Duelo invisible: cómo llorar a quien nunca abrazaste | Cristina Juesas | TEDxValencia

Quick Overview

The speaker shares a personal story of choosing a career path in genomics despite humble beginnings and societal expectations, ultimately achieving success by focusing on the business and scientific potential of sequencing the human genome, which led to founding a company and securing funding.

Key Points: The speaker, from a humble family, chose Biology because genetics appealed to her, despite her father being a factory worker and mother a homemaker. She recalls a professor in the 1990s telling her that a persistent loser is a future winner, prompting her to dedicate herself to genomics. The speaker's first entrepreneurial venture involved sequencing the human genome, which was cutting-edge technology in the 1990s and secured $3000 million in US funding. The Spanish context at the time viewed science as secondary and lacked national financing beyond European sources, making their venture particularly challenging. Despite initial struggles, they successfully launched the company, focusing on sequencing technology that was far ahead of competitors in Europe and the US. She highlights three crucial factors for success: Fools, Friends, and Family, who provided support despite the initial uncertainty. The company ultimately focused on selling sequencing services to clients rather than just the technology itself, which was already being used in fields like cardiology and oncology.

Context: This TEDx talk, titled 'Duelo invisible: cómo llorar a quien nunca abrazaste' (Invisible Grief: How to Mourn Someone You Never Hugged), features Cristina Juesas sharing a deeply personal narrative about her journey into entrepreneurship in the field of genomics. She contrasts her modest upbringing with the ambitious scientific and business path she pursued, detailing the challenges of securing funding and gaining traction for her high-tech venture in the relatively underdeveloped Spanish scientific landscape of the 1990s.

Detailed Analysis

Cristina Juesas recounts her career beginning from a humble background, where her mother was a homemaker and her father a factory worker. Despite this, she chose Biology because genetics fascinated her, a decision solidified after a professor told her that persistent losers are future winners. This motivated her to pursue genomics, leading her to work on sequencing the human genome in the 1990s, a field where the technology was far more advanced in the US than in Europe, especially Spain, where science was often considered secondary. She successfully raised $3000 million in the US for this project, which involved dividing the genome into ten segments, but faced the challenge of securing local financing. She credits the support of 'Fools, Friends, and Family' for helping her start the company. After this initial success, they decided to pivot from selling technology to selling sequencing services, which proved more viable. She recounts a difficult period where they had to return loans, but they persevered, eventually succeeding. She contrasts the high risk of their venture with the established success of others, noting that while they had high hopes, their experience was limited. She shares an anecdote where her professor mentioned that a woman who inherited a predisposition to breast cancer (BRCA2) had her life saved by genetic testing, highlighting the real-world impact of their work. Finally, she emphasizes the importance of persistence and making bold decisions, concluding that they decided to pour all their resources into their venture despite the risks, a decision that ultimately paid off.