Request for Proposals: NYC Life Sciences Innovation Infrastructure RFP

Great. Thank you Danny!

quick disclaimer up front: I have read, written and responded to RFPs and there is something about this one that seems to me just a littler oddly amateurish or even scammy, because of the assumptions it makes and the language which is kind of cliche in terms of buzzwords and overreach. I don’t mean to sound overly critical but all too often government programs giving away lots of money with RFPs that sound unrealistic end up being a corrupt technique for giving that money to your well connected friends, along with a kickback to you, Seen it happen in Miami repeatedly.

Example of being unrealistic:  

They expect to find an existing  organizations that > already has the ability to expand and enhance biotechnology commercial infrastructure, or which is actually developing therapeutic products like drugs,  which would imply they have already been funded to some degree, > but didn’t get funded by private investors (which would make it for-profit) and is looking for money, > and is a nonprofit whose mission is to support the success of for-profit, investor-funded biotech companies.

Isn’t that a bit like saying you are a non-profit that was started to provide free-housekeeping services for wall street banks? If you look closely at existing “biotech nonprofits” you see that they tend to be set up by for-profit companies or industry groups as a way to collectively invest in resources they all need, attract and coordinate additional money, and also to avoid taxes on that invested money.

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Responding to the RFP:

OK, so now that I got that off my chest, YES I would still go ahead and apply for this prudently and practically. This means:

1.       Ask specific detailed questions on 6/30 at info session about what is and is not required, giving examples of the level of “aspirational vs currently demonstrable” capabilities, etc.

2.      Provide what they ask for and nothing more.

3.      Apply with a mission statement that is realistic, utilitarian, contributes to their goals in a direct real way.

4.      Ask for the money you truly need with a financial statement that is accurate and complete.

Seems to me pretty straight forward to position BWoB this way:

a.      Currently almost every major city has multiple community biospace facilities with  safety level 1 or  level 2  capabilities. There’s a reason for this. It promotes and support biotech in those cities in by…..

b.      NYC DOES NOT have one. The biospaces people like to mention like genspace and others don’t actually provide a true facility like the labs in other cities and thus they are not able to promote and support biotech as described in NYC. So NYC lacks this important resource. NYC should have multiple such biospaces

c.      We can create a fully functional biospace that meets the criteria for level 2 safety and that would additionally have other key ingredients to support it’s mission of augment ting the biotech infrastructure in NYC: these include: expert staff to provide guidance, supervision, and support; training; ….

d.      The proposed biospace would also provide services to biotech companies like equipment evaluations, equipment rentals, temporary laboratory bench capacity; and much more

e.      This proposal is for the initial opening of a facility in [location] followed by additional facilities in Y and Z

I would not talk about anything other than the actual physical and intellectual resources you intend to provide. I would add many different examples of experiments and outputs by users of the space but definitely not point to any specific subject or science.

So, you would need to get down to it and produce as real facility creation and expansion plan with 5 year financial plan

Immediate next steps: prepare well worded logical questions for Wednesday’s info session.

So those are my initial thoughts

I'd like to say one more thing in response to the last update from Danny. Regarding the idea of health improvement services, commercialization and things like that, please keep in mind that it will difficult to pitch that when you've never done it.  just because the RFP says it's looking for those things in and ideal respondent doesn't mean that you have to say you provide those in order to be awarded money. The best way to win this is to stick to the things that are actually within your mission and which you can actually do have done in the past. I think there's more than enough of that without needing to go beyond it.  for example I can think of quite a few ways in which having a community L2 biospace serves to support existing biotech companies and provides a form of infrastructure. This includes 

providing a space in which everyone from independent scientists, physicians, researchers at biotech companies, and biotech startups getting ready to launch can do proof of concept and answer preliminary questions about their research. BWoB would provide the resources for the critical essential first step that then leads to read a real study then can lead to a breakthrough product. you provide the resources and guidance where ideas can be born and to turn into something. this is priceless and right now we don't have that here . So that's just one humongous value that you can elaborate on. 

other functions that generate revenue: Think about all of the biotech equipment manufacturers who would love to get some testers to beta tester products and give them some good feedback before they put a product out or apply with the FDA. 

Also there are tons of doctors out there who have a medical education but really no laboratory research training at all and they have opportunities to help their patients if only they could do some basic things in the lab. Those guys would love to get some training from you and they would gladly pay.

yet another branch would be that you would accumulate a bunch of well-maintained equipment that you could rent out to different buy labs when they need something for a project only. 

then there's the community education angle where you could provide an opportunity for high schools  and even colleges to conduct experiments using your lab . I'm talking about experiments well beyond just fun with fungus. It is essential that you say you're going to be a level 2 facility because that's where you can really offer a little whole range of useful services. 

so not only do I think there's no need to get into things like health improvement services and other areas that are outside of your original mission it would be potentially detrimental to your chances of getting money while at the same time you have an abundance  of value that you can elaborate on that is within the shared level 2 community bio space for New York City

Thanks for sharing some of your ideas! Any one of them or a combination could go into the RPF if this is the direction folks think is useful to the community/themselves and are willing to commit to the work then the RFP will have many supporters (and thus hopefully we be easier to write). Your inputs are a great start to forming an opinion but I do not believe it is the only one.

I want to continue discussing these ideas further on this thread especially in the light of strategic positioning as well as practical concerns that flow from specific prompts.

I hear you loud and clear about not doing something that reaches outside of our original mission. I will also note that the project mission seems like it would be written for this RFP, but of course we have our Mission Vision Values as a place where we have gained some alignment.

The way I am thinking about the questions is to build or destroy the case for our efforts towards this RFP. It would be good to get concrete evidence of how this RFP does or does not fit into our overall vision of the organization. The focus on BSL2 is a good nugget to focus on IMO. It speaks to a place I have some expertise and if you recall the NY Blood Center is also in LIC... I had been thinking about them in terms of blood borne pathogen training: an essential part of learning to work in a shared space with human blood.

Thanks for the note. One point to clarify, I do not think your mission statement should be written for the RFP that was my point. I think you stick with your mission statement and write the proposal around it.
I'd like to speak you soon because i had a conversation with a friend about this. He is extremely intelligent. has a phd in biology but has worked mainly as an investor and now is running his second successful startup. He is a great strategist and has always been able to raise money from investors. I asked him about this and he had a tactical suggestion that I thought was a super good idea. it's too much to type out so I need to explain it in a conversation. Let me know if you or the group has time before the 3pm info session .

Hi Danny, is there anything I can do to help for Wed?

C.B.

If you are able to articulate your perspective on how the RFP can be used to further the goals of BwoB then you can help by sharing that. Otherwise I appreciate you reading the RFP and providing a short comment.

I was thinking about workshoping questions over Loomio but there isn't much more time to do so before the meeting tomorrow. If I get around to drafting some tonight I will send them as a poll here.

Can we do a quick meeting? I am in the bay but could talk tomorrow if you have a few mins.

C.B.

I must have miscommunicated because I meant I wanted to have a quick chat today before the information session with the city or right afterwards. at this point afterwards would be more realistic . So let's say sometime before the end of the week

talk in 15-20 min.

how to connect for conference call?

in the meantime:

My initial thoughts:

After listening to the info session I feel confident that BWoB you can totally win an award with this program as a nonprofit BS2 facility provider.

Winning this can be straightforward if you focus on submitting a professional, practical, compliant proposal.

key ingredients:

- rational mission that fill an unmet need

- convincing explanation of the need

- how filling this need furthers the goals of the NYCEDC goals

- evidence that others are not providing this

- demonstration of how you will fill the need

                - products and services

                - qualification for service provision

                - implementation plan

                                - immediate, growth, long term phases

                - financial plan

                - risk mitigation plan

                - measurable success metrics
- management team

It will be hard enough to write a proposal for a focused mission. Adding to that would be impossible.

Problem:

This takes a lot of work and skills in writing, some financial accounting, market research, etc.  I don’t see that BWoB has sufficient people with the time/experience/interest/ needed to put this together by the deadline. This is a common problem faced by other applicants.

Possible solution:

For this reason there are companies out there that do this for a living. Yes, you can hire someone to write your proposal – not to formulate WHAT you want to say or make decisions about financing. They just do all the writing and formatting. They also thoroughly read the RFP and other materials to make sure the proposal in in alignment. But you would need to raise the funds to pay for that. And you would need to do this very quickly. You only have a month. That’s very little time.

i called the google meeting number and inpiut the pin but said no meeting is happening

The outcome said 18:00 sorry for any confusion

just got this

was in another meeting and now have to do other stuff. I will be available again at 9:30 PM.

• i think it would really help in anything we do to maybe be a little less reliant on only indirect communication through layers of tools. Sometimes calling someone directly is the most efficient thing to do which btw used to be the only form of communication other than in person. it works great. So for anyone in the future that needs to communicate with me immediately my number is 30578679625. just call me. for millennial that can't bring themselves to do that you can always text me.

regarding my last comment about how to win this, I should have added that I am very interested in contributing as much time as i have to writing the proposal but I would need to see that we have others involved enough to pull it off properly and make everyone's efforts worth while,

plenty to talk about. pleat let me know if we want to meet tonight and how to connect.

You were with us in spirit at our meeting. I revised the outcome to summarize.

I appreciate your thoughts about "direct" communication. You may have overlooked or missed the reasons I want to use Loomio as the default for organizational communication. The group description is the most concise way I have been able to express those thoughts at this point. They are primarily rooted in allowing for as many people to sit at the decision making table as possible and supporting a robust system of divergent thinking. However I also recognize the need to form working groups with a high level of alignment and purpose. We will be forming such a group to work on the RFP.

You phone number has a strange amount of digits. Can you check if it is correct? No need to share phone numbers so openly. You can always call the BwoB number and it goes to me (although I am not always available to pick up).

I communicate over text and phone using Signal with Vik and Ibrahim. We can set norms of communication at our next meeting.

From RFPs like this it's pretty clear what sorts of things NYEDC likes, big labs and infra projects. Bery much a "build it and they will come" mentality, which is not how anything works, but OK:

https://lifesci.nyc/news/new-york-city-seeks-proposals-100m-life-sci-hub

Compare their persective to paul graham's, who in this case I think has it right (though I'd argue he misses the forest for the trees when it comes to NYC):

http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html

http://paulgraham.com/hubs.html

Email I want to send to the EDC:

Hi NYEDC,

I have a few clarifying questions regarding the space that we propose for development as a part of the Life Sciences Innovation Infrastructure RFP.

Does the nonprofit respondent need to own the space they wish to develop into new lab space, or can the space be leased?

Does the space need to be controlled (owned/leased) by the nonprofit before submission of the proposal, or can the space be acquired (owned or leased) after an award is made?

Does cost to purchase/lease a space count as infrastructure costs?

If there is a general neighborhood that we want to focus on developing our space in, but no single location has been locked down for development yet, can we still submit a proposal focusing on the programming and services to be offered to the NY life sciences and startup community through our project while detailing requirements for the location in our search?

Thank you!

Regards,

Vikram

Looks good to me: thanks for drafting those.

Oh also in terms of potential blockers towards our application are the insurance requirements for funding eligibility. We can talk about it on Monday.

just notes for meetg

@Frank and @Yuriy Fazylov you should be able to comment on this thread now. Looks like we can't quite have guests from the main group in the subgroups. Sorry if there was any frustration with getting your thoughts up on this thread.

Thank you @Danny. Where is the RFP's live Q&A attendees list? Maybe some of the people on that list could be asked to join BwoB. Do nonprofits engulph one another for technicality of having an insurer?

It's on the RFP website which can be found here

I'm not sure of all the people on that list are necessarily aligned with the idea of being a member or the community. But there is something to that idea IMO, I just suspect it will not be a high return on effort if what we are looking for is engagement or membership.

And I'm not sure what you mean by your question. I think for non-profits to officially merge there are likely state level documents required to facilitate that merge as well as agreement required form the boards of each.

I looked the list over and CCNY.CUNY domains stand out the most. After its the generic Gmail. Makes one wonder what's going on on the CCNY end. A uni will have a lot more return on city's investment if only to pay off student debt over the years. Considering the competition, Downstate, Columbia, MSSM, etc. BwoB has to try that much harder.

Thank you to everybody who attended the meeting. I'm sorry I missed it, but I prefer written communication in any case.

I wish to state, as others have said, that for this type of proposal I would expect them largely to be awarded to known players. Most of us are not that, but Ellen is, and that could be useful.

I also agree with the comments above that you really need to stress that NYC has all kinds of people who have relevant expertise (e.g., physicians, those currently in the research universities that would prefer to work outside of academia, or programmers) but need access to lab space to develop their ideas with the goal of commercializing them without surrendering their intellectual property to a university or company. I also think that more about NYC's developing their biotech sector should be in the mission statement.

You might also check out the local politicians from various neighborhoods that you could partner with. I do think that a BwoB lab could help revitalize a neighborhood.

I think that maybe not for this grant, but in general, you really want to have a number of strong and appealing scientific projects in mind. While it is good to try to apply for this grant, I think it is much easier to convince individual backers (as opposed to large committees) with your ideas. There are even grants now where only ideas are reviewed, and the actual applicants are blinded. And Y-combinator was mentioned above, which I think that and similar ones would also be good places to apply.

From the BwoB materials I've seen, it all seems very vague and generic. I don't know what the vision is or how it will be run.

I will update the outcome of the meeting tomorrow to summarize some of what transpired but what to quickly share now that I am so happy you prefer written communication. That's one of the reasons I chose this platform to organize on. Have you read the main group's introduction yet? I hope it brings you some insight as to how I conceptualize the use of this tool.

Thanks, Danny. Now that I've clicked more through the BwoB website I know more, but I still would like to better understand BwoB's vision and plans. Not all of this would be suitable for a public website though.

For this grant, even if the awarding process is corrupt and they intend to give the grants to 'friends', in such set-ups they sometimes give some money to others as a fig leaf to cover the corruption. And BwoB has a virtuous name. ;)

I think most people would agree that to have a good chance
at obtaining this funding there are some necessary ingredients:

1. A team with enough people with enough participation 2.A clear mission that everyone agrees with
2. Sufficient expertise in the disciplines underlyingthe mission 4.The ability and time to write the rfp response 5.Enough financial competence to write a solid financial plan
3. The ability to communicate efficiently and work quickly, given the deadline for submission.

Unfortunately I just don’t see those ingredients materializing. Despite a list of names in Loomio, I have seen participation in BWoB by no more than 3 or 4 people.
An entire month has passed since the release of the RFP, whichis almost halfway through the time before the deadline and we are still not decided on a clear proposal statement/ask or mission statement. We still are not sure about the question of funding operations because we haven’t asked them yet.
From the sound of it, only me and I think Danny can or wants to write the document and we lost
the person who was going to be able to produce the financial plan.
Given the limited time, I don’t understand why we are discussing things that, as I understand it, would not be in the RFP, as well as unrealistic ideas like purchasing rather than leasing space and doing actual scientific research projects ourselves that would be of interest to the EDC. The
partnerships suggestions with Genspace and others doesn’t seem realistic either unless we are prepared to offer what they do not.

To Susan’s point about focusing and articulating a mission that provides some of what the RFP is seeking, I posted this opening shot to get the ball rolling:

In response to NYCEDC’s RFP…. We propose the creation of an important resource in New York City that will server multiple functions in support of the biotechnology sector and the life sciences
– Biotech Without Borders, a fully equipped BSL2 public laboratory with supporting education and expert staff where citizens, students, doctors, independent researchers and others can come to learn, develop laboratory skills, conduct initial investigations, test simplified protocols, perform proof of concept experiments, prepare personalized therapies, and much more .

It’s not a coincidence that most major cities in the US and Europe have one or more community “biospaces.” While they differ somewhat from one another, they all offer education and biological laboratory resources that can be utilized by non-professionals. They meet an important need that supports the larger local biotech ecosystem.

Amazingly NYC currently lacks a public, affordable, biosafety level 1 or 2 biolab that is open to the public. With NYCEDC funding, we can go beyond simply matching the resources available elsewhere and create an exemplary community bio space that sets a new standard both in serving the public and in tangibly supporting a robust and productive biotechnology ecosystem in New York.

Business model
Provide three core services in a synergistic manner such that each service benefits and supports: facilities (space, equipment), training/education, expertise
· Design and manage services in a manner that allows nimble response to user needs, market conditions, and new technology by customizing facility configuration and support for different experiments and training.
A second set of activities (track 2) focus on generating revenue to support the core services.

Services Overview
· Laboratory services
o Fully equipped level 2 safety laboratory
o Suitable for plant and animal cell biology, microbiology, molecular biology, biochemistry, and more
Expert staff
o guidance, supervision, and support
o consulting
Education
o Standard safety training
o scheduled classes
o custom workshops
o private sessions.
Track 2 Equipment services
o Off-premises rental
o Equipment evaluations for manufacturers

However, I’m not sure if we have agreed on any of this?

hopefully lots of progress was made after I left the meeting on Wed. but I have to be honest and say that at this rate unless more people materialize to produce this thing, especially the financial plan, and we fall into a much more productive cadence, I’m having a hard time picturing doing the work needed to submit this proposal in the time that remains.

Frank

Who did you think we lost, Frank?

If you are unsure about agreement with anything you should make a poll. This is a reason that I have chosen to use Loomio: folks can create a poll and ask who they think should weigh in.

Thanks for writing those snippets of the draft. At the meeting we talked about writing a draft even if we are ineligible or otherwise ill-equipped to submit a proposal because it can only help refine our thinking about the organization. I will placed this text in such a document and invited the community list to edit it.

I really appreciate your realistic and detailed comments on the RFP. I didn't mean to hijack the thread.

I too think a lot of energy, commitment, and realism will be needed to get BwoB up and running and to win grants of this type. I think some members are looking for signs of life and realism before they try to contribute. So far, in what I've seen, there has been a strange lack of direction, at least in communication style.

I fear that there is an idea that this can be run as self-organizing open source programming project or Wikipedia page. But those are very different undertakings from starting and running a BwoB-type organization, which is very hard to do well. It requires great will, leadership, and vision in my opinion. I am definitely not suitable, btw, and I'm not criticizing anyone.

As for your suggestions outlined above, I think they are good, but they would need to be expertly elaborated upon. On the other hand, all kinds of unexpected organizations are awarded government contracts, so you never know.

Isn't Genspace a BSL1 community lab?

Yes it is my understanding that Genspace is a BSL1 lab. However, @Frank mentioned something to the effect that when he asked to use the space they told him they are not accepting new members and/or the project he was proposing did not fall into that designation. Perhaps he can explain further.

I also agree with the sentiment that lots of energy, commitment and realism is required to get BwoB running. This is a space for anyone to bring that to the table and foster it in others. If an action is agreed upon by several folks I am happy to create a subgroup to allow them to work on that action. In some ways this thread is a microcosm of what one such action group would look like.

This sense that BwoB is being run like an open source programming project is not wrong. I am quite inspired by those projects when thinking about the future of BwoB. I disagree though that those projects or ours are fundamentally self-organizing. They have self-organizing elements which I am attracted to but I see them as requiring incentives and structure to allow the various actors to work towards a common goal. Could you elaborate on this fear?

I was and still am looking for a space where I could conduct a well designed and safe stem cell culture experiment lasting no more than two weeks. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GYuNYQ4EdmUAI5Ljq6TTxKzE2J5ea6kR07Bo7ul08kY/edit?usp=sharing
I also wanted to do a very simple oral microbiome transfer experiment.
Gene space told me that both experiments were beyond their capabilities.

Right, any human cell in culture is beyond what they will do, and maybe it's automatically BSL2. I don't remember the details. They will be very leery of direct DIY medical treatments though, and I can't blame them, though I do not have the background to comment on the safety of what you have in mind.

But that's biology . you can't possibly limit yourself to plant experiments only and consider yourself a real public bio lab that supports the biotech "ecosystem" . To be clear, I have not said I propose DIY medical treatments. The aim of the experiments I described is to redesign existing unnecessarily expensive and complicated protocols for extremely therapeutic treatments which do not utilize drugs to make them as inexpensive and simple without compromising safety or efficacy. the result is to make therapies with tremendous promise available to millions who would otherwise not have access. this is actually becoming a "thing" now. it's the type of project that would get a lot of media attention and recognition for lab that hosted it.