Ryan Bethencourt

I imagine a day, some time in the not too distant future when children and teenagers will be able to create their own genetically engineered machines, cure the diseases of the old and find new ways to build and extend the capabilities of humanity, moving from programming software to programing the physical world, through biology.

In the past, biology has been a backwater type of activity - a bunch of nerds in a lab. Now the sheer potential of biology to re-program our physical world is a new reality for everyone.

Biohackers want to tinker; do fun science; and, in the process, accelerate the pace of biotech innovation.

IndieBio's capital, facilities and deep mentoring by a network of biotech specific experts have the potential to spawn the Google's, Facebook's and Instagram's of biology.

Since the beginning of civilization humans have altered our environment and its biology to allow our civilization to thrive - from domesticating plants and animals to building shelter and tools from living organisms.

People wanted to do science outside of classical institutions like universities or big corporations, so we embraced it.

When deciding whether to fund and build a company, we start from basic principles and because many of the businesses and products that our companies create are a complete novelty to us, them and the market, we have to do the math.

I believe within five to 10 years most larger corporations will switch to greener industrial enzymes, not just for the environment but also for their bottom line.

We're starting to see a renaissance of investors embracing the idea that scientists can build businesses.

The success stories in biotechnology are mainly due to the straightforward application of design thinking in both the business and science aspects of our lean startups.

Simple genome engineering of bacteria and yeast is just the beginning of the rise of the true biohackers. This is a community of several thousand people, with skill sets ranging from self-taught software hackers to biology postdocs who are impatient with the structure of traditional institutional lab work.

Biohacking could literally change the world as we know it.