Publications
Publications
- January 2021
- HBS Case Collection
Biobot Analytics
Abstract
In 2017, Newsha Ghaeli and Mariana Matus were deciding whether to leave their labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, put other job opportunities aside, and dive full-time into founding a wastewater analysis start-up, Biobot. Ghaeli, an architect, and Matus, a computational biologist, had been turning sewage into information about “population health" and now had dreams of turning the data encoded in urine and stool into a viable and impactful business. In plainer terms, they planned to “tap into what you flush down the toilet every day." They’d been told not to. They’d been told their idea was too broad and their skills too narrow. They’d been told they had no defensible intellectual property and limited scalability. They’d been advised to choose other startups instead, and knew, as immigrants on temporary visas, if they failed at this venture, they might even have to leave the country. Despite the many hurdles and objections, Ghaeli and Matus felt mostly at ease about moving ahead. Were they missing something? Or was everyone else?
Keywords
Entrepreneurship; Technology; City; Data And Data Sets; Personal Development And Career; Technology Industry; Utilities Industry; Health Industry; Information Technology Industry; Information Industry; Biotechnology Industry; United States; Kuwait; Korean Peninsula
Citation
Kluender, Raymond, Joshua Krieger, and Mitchell Weiss. "Biobot Analytics." Harvard Business School Case 821-045, January 2021.
About The Authors
