You meet and build a relationship with your dream partner to start a new company with.
They mentor you, you do academic research together.
Then you ask them to become co-founders and… they turn you down.
Disappointing to say the least, right?
Not for Alina Su.
She managed to turn a no into a “hell yes” six years later and started Generation Lab with legendary longevity researcher Dr. Irina Conboy and Michael Suswal (co-founder of the unicorn Standard Cognition).
So far, they’ve raised $15M including having Accel lead their seed round, with participation by Giannis Antetokounmpo, Steve Aoki, me, and other great folks.
She told me the story (and more, like why she keeps on a clock on her desk counting down to roughly when she expects to die):
Treat Every No as a Not Yet
In 2018, Alina joined Dr. Conboy’s research lab at UC Berkeley.
She was just an undergrad studying bioengineering after immigrating to the US a few years earlier.
Over the next 3+ years, she helped out in any way she could even if it meant getting coffees and donuts for their group.
Alina was obsessed because she knew Dr. Conboy’s research, which showed how many traditional markers of aging were actually reversible through plasma exchange, should be used in commercial products to change lives.
That might sound surprising, but you’ve likely seen billionaire founder Bryan Johnson talk about doing regular blood transfusions (originally with his son) as part of his longevity protocol.
One of Dr. Conboy’s insights is that the main benefit of plasma exchange has nothing to actually do with “younger” blood, but rather it’s just the dilution of the older plasma.
She’d first released work on plasma exchange way back in 2005, with this new insight coming in 2016.
But throughout that whole time, she (nor anyone else) had commercialized it with a product.
Alina was determined to both convince and help her to do that, though Dr. Conboy turned her down initially.
Many founders in this scenario would have either given up, or tried too hard to push for a yes.
Alina, instead, looked at what she would need to do in order for Dr. Conboy to say yes. She realized that she had no experience building companies, so what value was she truly bringing to the table for an established researcher like Dr. Conboy?
Before circling back to start Generation Lab in 2023, Alina built and successfully exited another company, NovaXS.
She went through Techstars with it and, there, met Michael Suswal. At the time, Michael was building Standard Cognition to a billion dollar valuation.
After NovaXS was acquired, she went back to Dr. Conboy and Michael and pitched them both. Michael, on the longevity space. And Dr. Conboy, on commercializing her research together.
When you want to build something world-changing, finding a truly world-class subject matter expert is hard. Convincing them to build something with you is harder still.
Alina’s journey makes it clear that playing the long game, and making yourself the type of person with the right experience that your desired co-founder would want to build with in the first place, is the right response.