Reshma Shetty, Founder of Ginkgo Bioworks at the Female Founders Conference

TL;DR

Reshma Shetty, COO of Ginkgo Bioworks, advises founders to raise lots of money but resist the urge to spend it all, instead maintaining the frugality and scrappiness that built the startup. She argues that the winning combination is raising capital while keeping discipline, and that success depends on having a “Scrooge McDuck” who enforces efficiency.

Key insights

• Biology is digital (A’s, T’s, G’s, C’s) and programmable; Ginkgo designs organisms by writing DNA sequences.
• The advice “don’t raise too much money” is misleading; the real issue is spending that money wisely, not raising it.
• After raising a large round, unconscious pressure to spend arises across the team, threatening the scrappiness that got the startup to that point.