leadership in fostering a culture of creativity and risk-taking.

Ken's reflections on his Armenian heritage introduce a personal dimension to the discourse on resilience and grit. He shares poignant anecdotes about his grandfather, a survivor of the Armenian genocide, whose experiences instilled in him a profound sense of responsibility to contribute positively to the world. This background shapes Ken's motivations and aspirations, guiding his endeavors in the startup landscape, including his current role at Bioforge. The discussion also touches upon the broader implications of innovation in the context of societal needs, particularly in the face of economic uncertainties. Ken's emphasis on the importance of capability over technology aligns with his entrepreneurial journey, where he consistently seeks to deliver solutions that address real-world problems. By intertwining personal narrative with professional insights, the conversation exemplifies how individual experiences can fuel a broader vision for societal change, particularly in the realm of healthcare and technology.

Takeaways

• Ken articulates the mission of Bioforge as creating innovations in the manufacturing of precision biological medicines, aiming for affordability and scalability.
• The emphasis on translating scientific research into practical capabilities for society underscores the importance of real-world applications of technology.
• Ken reflects on the significance of leadership in innovation, asserting that CEOs must actively protect and nurture breakthrough projects.
• The conversation highlights the distinction between basic research and mission-driven innovation, particularly in the context of DARPA's operational philosophy.
• Ken's personal narrative illustrates how his heritage and family history have instilled a sense of responsibility to contribute positively to the world.
• The discussion suggests that a focused, agile team with limited resources can often achieve more than a larger organization with extensive funding.

Well, hello, Ken, and welcome to the podcast.

Hi, Jyothi.

Great to be with you.

Thank you for making the time.

I always like to start with asking people, where are they originally from and where do they live now?

Well, I grew up in the central part of PA in York, Pennsylvania, and went to undergraduate at University of Pittsburgh, where I met the love of my life.

And we went off and worked at Bell Labs in the government twice.

Boston, where most recently with Draper, where you and I met.

And now we're back in Pittsburgh.

And that's the background we're seeing.

That's the background you're seeing?

Yes.

Down.

It's not a fake background.

It's not a fake background.

You're in your office, you're not at home.

Yes, I'm in my office.

Yeah.

And so speaking of that, it hasn't been that long, but you are CEO at bioforge, Right.

And this is another in a string of very interesting things that you're.

You're taking on.

And maybe you could tell us what the vision for Bioforge is.

Sure.

So the what of Bioforge, the mission is really I've articulated as creating breakthroughs and innovations in the manufacturing of precision biological medicines like cell and gene therapies is an example to speed their delivery, use and impact.

Because the promise of this individualized precision medicine is enormous.

We read about it every day, whether it's a CRISPR treatment or CAR T cell therapy treatment for cancer.

But as amazing as the results are, what's even more eye watering is the price.

Much of that cost, which is for just a single treatment, anywhere from half a million to $2 million, is not sustainable.

It's not scalable.

And so Bioforge is bringing that same level of creativity, energy and drive to improve the manufacturing so that we can make it more affordable, more scalable, and available to a broader set of people.

The support is coming from the R.K.

mellon foundation, and the idea is to leverage the nearly a billion dollars a year in health sciences research at the University of Pittsburgh and selectively take some of the more promising developments there and accelerate the innovations and breakthroughs in manufacturing so that we don't just play a game of pachinko until somebody finally gets the manufacturing right.

So it's a more direct and deliberate and specific focus on the manufacturing.

It's really in a long string of things that I would generally put into the buckets of innovation incubation in your career, even your time at darpa, you could, you would have to put in into those buckets atap at Google.

Yep.

The way we essentially created an incubator, you and I together at Draper, which ultimately had two pretty successful spin outs.

I mean, the, the final answer isn't there, but I mean, you know, sure, that was a long time ago.

I mean it's, it's been so, so what is your, I don't know, philosophy about where innovation happens, what makes it happen, and, and where there's been real challenges about, you know, making this kind of thing work?

Yeah.

So I'd say the common thread running through all that is a recognition, I think, that if we can't translate a new discovery driven scientific research outcome into a new capability that affects people's lives or the way they do things, whether it's the Internet or precision medicine, then I question what's the value of having done that work, that basic discovery driven work.

Now, I'm not minimizing that.

It's important for us to add to knowledge.

But I'll say my career was influenced very heavily by my two tours of duty at Dorpa, and in particular the very first time in the late 90s, actually, early 90s.

And I'll relate it in a story.

I was brought in to talk to the deputy director of DARPA at the time and he said, talk to me about MEMS.

Because I came to DARPA in the 90s to start the MEMS program, micrologic micro Electromechanical systems.

And I used the usual pitch that I used, having come from Bell Labs and sort of academic style research.

I told, and he said, tell me about mems.

And I said, well there you can make mechanical structures using the same materials and processes as electronic materials.

And he said, and so I realized, okay, that wasn't landing.

And I said wait, did that reaction mean he didn't believe you or.

No, no, he, he said, yeah, uh huh, got it.

I believe you mean so what?

So what?

It was more of a so what?

And I said, okay, well, because these things are on the scale of microns with sub micron gaps, forces at that scale are different than the forces that dominate at our usual human scale.

So for example, electrostatics is a more powerful actuating force and capacitance measurements than electromagnetics, which is what most of motors and actuators we use in, in our scale.

And he said, huh?

Yeah, you know, again, and at this point I'm saying, okay, pull up.

And I said, well, because things are so small, I can use fairly exotic, expensive materials that I couldn't afford to use at a, at a big scale.

And finally he said, yeah, but what can I do with it now that I couldn't do before?

And that was like a, not just a light bulb, that was like an atomic bomb going off in my head that said, oh my God, he's, he's absolutely right.

Like, who cares about all this stuff if you don't create a new capability, a new way of doing things?

And that's when I say, well, gee, if I could do all those things.

For example, an inertial guidance system that doesn't use gps, by the way, which is mainly a lot of the systems that Draper built for the Navy and the submarine missile launch ballistic missile program.

That thing is the size of a Porsche and costs 10 times as a Porsche what a Porsche costs.

I could with mems, potentially build a belt bucket size inertial guidance system for Warf fighters who might lose GPS signals for 20 minutes while they're doing various things.

He goes, now I'm interested.

And so when, when I started, that was really crucial because with my, when, when I was here in Pittsburgh the last time in the, in the knots and started my company, Acoustica, making MEMS based microphones, which I ultimately sold to Bosch, that thinking informed every one of my interactions with customers and people in the, in the ecosystem that delivered microphones for cell phones or laptops.

Because I talked less about the technology, which they actually didn't care about.

They didn't care whether I did it with MEMS or a slab of peanut butter, as long as that digital output microphone cost 52 cents and went down in price 3% every quarter.

Right.

That's, that's what the integrators cared about.

So capability is the thing that the rest of the world wants and cares about.

Technology is what you developed and allows you to deliver that capability.

But, and some of your customers may be interested in it, but what they're really interested, what will sell it and what will make you successful is the capability, not the technology.

The lesson that you just described is one that so many technical founders have to learn.

Absolutely.

Sometimes the hard way.

Yes.

And I think, I mean, I was guilty of it, that the famous, if we build it, they will come and, and it's, you know, when I try to, in the book I've written and in these discussions, I'm hoping that that resonates with people that are startup founders and they, they make that before it's too late.

They, they understand this and they, and they adapt accordingly.

Yeah.

Staying on this topic for a moment of innovation and incubators, I've Always had this somewhat idealistic view that there is so much money being spent to develop amazing technologies that are needed by NASA, the military, government in general.

That, and a lot of it doesn't make it out into the commercial world.

And then, you know, people occasionally make an effort to try to do something about that.

I don't think any agency comes close to how good NASA is at this.

And we tried a little bit of that.

So, you know, small scale.

2000 by the time I left.

2000 by the time you left.

And it is a small defense contractor, a not for profit.

And when we got together and we sort of, we hadn't really met.

But you knew about the Crash program because you were intimately involved with the creation of it as the deputy director and I saw you and some DARPA presentations.

But it wasn't until I sort of sought you out to try to find a way to do what for some reason DARPA kind of did a, to me kind of made a mistake when Crash ended.

And it was one of, you know, one of the best program managers that I think DARPA had in that era.

Howie Shro.

Right.

And he had every intention of there being a follow on, you know, for the audience.

Crash was a, A was what's considered a basic research program in the parlance of government.

It was a 6.1 research program which meant that what they wanted was papers and, and, and you know, discovery driven research.

And, and, and they didn't expect there to be things yet.

And, and, and the results were good.

And that, that started, that was real and, and, and threatening and serious.

And so that since there wasn't a follow on, I was, I was motivated to try to do something.

I tried to get the prime contractor I was at, at that moment in time working for BAE Systems to, to go do something.

And they didn't quite understand it and no luck.

I talked to you.

You were at atap, then you were at Draper.

And we created this concept of incubation and it was, I thought it was extremely well structured and we were, we were both kind of on the fly trying to figure out what would work best.

Yeah, and it doesn't, it doesn't, it didn't become a repeatable model after you left.

You know, and, and so that's disappointing.

You know, what you would want is, you know, a legacy that, that from, from both of us that says here's a, here's a repeatable model.

Draper could keep doing it, other people could, could copy it and, and do it And I want to know what your thoughts about.

Yeah, there are a lot, lot of things to touch upon in that question and story.

I think.

Let me address the issue of crash and DARPA's approach to programs.

So I think one of one of the things that distinguishes DARPA and the DARPA model is that you may have heard the phrase it is a mission driven agency.

Not their charter is not to advance understanding.

That's a legitimate and worthy objective that nih, nsf, few other agencies in the federal government do.

They don't have a particular objective or mission.

DARPA advances science and technology, of course they do.

But it is always in service to a particular mission.

And that mission, which you've heard me articulate many times, is one of the best and simplest agency objectives that I know to create and prevent strategic surprise.

That's DARPA's entire mission.

Because the origins of DARPA were Sputnik.

And I'm paraphrasing obviously, but it was like don't let this ever happen again.

And the way that DARPA doesn't make that happen is captured in the create and prevent strategic surprise.

Those are two sides of the same coin.

Because if you create the strategic surprise, the breakthrough, the out of the box innovation, then by definition your, your adversary didn't and you are in a better position to understand it, protect yourself against it or use it to your advantage.

So the other really important defining thing is that DARPA does that and only that it does not take on responsibility for scaling innovations.

In the late 60s, early 70s, they demonstrated that you could create a network where the network was the network.

You didn't need Hub and spoke, you didn't need all that.

And that was important for survivability of a communication network in the case of nuclear Armageddon, if that God forbid ever happens, right?

That once they demonstrated it, DARPA shifted it to others to scale it into the what it has become the Internet.

And in all its glory and bad elements as well as its good elements.

The reason that's important, Joffy, is you can't do breakthroughs and out of the box things are innovations.

If you are also responsible for maintaining something or scaling it, those two things are very different.

And you if you're going to be someone constantly pushing against the accepted standards and accepted worldview, you can't have your own worldview and some other elements of what you do.

So that's what I would say.

Crash is not unique.

There are many programs at DARPA where the basic elements, your work, other people's work in the crash program were demonstrated.

But DARPA says, over to you rest of the world, we've got other things to explore to make sure to create and prevent strategic surprise.

Now that's where from my perspective, one of the things I learned both from my experience in the private sector and venture capital backed company and DARPA was people are the most important thing.

So the technology was important, the crash technology was important.

But more important was you.

When you showed up at at Draper, I bet more on you than I did on the technology.

And that's also an important part of what happens.

Because at darpa people bet on program managers not only on technologies.

There may be interesting technology areas, but if we can't find the right program manager, we're not going to go into that area.

Howie Shro was an example of a great program manager that allowed us to invest in that.

Now why is that not replicatable?

It takes two to tango, I think, right?

You had to be there and I had to be there.

And by definition that already drops the probability of it happening.

Because if it's you, the probability of you showing up as P, the probability of me showing up as P, P squared, that we're there at same time, right?

So, and this is something that I talk about all the time, which also is a lesson learned from DARPA obliquely.

People talk about how companies should have a chief innovation officer, right?

You hear that a lot.

That goes back and forth in, in vogue and out of vogue.

My argument is the CEO of the company is the chief Innovation officer.

That's part of their job.

And the reason it's part of their job is the CEO is the only officer in a company that can resource protect and nurture a out of the box breakthrough or innovation.

Because the rest of the company is worried about hitting their P and L targets and growing their business areas.

And these people working in the breakthrough and innovation areas are the enemy.

They're taking away resources.

They may break my rice bowl.

And our internal enemies and barriers are the biggest threat to breakthroughs in innovation.

And that's why the CEO is the only person who can protect it.

That's why DARPA in its early formative stages, first 20 or 30 years, reported to the Secretary of Defense.

If it hadn't reported to the CEO of the Defense Department, it would have been squashed by the much larger Services and other existing laboratories and DoD research organizations.

And so that's why I don't think it's as replicatable, because ultimately it depends on whether the CEO of a company, or Draper or anywhere else understands how important their role is in driving innovation.

A lot of CEOs think, oh, just give money to a bunch of smart people that come up with something, but if you don't give them a direction and if you don't give them the resources and the protection, nothing will happen.

You'll remember when we created Hive and you did the incubation of what ultimately spun out as Dover.

I gave you the resources, I gave you the protection, but I also made it very clear what you had to demonstrate in terms of capability, not the technology.

Right.

The technology was important.

And yes, I was interested in hearing about you developing a technology, but what I needed from you to.

To take this beyond just an interesting demonstration was what could this development do with a new capability for cybersecurity?

Yep, yep, yep.

And it was.

Do you remember when we first started, we both thought it might take three years.

Yeah.

And then we both saw maybe better progress than we had expected, faster progress than we had expected, and a concern that there was going to be competition and that it needed to.

We needed to make it happen in two years instead of three.

Yep.

And get out into the market.

Yep.

Which we did.

Yeah.

We didn't give up on one bit.

On.

On having a real demonstration.

That's right.

The.

The part of the demonstration that I.

I still laugh about is that we made it look like we were able to steal your password.

Yes, exactly.

That's right.

And I think this is one of the genius elements of the DARPA approach.

When you have an objective, every program has some sort of objective, some demonstration of a capability that's supported by a lot of technology and scientific development.

But ultimately, everyone's working towards some sort of demonstration of a capability.

When you have that as an objective, the power that a lot of people don't realize that's inherent in that kind of approach is that it helps you make choices.

Because when you're developing something new, you're always uncovering interesting pathways that you could go down.

I could develop this part of this.

I could do this.

And I don't care whether it's biology, life sciences, cybersecurity, mems, gee, I could do this or I could do that.

When, you know you have to get there, you can make choices about which paths you're going to take.

And that's what I've seen over and over again.

And what you just referenced, which was we thought it would take three years, but the clarity of an objective and the motivation and the reason that we had was we knew we could move faster because of those, that capability allowed us to make the decisions to not do this and double down on that.

And I'll go back to the list of things that you said were your responsibility because obviously the funding was the most important thing, but after that, protecting this, because I had no idea how much resistance there would be within the organization about this.

This little, you know, they thought of it as your pet project.

Yeah.

And, and of course, I'm coming in from the outside.

I don't know anything about the, the culture.

What I wanted to, to do was, was to have the whole thing act like a startup with the same amount of sense of urgency, quick decisions and, you know, and so forth and, and, you know, and efficiently keep you in the loop.

And the protection was, was absolutely essential.

And I didn't realize it when I first got there.

Yeah, I, I think you see it in, at different, at different degrees of intensity, but it's always there.

It's always there.

Yeah.

In any organization.

I'm going to change gears a little bit.

I have, I have a, a different type of question.

Yeah.

So you're, you're very, you very proudly are of Armenian descent.

Yes.

And, and that is a population that has been persecuted and subjected to genocide for millennia.

And how much of that, that background has, you know, found its, in a way and formed your personality?

Great, great question.

So both my grandfathers were by definition survivors.

If either one of them had not survived, I wouldn't be here.

And I did not know my paternal grandfather.

He, he passed away when I was six months old.

He knew of me.

I did not know of him, but I spent quite a bit of time with my maternal grandfather, who was 15 when the most recent and most prominent Armenian genocide was propagated during World War I by the Ottoman Empire.

It was the defining moment of his life until the day he died.

He was talking about it, writing about it, and part of what I felt, have always felt because of that was he survived.

And you, Kerem Ken, are have the privilege of not being persecuted, having enough to eat a roof over your head.

You have to make the world a better place.

So that, that is a motivating force for me.

Right.

He, when he was 15, he was running around in the upper reaches of what has now become Syrian mountainside, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, just surviving by just his own Capabilities and foraging.

And I'll tell you a funny story which obnoxious.

My dad and my mom, they would come and stay with us.

And my grandfather, despite our comfort in living in suburban York, Pennsylvania, my grandfather taught me how to catch birds with like sparrows and small birds with just a piece of thread.

And we caught a couple of sparrows and he killed them.

And, and my.

Had.

We cleaned them.

My mom roasted them.

He insisted that my mom roasted it.

My dad flipped out because there we were, grandfather and grandson capturing sparrows.

All the neighbors could see us for snacks.

For a snack.

But.

But that was that.

That's how much it affected him.

So you, you just pronounced your first name or, or what he said, how he pronounced it differently than I've heard it.

So what's the correct pronunciation?

It's Keram.

So the G and the H are like the R in Paris in the way a Frenchman would say it.

Right?

Okay, don't say Paris.

They say Paris.

It comes from the back of the throat.

So the GH is like the R in Paris pronounced in a French way.

Interesting.

Okay.

Yeah.

This may be a related question and it's one of my favorite topics is to talk to people who have done startups and, and you've done many startups.

Okay.

So you know Acousticus, sort of the one you, anyone who knew about your background would say, oh, there's his startup.

Yep.

And, and he sold it.

But Atap was a startup.

Bioforge is a startup.

And, and you've been involved with Dover in many different roles.

And full disclosure, you're on the board.

So all of that stuff and other things that you've done require a lot of grit.

And so I want to ask where you think your grit comes from.

Is it the same answer?

Is it this?

Grandfather?

Definitely grandfather.

Definitely.

Father as well.

My father was, was a curious.

You know, he, he was always intellectually curious, but he was a businessman through and through.

He started his own business during both very difficult times and in, in the old country politically and all sorts of other things.

He would, he was always, I, I took inspiration from that.

He, he was business minded.

And I didn't realize how much of that influenced me initially.

I thought, well, I'm just going to be a, I'm going to go get a PhD.

I'll be a professor.

I'll have a life of intellectual examination.

And quickly realized that that was not enough for me personally.

So part of the, the grit is definitely that I'd say from my grandfather's more survival.

That's Going to take a lot if you think you're going to take me out.

Right.

Because that I, I, that, that, that's what my grandfather taught me, my father taught me that it is noble to be, I mean, in the classic sense of business, that, that you're delivering a service that people want and makes their life better.

He was an air conditioning engineer, so quite easy for him to understand that people wanted to live more comfortably.

He was delivering a service.

So this isn't about ripping people off from a Ponzi scheme, but a business in the classic capitalist perspective of delivering something that's a better product, that makes people's lives better.

That's what businesses are.

They're not terrible.

They employ people, they deliver service or products at a decent price.

And if you have the right sort of free regulated capitalism, that's the way it thrives.

So I'd say the grit came from my grandfather, the, the skill or interest in business.

And to the extent that I have any natural capabilities in that, whether forming a company, dealing with business partners, making deals, that's from my dad.

And my last question is going to be, so is all of the funding and everything you need for bioforge safe from the insanity of this new administration?

Yeah.

So thank you for raising that.

Yes, in the sense that all of our funding is coming from the RK Mellon foundation, it's 10 million a year for 10 years.

It is safe in the sense from a direct perspective.

Right.

So we don't, we don't get anything.

We don't have any of our funding from the federal government or by design.

But part of a small digression, I'll come back to it.

One of the things that people tend to lose sight of is how much a million dollars is and how much you can get done in, in the current inflation.

You might, some people might think, well, gee, can.

You were deputy director, acting director of a $3 billion a year agency in the government and you were CEO, president and CEO of Draper, 600 million plus in revenue, 2,000 people.

You were COO of Welcome Leap, which was 200 million a year in research dollars going out to all over the world, 160 plus organization.

And now it's like $10 million a year, $9 million a year budget.

You know, a million dollars is a hell of a lot of money.

You can get a lot of really amazing stuff done.

And it's actually in a perverted way, for the same reason, or I shouldn't say perverted in a counterintuitive way, you can actually get A lot more done if you're focused on a small team with $10 million than you can with 50 people on $100 million.

Because it's the same reason why startups succeed is because they're small, they're agile, and they're fast, and they don't have a thousand things they're worrying about.

They're just one or two things they're worrying about.

And so I am.

They're willing to take risks, and they're.

Willing to take risks.

Right.

What do I have to lose?

And especially at this stage in my career and in my life, my attitude is.

I don't know if I ever told you this, but we got some.

Regina Dugan and I, when we were going in the first time at actually the.

The only time, the second time for me, second time for her, but both of us going in as director and deputy director, there was a retired army general, four star, that came to see us and his advice, he wrapped it up at the end and he said, write it like you stole it.

Some.

Some of these people come up with great short philosophies like.

Like, don't just move.

Move out.

Do things and write it like you stole it.

And it's the best, best advice I ever got.

And I think that's got to be the title of this episode.

There you go.

Yeah.

And.

And I think that's what motivates me about bioforge.

I'm moving fast.

The money doesn't do me any good in the bank.

And $10 million is a hell of a lot of money.

I agree.

A lot of things done.

And.

And it's.

It's the mo.

From.

From.

From what I'm observing.

It's.

And I'm not talking to you, you know, even once a week.

Or maybe it's.

Maybe it's more like once a month.

But it seems like you're having the most fun I've seen you have.

Yeah.

Because it.

It allows me to focus on the things that matter and to work with people and actually bring that same perspective to them and see them all saying, yeah, you know, I could do that.

Oh, you mean I don't have to submit a proposal to you on a fixed time frame for a project, was it.

No, just come talk to me.

And it's just blowing people away.

Just fundamentally changing the way they think about things.

So the.

Directly, no, indirectly, obviously, if stock markets get.

If the economy gets hammered, philanthropies have all their money and various financial instruments.

The partners that I want to work with.

I talked to you about their NIH funded research and NSF funded research of the universities here.

The more the indirect and other things get cut the less discretionary dollars they have to contribute because one of the things I absolutely require and demand as part of the model for Bioforge is if you want to do a project with me and we both agree this fits the mission and we'll help you and we'll get something important out I expect you to put some skin in the game for the project.

It's not going to be fully funded by Bioforge but in the new environment I have to be willing to accommodate accommodate less skin in the game because they don't they're beginning to lose that flexibility.

Yeah.

Well this has been really fun.

Yes I think we're we're at a at a good stopping point and I appreciate very much these, these conversations.

Wonderful.

It's great we haven't had a chance to talk about so many of these things.

I really appreciate it was great to step out of the usual day.

Thanks Jothi.