SPEAKER_00 0:00

My guest today is Noor Siddhaker. Noor is the founder of ORCID. ORCID lets couples do genetic testing on the embryos that get created during the IVF process. Some people disparagingly call that designer babies. And I'll be honest, um, at times I've been that person and I've had my apprehensions about this kind of thing. But recently, I've been fascinated by cases where technological progress gets pushback just because it feels icky. But no one can come up with a good logical or or practical reason for why it's wrong. And I wanted to talk to somebody that's at the center of that. Somebody that's pushing the envelope and having the envelope push back towards them a little bit. That's why I wanted to have Noor on. And I found the conversation to be really interesting and enlightening. With that, I bring you Noor Siddhicki. From WeFunder's office on Mission Street in San Francisco. This is War Metro. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

SPEAKER_04 1:14

Thank you so much for having me. I don't think anyone's ever pronounced my last name that perfectly.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

We can end the podcast right now. The whole point was for me to be able to give it one good pronunciation. Uh, but Noursadicki. Uh so let's start here. I, you know, in preparing for this, what we normally do is uh I'll sit down with our producer and editor, and we try to come up with one or two words, one or two concepts about the guests that we're really interested in that we just really want to sort of get into with a guest.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

How do you think you and your sister, and it's just the two of you, right? I have a younger brother, too. Oh, got it. Okay. So uh my research has failed me. Uh so the three of you, how do you think uh the three of you coming onto the scene changed their lives?

SPEAKER_04 1:53

Um my parents were like so uh overly uh loving. So I think that like they just constantly reinforce this thing of like, oh my god, you guys are like our entire world, like, you know, our life is all about you guys, which I think is a kind of common South Asian thing. But I do remember at the time being like, dude, I'm just like a drooling kid. Like, how could I possibly be the purpose of your life? I don't even know how to like eat greatly. Like, how could I possibly be that interesting? Yeah. Um, but um, yeah, I don't know. My parents were like really happy to become parents and like really happy about each specific kid. And like my mom to this day is always like um the age that my kids are now is like the most amazing age, you know. Like some people have like a certain age where they really love how my love when they were toddler or love when they were three or love when they were five. And she's always like today, she meets us and she's like, oh my god, this is the best age my kids have ever been at because she's enjoying whatever like moment and chapter we're in right now.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Uh I think there are a lot I don't think people really know what unconditional love is until they meet brown parents.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Like it truly the depths of unconditional love are like it would reserve nobody practices it like like brown parents do.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

But um, I actually I I do I'm curious about your sort of take on this. Like, do you think because it's relevant to the conversation, like, do you think that the way in which uh at least our people approach parenting, um do you think that's uh I think in a Western context it's very often seen as unhealthy. It's uh overbearing, right? Is that kind of your reading on it? Or do you think it's just different but equally great?

SPEAKER_04 3:31

Hmm. I don't know. It's hard for me to generalize because you know, you only know your specific family and your specific parents. But I would say for my parents, I would say like no notes. I mean, I would be like so like they were just such amazing parents. I just feel like the most core thing to me is like um, yeah, I think that unconditional love piece. And like I think that that just gives you this confidence that's really unshakable, right? It's like, hey, like, okay, who cares? Like I've tell you good on this test or not good on this test, and I like get on the varsity team or not. It's like my parents still love me. And I don't think you really realize that until you're older what that is, because a lot of people are doing things and they're like really trying to like fill this hole of parental love, right? Yeah. And I think it sounds really like overly medicated and you know psychological, but I think you really do see it, right? There's like there's like a positive motivation to do things, and then there's like this like hole-filling motivation to do things. And um, I mean, my parents are obviously not perfect people or anything. There's definitely things that you know we disagreed on, and uh probably things I'm gonna be do differently for for my kids, but I think that core thing of like loving me way too much, loving all of my siblings way too much. Um I think I would even describe it actually as a kid as like a suffocating amount of love. Like I actually described it to my friends like that. Yeah. But um, I don't know. I just think it's it's it's really nice to never have to question like, do my parents love me? And I and I was actually like so um, what's the word, sheltered from like alternative realities of this that like I I was actually shocked when like other people had talked to me and they'd said that like, oh, they'd never heard their parents say that they loved them or proud of them. Like I was like, what? Like I hear that 70 times a day. I'm like telling them not to say that because it's embarrassing. You know what I mean? Like it was kind of and um I don't know, I just can't imagine uh like growing up in a family where it wasn't like this like constant affection and this constant um love. And uh I mean, obviously there's lots of different ways to be. And I think specifically with um brown families or Muslim families, like sometimes I've heard that um like the um females in the family aren't given as many opportunities or something like that, but like that was just never my experience, like at all. Like I've come from like a long, you know, line of matriarchs who've done like crazy epic things. Like my grandma, she had five kids in Pakistan and then um left them all there for my grandfather to take care of while she went to America, like got uh, you know, studied here and then got a job, got like whatever. I think she was working like three jobs at one point, and then um, you know, brought you know them all over here with visas and things like that. And um, you know, they were super supportive of like I never felt like oh, like my my brother is favored or something over me, and you know, I don't think vice versa. And then similarly, like all of our friends in the area were like the same. So again, I think it's really hard to generalize because I think obviously some people have had really oppressive uh parents, whether they're brown or any other uh ancestry. But for me in particular, yeah, I have just no notes. I'm like so grateful to have gotten to grow up with parents who were so selfless and like really wanted us. Like, I think it's also really hard. I think people who grow up with parents who weren't ready to have them, or like whether whether that's like emotionally or just whatever, they just weren't ready for it. And I think um I don't know. I definitely felt like my parents uh were constantly reinforcing this idea that like we were gifts and we were like the center of their lives, maybe even too too too much.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

So I can really relate to that. And I think um um I don't know, I was I've been thinking about I'm not a parent, but I've been thinking about parenting uh in preparation for this interview uh sort of all week. And uh one of the thoughts that I've had is like I think people hold their parents to insane and continually more and more insane standards nowadays. Like it's you cannot hold them to the standard of perfection. And which is why I really like what you're saying, where I I've boiled it down to like, I think the best that you can do as a parent. Again, take this. I'm gonna get fried in the comments because I'm giving up parenting advice as a non-parent. But I feel like the best that you can do, and by this standard, I think my parents did a very good job, was um, you can give your kids unconditional love and you can give them the mechanisms, the sort of the machinery of happiness, of like teach them how to be happy. You can't really make your kids happy, like beyond a certain point. And so I think that, and I don't think people that people that haven't had that, it's very hard for them to recognize just how exactly, as you said, like this sort of invincibility shield you walk through in life. Because you're like the worst stuff could happen to me, but I have two loving parents back home. Um, which I think my my sister and I definitely grew up with. I I could relate to that. But I want to make this about you for a second. Uh I want to make the whole thing about you, but I want to come back to you for a second.

SPEAKER_04 8:20

Well, I want to make it about you. I want to hear about it.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Oh no, no, no. That's the part everybody's gonna skip through. Um, tell me, tell me this. What were you growing up with this invincibility shield? Um, what were you like as a kid? What did you want to do? What did you think you were gonna be when you grew up? Yeah, tell me that.

SPEAKER_04 8:34

Well, I definitely don't think I had the invincibility shield as a kid. And I and I don't I don't know how to explain it. I just feel like I I recognize it now as like a huge blessing, right? Is is just to have I don't know how to explain it, just like having knowing that your parents really love you and knowing that they're there for me kind of through ups and down has just been something that's been very grounding. Um but yeah, okay, so what was I like as a kid? Um I can't remember. I really liked The Simpsons. I was obsessed with The Simpsons. I like had a like encyclopedic knowledge of Simpsons. Um Bard Simpson, obviously. I mean the only right answer. Yeah, who doesn't who doesn't love the chaos machine? Um I'm trying to think what else was I like as a kid. I loved playing uh Foursquare. It was like also very serious activity. It was like, you know, you got you had to like know where were you ranked, you know. You couldn't like there was also I think there was like two different um arenas, right? And it was like the people who were like really serious about it and the people who were more casual and like you kind of you had to sort you had to sort yourself based on how seriously you took foursquare. Um I also really loved soccer. I like just I was I was I think I got a lot of red cards in soccer, actually. I don't know. We're doing what? I don't know. I think I was like too aggressive, which is weird because I was always small. So I don't know. I think that was maybe I don't know. I think I was clear those Napoleon complex going on.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

That was the exact opposite of my problem. I used to do karate growing up, and my coach used to call me Gandhi because I uh could not uh hit the other person without saying sorry every time, which was like very disruptive to like a sparring thing because I would hit the kid in every time I would be like, sorry man, sorry. But anyway, back back to you. So you got a lot of red cards as a as a yellow cards, yeah, some red cards.

SPEAKER_04 10:11

I just remember it being an issue. I remember like it came up, like and it was like the sort of parent conference about that of like what is wrong with your child, aggression issues. I don't know. And then um, yeah, I loved soccer. What else did I really love? Oh, one of my defining experiences of high school was actually pole vault. I don't know if you're familiar with this. Basically, you have a giant stick and then you just like plant it in, and then you like try to, you know, torpedo yourself over this bar. Um so that was really fun because I don't know why I think I didn't have very many friends in general in in school, but that ended up being a group of people who I really, really liked. And were you a pole vaulter or you just became friends with the pole vaulters? No, I was a pole vault. Okay, cool. Well, I'll explain. So basically, my entire first season of pole vaulting was a complete failure. So I don't know how I found out about it. I don't remember all the details of this now. This is weird, but I remember I was really enchanted by the idea of it because I was like, oh, that's insane. Like that seems like an insane skill to learn, right? I was just like very enchanted by this idea of like being able to like do that. It just seemed really cool to me. And then uh I think there was something really cool about our coach. I think our coach for the pole vaulting was like an Olympian or something crazy in pole vaulting. And then his son was like, he was trying, he the whole reason he signed up was because his son was um gonna be on the team and like it's basically he was gonna be able to coach his son. I was like, okay, this is like really sick. Like, I this is really my chance. And then uh I ended up having absolutely no skill because you really need to have upper body strength. Yes, like it's actually really critical. Like I thought because I was fast, I'd be able like that's supposed to be supposed to be able to, that's supposed to be a good asset, is if you're fast. But the problem is you also need to have upper body strength, which I did not have. So the entire first season was just failure. It was just like face plants in different like arenas, like different different orientations of face plants. And um, I don't know why. It was just really fun because then it was really satisfying. Like the next I think it was like the first day of the next season or something, but like you had to had to fail an entire season. And then the next season, the day that I did it, it was just like I don't even know. It was just like the coolest. I was like, wow, I finally made it over. And uh I don't know, that was really fun.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Bull vaulting seems like an incredibly painful sport to not be good at. Uh it's a it's of all the sports that I don't want to suck. I suck at every sport, but like that would be in particular really bad. Uh tell me this. So you um you faceplant and red card your way through. Uh I mean, I can tell from everything about you that you're obviously very good academically. Uh, but you end up at Stanford, right? Um what did you want to do when you showed up at Stanford? Like what what did you think your career was going to be the day you showed up at Stanford?

SPEAKER_04 12:47

Oh. Well, I actually came up to came to Stanford with the very, I don't know, very explicit or implicit goal of like starting ORCID afterwards. Like that was kind of the whole point of going to Stanford was um I so I actually applied to the Teal Fellowship with the idea for ORCID, right? So I was like whatever, I think 16 or something, applying, being like, so what I really want to do is like embryos. And then um kind of when I was like fortunate enough to actually get the fellowship, and I was like thinking very practically about like what am I gonna work on next, I sort of like, okay, I don't think I'm really gonna be able to convince parents to send me their embryos, seeing that like I am like in barely finished high school at this point. Yeah. So I worked at a different like company, like learned how to, you know, code and build products and raise money and kind of like the I would say like the basing founder skill set on that, and then kind of was like, okay, I want to go the main thing I want to study here is like how do I like really impact the space? Like what is what is really gonna, you know, make a difference here. So um yeah, I was a software person that just rotated in a bunch of different um, you know, deep learning labs, and it was like super fun to get to work with people who are um extremely applied. So like the first lab that I rotated in was uh Sebastian Thrund. He was like one of the founders of Google X. He like proposed this idea of the self-driving car. And uh to me, that was like the coolest possible like PI to work with. Um, because the thing that I thought was like sad about going to school was like, oh, what's the point of like writing stuff that just ends up being a paper that like three people understand? And I don't know, I was just like, well, I don't really care what those three other people who couldn't understand it think. Like I want to do stuff that um I can like see in the world, right? So then Sebastian was like the perfect person to work with because he proposes these crazy ideas that sound like sci-fi and then you know, a decade or two decades later, actually, you know, make them real. And it was like such a cool experience to get to work with the people in his lab who you know ended up, you know, founding Zooks and like the core technology at Waymo. And um, I don't know. I just like like that's what I feel like the point of the university should be is like propose stuff that would be like wild and uh amazing for the world and then like work on it until you know it makes enough commercial sense for like a company to go pursue it. So that was a really cool, really cool experience. And then I rotated in um with a professor, his name is Ashla Kwendaj, who's joint with both CS and genetics, and he had a bunch of um genetic data. And uh that was really insane because um my mom uh you know got um diagnosed with a condition called retinitis pigmentosa. So she started going progressively blind. And during that process, there was this promise that, hey, in 10 or 20 years, there's gonna be these huge databases and it's gonna make a really big difference in medicine. And, you know, here it was. I can just go SSH into that server, that data is actually real and like these models actually work. And um, to me, it was like, hey, you know, the most obvious place to apply this isn't uh on us adults, we're already fully formed, there's not much we can do. Um, it was uh all about embryos, right? So I was like pretty close to getting um engaged at the time, and I was like, okay, wow, babies are gonna be like with this specific person, not like just you know, in the abstract.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:02

And um, yeah, I don't know. It was a very kind of selfish thing of like, all right, well, I want to make sure that I can screen, you know, my embryos and like my child isn't gonna be affected with by the things that have affected my family. And then um, yeah, I don't know. Stanford is like the perfect playground. Like all the professors there, like I was working with um, you know, the division chief of reproductive endocrinology and fertility, like the head of the IVF lab, like everyone is just really like accessible and ready to like listen to um, you know, an undergrad or master's student or whatever I was at the time when I was always pinging them with questions. And then those questions turned into, you know, reading assignments, as reading assignments turned into coding assignments. Coding assignments turned into, you know, research projects and classes together. And then um, those were the first people who ended up um, yeah, basically helping start the company. Like it's it's actually really funny. Like earlier this week, uh the first um the first embryo that was screened as a research study in Stanford, that baby was born.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Wow. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 17:09

Which is so cool.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:10

Yeah. So it's like really cool to like see these loops because sometimes people come to us and they're like ready to test their embryos tomorrow, right? And sometimes it's been like, you know, it's like crazy to me that wow, people who've been who've had an experience with a company that's like spanned like half a decade now and like those babies are being born and like thinking into the future that you know people are gonna come be coming back to us in a decade, right? Or in half a decade, whenever they're you know, ready to start their families. And um I don't know, it's just like cool to like be at that moment in people's lives and then to get to be on the other side of that uh, you know, that really that life-changing moment, right? Yeah. Like your your life really like there's like this moment before you have a baby, and then there's a moment after. And it's like, you know, yeah. It really um I think it really both hardens and softens people, right? It softens them because they kind of, you know, they lose some of the um some of their edge, right? Because they let that baby softens them, and then it hardens them too, because you know, you have to become kind of like a badass and a soldier to like handle parenthood.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

It's um it to me one of the most interesting uh experiences. So somebody told me that this, uh like a person with kids who was telling my wife and I this that it's the only decision that at some level you kind of can't get it wrong. Because if you decide you're not gonna have kids, you're gonna be happy with that. And I just almost very few people say that they regret not having kids. And then at the same time, if you do decide to have kids, there's something about the process of going through that that actually makes that the right decision for you. To say it is kind of like self-fulfilling that way, but it changes you more than maybe any other decision, a single life event, right? But tell me this, okay. So this week, as uh, you know, my mom and other my wife will ask me who I'm having on, and I kept bumbling through the explanation for what ORCID is or how it works, just exposing to me just how dumb I am on this particular in general, but also in this particular topic. Uh, in the uh not in the dumbest possible terms, but in very simple terms, uh, what does ORCID do? And then I have a actually like a second part to that question, which is, and you you kind of already touched on this, that um uh what in your own experience, and you would love to hear about your your your mom's experience with this, but what made it such that at 16 you knew you wanted to do this? So let's let's attack first what uh what ORCID is, and then let's get into why for you it was so important to start this.

SPEAKER_04 19:33

Yeah. So what ORCID is, is we help parents protect their baby before they're even born. And uh the way that works is that um we scan embryos for diseases. So when you go through IVF, you make multiple embryos, maybe you'll make five embryos, maybe you'll make 20 embryos. And the older testing is extremely limited in the amount of information that it can scan for. So it actually only scans less than 1% of the DNA of the embryo. And the way that you can think about sequencing and um, you know, scanning uh DNA for diseases is kind of like a spell check, right? So if you had a proofreader for a book and you said, Hey, can you proofread my book? And then they said, Hey, I'm only gonna be able to tell you if that book has extra or missing chapters, you'd be like, okay, not great proofreading, but like pretty, I guess, d maybe okay. Um that's kind of what the what the uh existing embryo screening uh is able to do. It's only able to screen 1% of the DNA of the embryo. So it's only able to look for a very, very small fraction of the total diseases. So what Orca does is we can screen 99% of the DNA of the embryo, so we can screen for thousands of diseases that would otherwise be missed. So it's kind of equivalent to that proofreader getting an upgrade from just being able to tell you is your table of contents present or not, to being able to actually read the entire book. So actually look at every single letter test, check for typos. So we look at all three billion letters in the embryo's uh DNA, and we're able to scan for thousands of diseases. So these diseases are things like um birth defects. So children that are born without skulls or without uh organs, right? These are looking for um signatures for uh genetic forms of autism, intellectual disability, right? 60% of moderate to severe intellectual disability actually has a genetic basis that you can screen for, right? Um and we can also screen for complex conditions. So for things like schizophrenia or bipolar or heart disease, it's not just one gene, one typo, it's the cumulative impact of many millions of variants that are driving risk. So we can help parents reduce their child's risk for these uh disorders by anywhere from 30 to 80 percent, just five embryos. So, really, what parents are able to do is they're able to take um a massive amount of risk off the table for those monogenic conditions. So if there's things where it's um a typo, an anomaly, a genetic disease that's present or not, um, they can you know take that risk um you know substantially lower, like you know, our accuracy is like over 99%. Um then for Those complex conditions, you're able to select an embryo that's lower risk, right? Has a lower genetic susceptibility, right? So one embryo might be in the 99th percentile of risk, another embryo might be in the 70th or 60th percentile of risk. So their absolute risk is really, really different. Um, so for families where they have a family history of, you know, bipolar or schizophrenia or diabetes, um, there's not really a lot of mitigation options. There's no diet or exercise that you can give your child to minimize their risk for bipolar schizophrenia. The most significant factor is genetics. And we allow parents to actually see what the genetic susceptibility for their embryo is before their baby is born. So instead of rolling the dice and getting a random outcome, um, you can get a better than average outcome. You can get a lower risk for whatever disease you're worried about in your family. Um, and you can take risks for these uh really awful, you know, catastrophic outcomes, right? Stillbirth, infant death almost to zero. Um so I think that it's just like a really important advance for families because um, you know, pregnancy is like one of the most uh, you know, difficult things anyone ever goes through, right? And the idea of like having a pregnancy and then, you know, that baby dying at the end of that process is just horrific, right? That should not happen, right? So right now, um, 28% of infant deaths are actually due to a genetic cause that we know of, right? So a quarter of over a quarter of deaths we could just um, you know, eliminate, right, by helping those families uh identify an embryo that is, you know, going to survive, right? Um so 50% of miscarriages are actually also due to um genetics as well. So again, it's like you you kind of go through this process and you don't want it to end in um, you know, the most catastrophic outcome for both mom and baby. So um yeah, what what ORCID really gives parents is the maximum amount of information going into the most important decision of their life. So it does require IVF. That's another question people often ask immediately. It's like, oh, but can I do this if I do it the old-fashioned way? And no, you can't. You have to create embryos via the IVF process. And then um, however many embryos you create, whether that's five, ten, you know, twenty embryos, you can get embryo reports for each of them. And then you decide which embryo to transfer based on, you know, kind of the the risks you're most concerned about.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Warm intro is brought to you by WeFunder. WeFunder created this thing called the community round that lets you raise money directly from your community. So instead of going to VCs and rich people, angel investors, you can go straight to your friends and your family and your customers. And uh, you know, but this is not a traditional ad read. I used WeFunder for my company three times. We ran three rounds on WeFund and we raised over a million dollars. And I found that it completely changed how everybody felt about our business. Our customers all of a sudden didn't feel like they were just customers, they felt like they were owners in the business. They shopped with us more, they told their friends about us. My team felt like what we were doing was important because our community had shown up to invest in us. I tell every founder I can find to go raise a WeFund around. Especially for companies that care about community, there is nothing greater you can do than letting that community invest. Go to WeFunder.com slash join. Let's check it out. Wow. I um this is of of all the guests we've had, what you're working on, I I'll reveal my bias. I think is the most interesting thing. Um so I want to actually switch over to kind of the reaction to this, right? Um you all have been in um I it feels weird to say in the market, but in the world for a little bit, right? And um you've got obviously got a lot of supporters. I know people who've used Orchid, which I can tell you about off camera. Uh but and it's you know, they would never uh have done it any other way. Um I want to try to understand from you how you understand how you think about uh uh who the user is, right? Like, or I don't know if that's a word you like to use, but who the typical person is that that uses Orchid. Um and then on the other side, w have you found any kind of uh sort of unifying trait in the people that tend to be uh honestly the best I can come up with is weirded out by ORCID. Um yeah, how do you understand those two kind of contingents of people?

SPEAKER_04 26:27

Oh yeah, the first is like who our users are, and the second is people who hate us?

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 26:32

Okay, people who use us, I think, are um just extremely smart, right? Like they're very thoughtful. That's a great answer already. They're very thoughtful. They're they've like really researched all the options, they've seen that there's fakers, they care a lot about making sure that that the quality of their results are um, you know, really well validated. Um, yeah, they've talked to other people who've used the product. So yeah, they tend to be like really smart and really um I don't explain it, like data gathering, right? Like they want information, they want inputs. Uh they're definitely not the kind of people who are, you know, shying away or uh, you know, info hazard people. Like so yeah, I guess moving to people who who hate us, I think um yeah, I think there's people who def who genuinely think there's um who who get anxiety from information, right? And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. You just kind of have to know who you are, right? But some people, when they gather information, they feel more confident, they feel like they're in control. Those are our users. Some people, when they gather more information, they get into a paralysis state, right? They're sort of like, oh, these are there's like sort of trade-offs in every decision, or it's like negative to know beforehand. Um, so yeah, I think it tends to be people who are, yeah, basically uh higher anxiety, or people who are uh religious who tend to not like the product.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Oh, religious. Is there a particular religious affiliation that has a problem with that? Because I didn't I never thought of there being like a religious uh I guess like uh wait, I'll let you answer. Uh is there a particular persuasion that is against Orchid?

SPEAKER_04 28:01

Um I just think we can put this out if you don't want Yeah, I don't want like a specific religion to go after. But um yeah, what's what's like a more neutral way to describe it? Um Yeah, I mean, I just think there's people who um don't want technology to touch birth, right? And I think some of those people are religious and some of those people um I don't know, are just traditionalists or something, right? I mean and yeah, they they feel like anything that touches uh birth is uh is dangerous and is sort of should be um yeah, it it shouldn't enter that space. I mean, there's a very long history of this, right? So um, you know, when condoms were first introduced, they were met with um pitchforks, right? So the doctors who offered them were actually put in jail. They were banned under obscenity laws. It was considered obscene for a woman to have control over uh whether she conceived and when she conceived. So there was actually two Supreme Court cases fought in the US for women to have the right to buy condom. The first Supreme Court case gave uh women the right uh who were married with the per written permission of their husband uh to get access to condoms. And then it took another Supreme Court case, I think, you know, more than um close to a decade later, uh, for single women to get access to condoms, right? So things that are passed out in middle school and high schools routinely today, um, you know, was it was originally met with uh pitchforks, right? IVF. Similarly, there was um, you know, this this fear around uh fear and sort of uh negativity around test two babies and how you know millions of people exist who wouldn't have been born otherwise if those scientists didn't push through the controversy. Um and I think actually my favorite one, because I think is sort of the most ridiculous, is that there were actually a lot of doctors who were against the NICU, so the neonatal intensive care unit, this idea of incubators for babies. They said that this is a waste of money, we'll never be able to save these babies, we should not put any resources into this, right? And now, um, yeah, millions of babies that would have otherwise not have made it um are here today because we invested in uh um you know NICU care, right? We we we tried to help the most vulnerable people in the world, right? They're only a couple uh weeks old um actually survive and make it um determined be you know healthy infants. So I think that um, yeah, society uh I think rightfully understands that you know pregnant women and babies are the most vulnerable members of society, but um, I think wrongfully doesn't try to introduce a lot of um, you know, science and engineering to the process, right? I think this is sort of the most um like the biggest moment in a lot of people's lives, and we shouldn't be using um you know medicine and science and engineering to make it the safest uh possible outcome for folks.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Well, let me let me ask you this. So um I is there any criticism of this field, not of ORCID specifically, but is there any criticism of this field that you do take to heart that you think there is? Because I so I tried as hard as I could to immerse myself in all the bad things that people think about this field and all the reasons people don't like it. A lot of it I would just chalk up as a an outsider, I would just talk up to people um just getting the ick and not really being able to describe it, which is a lot of like sort of Luddite points of view in general, is just that it doesn't feel right, but there's no real moral framing that I can create in which I'm not saying this, but I'm saying this is what people are saying, right? Is that I don't know why, but it doesn't feel right. And maybe I'm not doing them justice, but that's what it so I want to try to do them justice from as somebody who spent, you know, I mean, going on two decades, right, in this thinking about this. Is there any criticism in those two decades that you have felt like, no, there's there's like a kernel of truth there, or maybe I I kind of get where they're coming from?

SPEAKER_04 31:54

Oh yeah, no, there's a lot of them that I think are I'm actually very sympathetic to. So the one I'm most sympathetic to is um uh, you know, this is something that is gonna um like it's not okay that this is something that's only available to the wealthy.

SPEAKER_03 32:08

Right.

SPEAKER_04 32:08

That's I 100% agree with that one, right? So IVF itself um has existed in this country in an extremely unfair state, right? Yes. IVF was only available to people who could afford it. So that essentially means for the last 40 years, America has been a country where rich people get to have babies and poor people don't because they can't access the technology that would allow them to have families. That's extremely unfair. And I think it's also extremely unfair that um orchid and embryo screening would fall into that category. So again, I think it's insane that this isn't covered under insurance, right? Because if you think about insurance dollars, if people could allocate it themselves, they would certainly want to allocate it toward, you know, pregnancy, IVF, embryo screening as opposed to right now. There's a ton of dollars that are kind of lopsided at end of life care in their last week or two of life. I don't think that's where people want to spend uh the the bulk of their um healthcare dollars. So I think that the ROI on IVF and embryo screening today is already through the roof. And I think that, you know, every employer, um, you know, every insurance company, it should be mandated to cover it because it's, I mean, it feels like it's a human right. Like, why should it be the case that people who can pay more get a healthier child than people who can't, right? But that's what the reality is. Like you can get a better than average outcome by screening your embryos. Yeah. And it should be that that's available to everyone.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:27

Um, yeah, so I think that's true. But you know, I'm not emperor of the US, so I can't mandate that.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

Well, but this is the you are pointing to, I think, a very interesting trend where there's this article, and I'm sure you heard about it. Everybody was discussing it a few years ago called The Death of Meritocracy, right? It was in the Atlantic. And one of the things it talked about was that if you go back to the 70s and look at, you know, a cartoon of a rich person, that rich person is overweight and unhealthy. And, you know, like it's the classic depiction of like, and it's been going on for for a while, of like this sort of um this like uh obese, kind of gluttonous person. That was a rich person. And uh and a a poor person was somebody that was like, you know, very sort of lean and trim and they didn't have enough to eat. But the reality has flipped so much where now you are significantly less likely to have diabetes or to be uh morbidly obese, name or uh you know, cardiac problems. Any problem you can think of, you're significantly less likely to have uh if you are in the top sort of um whatever quartile of income earners, right? So we do have this. So my but the point I'm trying to make is like that's not just exclusive to ORCID, of course, right? That's just the reality of the world that we're in. Um I want to switch to actually the other side now, that the sort of the positive of this. Yeah. Um, not the positive of income inequality, the positive of ORCID. Um, is there a story for you that, you know, when you're having trouble sleeping at night or just, you know, your mind starts to wander uh to things that make you feel good? Is there a story that really sort of sticks with you? Uh and I know you can't share any kind of like real details, but so feel free to anonymize everything and change names, whatever you need to do.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

But a a a genuine user experience case study story that really, really is close to your heart.

SPEAKER_04 35:07

Oh. Um honestly, I I love all of our users, honestly. I think that they're all really cool, and I'm always so honored to get to work with any of them. But I'll tell you just a f a story that I thought was really funny. So um I was at a party and I didn't really want to be there because I was just being kind of um I was being kind of emo. You know, you're just kind of emo sometimes. And I was emo, and then I was kind of like just walking around the party because I was like, because out of social obligation I had to be there. So I was like kind of walking around it, and um then someone comes up to me and they're like, Are you the founder of Orchid? And then I was like, Oh my god, this is my Charlie Kirk moment. Yeah, like this is so bad. Um, I didn't know anyone knew about the company or anything. And this is, I was like, I'm about to get yelled at, they didn't like something, this is gonna be bad. And then, and then and then I was like, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I am. And then he's like, You saved my life. Wow. And then I was like, then I switched to being, okay, I think this guy doesn't realize this is not the right company. Because I was like, we don't save adults' lives. Like this is like we couldn't have done this. I was like, I was like, I was like, I think you might be mistaking us with like a paramedic company or something. Like we actually don't really do so much for adults. We do embryo screening. He's like, no, no, no, I know that. Like, I have an embryo report from you guys. And then he he goes on to explain that um we basically solved this medical mystery for him and his family. So he had um a lot of uh like he basically had calluses on his hands and feet, which again to me, the untrained eye, doesn't seem like a very big deal. Um and but it's actually a like legitimate um symptom. So basically the um protein that forms keratin, uh, the same ones that are at in your hand also uh is uh is um present in your heart tissue, right? Yeah. So basically this uh hardening of the tissue on his hands is a symptom of the hardening of the tissue in his heart. So people with this condition have uh sudden death because their heart tissue basically calcifies and then their heart literally stops beating. And he had a um family member, one of his uncles, who suddenly died uh in his um, I think, early 40s due to this condition. And um, they didn't know it was this condition. Wow. Um, but they've subsequently sequenced all of the other family members, and he's actually a competitive cyclist. Oh my God. So um unfortunately you'd think that that would you know make your cardiovascular strength higher, but for someone with this condition, it actually weakens your heart faster because you're basically stressing the heart tissue um beyond what its capacity is, so you get to stop um cycling. And then I think he's you know planning on getting a uh you know device implanted so that uh if his heart is you know were to stop, you know, then uh there's basically a device that's able to kind of uh you know uh kick it back into high gear. Um so that was just like a completely out of love. And really did save his life. I mean, I think he's being very generous when he said that. But um, I did just think it was really cool because you never know what the consequences of getting results on your embryos are because he actually did the embryo screening um kind of prophylactically, kind of in in that information gathering you know, category of person where there wasn't actually a family thing that he was worried about. He just did it because he wanted to um do right by his kids. And then what he ended up finding out was information that was super relevant to his his his current life and to his whole family, actually, right? Because he has other um siblings and aunts and uncles um, you know, who who need to know this information. So um I don't know. That was that was that was one of the ones I thought was kind of the most funny just because I was I was so duped in many different directions.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

No, that is especially if you were feeling emo that day. That's that's a good that's a good pick me up. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um I have so I have two questions to kind of close this out. Um the second for a second, right? Um I want to try to get sort of the the Noor Siddhicki um map of the world a little bit where um in an ideal world where not just ORCID but um all of the technologies and all the sort of advancements that you really believe in, uh you believe to be positive forces, have all come to come to be true. What um what does that world look like? In what ways is it different? In what ways is that world better than the world that we currently live in? Yeah, what is if all of your dreams about technology come true, um, what does the world look like?

SPEAKER_04 39:32

Oh wow, that's a fun one. Um yeah, there's actually a variant of a question I actually really like to ask. I highly recommend you ask your your friends or someone new you meet, which is basically so if the population of the world was all you, just like, you know, there were there's no other people. It was just like, you know, everyone was newer or everyone was Obama. Like what would the world look like?

SPEAKER_03 39:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:53

Like how would people dress? What would the holidays be? What industries would exist, what industries wouldn't exist? Um anyway, that's it's very it's just like a fun.

SPEAKER_00 40:01

Um I asked a version of that question, which is does morality exist in a world where you are the only alive uh being? Uh-huh. Uh so but that that's a that's for the when we have you on the second time, but I would I want to kind of kick it.

SPEAKER_04 40:13

Oh, okay. But yeah, I'm sorry, you were asked, but what were your your question was what um What does the world look like? What does the world look like where uh all of Noor's like pet technologies exist? Um I think it just looks like one where people have like more freedom and more expression, right? Like I think that um, you know, what's like the promise of the great American West? It's about like freedom and like self-expression and like you know being able to like go build your dream, right? And I think like the physical environment right now isn't like that. Like you can't just go build a log cabin and then you like have a house here, right? Now it's like there's so many um, you know, rules and regulations and scarcity and like I don't know, it's just kind of funny. I don't know if you've like seen a lot of these developments, but houses used to cost$3,000 and then we built them like right by the coast, and like that's where like young families used to live. Like that's Pacifica, right? And now it's impossible to buy a house that's like doesn't have lead paint in it for less than like$2 million. And it's like a really sad story of like this is the American West. Like there's this whole promise and like legacy around, oh, you come here to like be free and live free. And like now that promise has like just uh been really truncated and just siphoned into this one little place, which is like cyber, you know, technology universe where you know it hasn't been, you know, overburdened, over encumbered by um, you know, unnecessary rules and Karen's and things like that. So yeah, I don't know. I think the future that I'm excited about isn't like really about technology in particular. I think it's just about where people have uh a lot of freedom and there's a lot of abundance, there's a lot of optimism. And like when you want to go do a thing, you just go, you're able to go do that thing, whether that's like sort of family, whether that's do a painting, whether that's um do some street art, make a home. Like I just think that uh people are just like these amazing, like generative like um entities, right? Like they're just like full of like light and they glow and just like let them glow, right? Like one of those features is like computers, right? People make these like amazing websites where you can learn stuff or like meet someone from across the world to teach you something. And um, I just think like the the world that I'm most excited about is where like each individual person is able to like bring their fire um in full force to the world, you know?

SPEAKER_00 42:27

I um uh a couple of years ago, I took I had to get licensed uh to ride my motorcycle in America. And I went to uh to do that in San Francisco, you have to go to UCSF and you have to ride around and make like eights in your motorcycle for a whole day to get the truth to do the training in their parking lot for UC San Francisco.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

And the entire time it's a beating sun, yeah, and I'm just sweating inside my helmet, and there's this big library building. Um, and I've been thinking about this moment in kind of preparing for this. This library building, and it has these words at the top of it. And so these words are now seared in my brain. And I think that they describe this worldview very well. Like driving around in eights, beating sun, and I just kept looking up, and the words in the library are the truth will set you free. Uh, and I think uh I mean you're I later learned that that's actually also a religious thing. But I I do think that there are fundamentally two worldviews. One is like um the one sees the truth and more information as a burden. And this is like there's chapters, there are books of moral philosophy dedicated to this that I'm not gonna be able, I'm not smart enough to describe or even to understand. But there is, I think, a view that sees it as a sort of informational hazard, as you said, right? And then there's this other view, and I think that you're a real champion of it, of like, no, the truth will set you free. More information helps everybody. Um, but I want to bring this to my my final question. You know, a century from now, when your thoroughly genetically uh tested grandkids are getting interviewed by my third. Thoroughly genetically tested grandkids. And they come to the question as we did of their grandmother. As as you were talking about your grandmother, what do you hope your thoroughly genetically tested grandkids will fully upgraded by them? What do you hope they'll say about your work and your life?

SPEAKER_04 44:22

Um I don't know. I hope that they just were like, oh, I had a uh grandma who um I mean I think that's that that's actually what's really funny about grandparents and about uh like life in general, right? Like we're all so fixated on like, oh, like what is my legacy or whatever gonna be. Dude, nobody knows their grandparents' job title. No one cares what their LinkedIn whatever career trajectory was. Literally, the only person they are to them is grandparents, like they're just grandma. Like they're just gonna be grandma. And like that's cool, right? Like it's cool. Like to me, I'm excited about, oh, like, you know, hopefully if I'm lucky to have the number of kids that I want to have, like I'm excited about that like massive Thanksgiving table with that's like super chaotic and like stuff is being spilled because there's just so many people there, and um, you know, they also want to have kids. So I don't know. I don't think they I think it'll just be cool that they're there, right? Like that's kind of the point. Like, I think um I don't know. I remember like talking to my husband about this too. He's like when you marry someone, you're like looking into the person's eyes. And those eyes are gonna be the same ones that you're gonna be looking into when your parents die, right? They're gonna be the ones consoling you when your parents die, right? And that's gonna be the saddest moment of your entire life when like your entire world and your entire identity gets shaken because those are the people who carried you to to you know to to your entire life, right? And then those are the same eyes that you're gonna be looking into um, you know, when you pass away, right? When when either of you guys pass away. And they're the same eyes that you know your grandkids are gonna see when they're bored for however many days you you're lucky enough to be able to, you know, hold them for. So I don't know. I just think it's cool. Like I would I think it'd be just amazing if I end up, you know, being able to be a grandma, right? Like that's the thing, is like I feel like people who are our age are always like freaking out about, oh my God, I have a wrinkle or I have a gray hair or whatever their thing that they're irritated by. And it's like growing old is like a massive blessing. Like, there's people who have these like horrible diseases and they're given this like you know, pretty horrible prognosis. And it's like every day really feels like a gift to them. And I think if you have any even vague proximity to that, then you recognize it, like this idea of like be getting to be a grandma, getting to become irrelevant in the sense that like whatever the technology is of the time, I'm sure I won't be well versed in it, right? Like that's a that's actually a blessing that you get to be like the storer of you know history and news that uh has become archaic and you get to um, you know, hold your grandkids and you know, just be, right? Like being is also like a really valuable part about life. And like I think people who are in our age are just really focused on doing, which is great, but like your personality is really mediated by how old you are, right? Like when you're our age, it's all about doing. But when you're older, it's about being. And like that's actually like a very um beautiful and um yeah, it's like an incredible aspect of life that I think people should like be looking forward to. And I'm just gonna be and like hopefully hang out with them.

SPEAKER_00 47:31

That is so beautiful. Um, may we all get to be vessels of history and may we all get to be. Um Sideki, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

SPEAKER_04 47:40

Thank you so much for having me. This is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 47:41

Yeah, this was so much fun. Warm Intro is produced and edited by J-Wan Moon and Alex Eichel. Hosted by me, Chai Mishro.