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Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

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Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#161

Post by sytse »

lzqqqqqq wrote: post #158
sytse wrote: post #88

Thanks for posting this. Happy to answer questions!

Such an inspiring read. As a bioinformatics researcher I'm awed by the depth of the deck. How do feel about the process of learning cancer biology and bioinformatics? Ps. I work for BillionToOne oncology and we build some of the most sensitive liquid biopsy tests ( https://www.northstaronc.com/ ). Feel free to reach out if it pique your interest!

It wasn’t easy to learn it while dealing with the side effects of chemo. But AI helped a lot, also see the OpenAI forum talked linked on the page. Love BillionToOne, also see https://osteosarc.com/timeline/ MRD Northstar for my results with it.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#162

Post by arjie »

crote wrote: post #72
perch56 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can fathom 3B, I can’t fathom 300B

Quick, without doing any kind of Googling or calculation: if I asked you to count 3B grains of rice by hand, how long would that take you? How big would that pile of rice be? How long would it take you to eat it? A billion is already unfathomably large. If you think it isn't, you just haven't tried imagining what a billion of anything would be like.

The problem with this exercise is that I have a few million in wealth and I cannot actually visualize a few million grains of rice but I am fully aware of my total capacity to allocate capital to problems.

Neither $3b nor $300b are realistically unfathomable to me. I find them easy to consider in terms of the projects I can build if I achieved each of these amounts.

As an example I’d have to allocate somewhere between $50m to $250m to get people to vote on a California proposition. I’d need to spend $1.5b to create a wing of a major hospital. I’d need between $100m and half a billion to create a new K-12 school in my city.

These are large sums of money and are currently out of my reach so if AI doesn’t destabilize everything my best bet is to take the same approach each of my ancestors did. Move my children one level up the wealth ladder and hopefully give them the values that help them prioritize these actions and the optimal way of getting there. I think that involves some amount of compounding and then some amount of spending.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#163

Post by archon810 »

plasma wrote: post #132

I think you’d find Dr. Richard Scolyer’s story really relatable. He’s an Australian cancer expert who, along with his colleague, is using himself as "patient zero" for a world-first treatment for his own brain cancer. They’re basically doing the research and the treatment in parallel to find a new way forward: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-30/dr-richard-scolyer-sp...

Unfortunately, I found this from 12 days ago https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15655909/Dr-Richard.... Glioblastoma is a horrible disease.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#164

Post by ex-aws-dude »

hubrix wrote: post #87

This story and the guy curing his dogs cancer leads me to believe what's missing is a jurisdiction that allows people with money to do whatever experiments they want/need to move medicine forward.

Sorry but that’s an insane statement

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#166

Post by 113 »

dasil003 wrote: post #76
fumeux_fume wrote: post #28

The linked post about his treatment is basically a vanity article; low in useful information, but high in vague assertions and platitudes. There's also a link to a post griping about the red tape someone experienced while trying to self-treat their dog's cancer that's weird. I clearly live in a different world than these people.

It's wild to me to hear this being spun as vanity, like it's some influencer clickbait or linkedin slop. You could argue anyone posting anything online is driven by vanity, but in this case we're talking about someone who took agency in his own medical outcome, and essentially experimented on himself. Sure it was selfish in the sense that he didn't want to die and he bent all his effort and resources to it, so what?…

Because it's only an option if you're rich and most of us aren't rich.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#167

Post by appstorelottery »

djmips wrote: post #151
appstorelottery wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right on the mark. What triggered me was the slide in Sid's presentation: "Assessing Fibroblast Content of Tumor". Peyronie's is all about Fibroblasts. I actually typed my reply quite a few times, deleting mention of Peyronies and retyping it. It's a shameful condition for me, and I realize that I have to get over this. Peyronie's affects 1% to 20% of men, primarily because it's (if you're anything like me) -…

Bravo, I didnt even know about this condition so thanks for bringing it out into the open.

Thank you, I'm seeing that awareness is key.

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#169

Post by sytse »

WJW wrote: post #142
sytse wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a stoic mindset, I try to not care about things that are outside my sphere of influence. While the cancer was unfortunate it was out of my control. Having my YCW15 batchmate step up for me during my initial set of treatments to get me Shasqi opened my eyes that I could help create and take new medicines. It was within my sphere of influence. When I reached the end of standard of care I stepped down from the CE…

Philosphical treatments have got a bad rap because it is so easy for conmen to convert them into fake hope, but when properly applied they are still amazingly effective. It's just that "properly applied" is very often not profitable because all the applicable texts and practices have been quite literally known for thousands of years and are available through well known texts in the public domain. And Sytse if you rea…

Dank je!

Re: Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

#170

Post by sytse »

appstorelottery wrote: post #133
sytse wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not knowledgable able fibrosis except that my tumor expresses a lot of FAP and it is a workable target for radio and immune drugs.

I have sent you an email - any help you can provide in this area.

Thanks, I replied to your email.
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