Ikigai

Ikigai was a company Andy started in 2017, while working at Uber, to sequence a person’s DNA and RNA and match them to an Alzheimer’s clinical trial, with a further hope of developing a drug. The October 21, 2020 essay says the company failed after about two years.

That essay says:

• Andy joined Andreas Pfenning’s neurogenomics lab at Carnegie Mellon as a part-time researcher, after asking professors in person if he could work for free. The lab worked on DNA and RNA sequencing and the epigenetics of Alzheimer’s. The essay says this was about eight months of part-time research before the company started.
• Cold emails got meetings with Travis Kalanick and Eric Lefkofsky. The essay says those did not become an investment.
• Two universities shared patient data, and there was an LOI from Denali Therapeutics. The shutdown letter names the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center and talks with the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in Pittsburgh.
• Y Combinator offered to invest for Summer 2018. The cofounder relationship ended the day after that offer, and YC rescinded it. Andy stopped after an Alzheimer’s conference in Chicago. The shutdown letter in the essay is dated October 21, 2018.
• The product was a diagnostics report. The essay embeds a sample PDF.

The old about page describes the same lab role as “Staff Scientist” at the Neurogenomics Laboratory and says Ikigai was accepted to Y Combinator Summer 2018. The July 4, 2020 essay also says Ikigai was accepted to YC S18. Education on that old about page: BA in Mathematics, Swarthmore College, 2016.

Writing: Alzheimer’s clinical trials w/ DNA sequencing , Defining Alzheimer disease , and Amyloid beta hypothesis .

TODO(andy): Which CMU title should this page use (“part-time researcher” in the October 2020 essay, or “Staff Scientist” on the old about page), and which YC outcome (accepted, as the July 2020 essay and the old about page say, or offered and then rescinded, as the October 2020 essay says)?