YouSaid · the spoken record

Othman Laraki

lines on the record: 79
first: 2017-01-02
most recent: 2017-01-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Whereas today you already have, you know, if you go see your doctor, ideally you'd like them to be able to use your genome, your family history, your glucose readings from the last year, et cetera. But all that data, we can't process it as humans. So the question is, how do we use software to enable us to work with that data at a very different way?”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's an AI expert, is it? So I think we'll rely on it. I don't think it'll require people to, in fact, I think it'll allow people to be able to not need to dig into the data as much. It's almost like self-driving cars. Like they, you know, they allow transportation at different scale, where I think with healthcare, if you look at how we practice medicine today, it's more of like what we'd call an expert system where you have a decision tree that you try to make fit into people's heads and we call those doctors.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I disagree with that, actually, because I think we already use artificial intelligence in a lot of interesting ways today, and you don't have to be an AI expert. Actually, it's the opposite.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I guess historically But I think the other piece is that there have been a few changes from a scientific as well as environmental standpoint, where, for example, with genetic sequencing, the cost of genetic sequencing has all of a sudden made it possible to completely rethink the cost structure of this information. And there's also the impact of using machine learning in healthcare, which has been the biggest.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, you know, maybe it's like global warming at some point, hopefully we fix it before everything breaks. Probably not.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, it's, I mean, I think with healthcare, a lot of investors like to say everything takes 10 times as long and costs 10 times as much because it's a An area where there's kind of so many other variables to deal with, and just building software. But on the flip side, you know, it's an area where we can have a huge impact on people's lives as well as on the economy. And so I think it's one of those where now there are a few environmental things that have changed that really make it worthwhile to very heavily invest in it, I think. I mean, one is we are coming to a breaking point, right? Like it's such a heavy part of our economy that's, you know.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, some of our main investors have been Formation 8, Joel Lonsdale, Coastal Ventures, General Catalyst, Himantaneja, who actually, I guess most recently, a lot of the news with Stripe Investment, and a number of other kind of high-profile philanthropists or people who care a lot about it.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. It's kind of like once it's very obvious. But it turns out that half of, for example, women who are carers of BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations don't have the family history that would allow them to get insurance coverage.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the well, so normally even today, these tests cost anywhere between $2,000 and $4,000. And the side effect of that is that historically, and even today, if someone just wants to go and get tested, if they don't want to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket, it would go through their insurance. And very few people qualify through insurance. You need to have had an extreme level of family history in order for insurance to be.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. No, we don't have doctors on staff. We have board certified genetic counselors. Who kind of help with giving people the results, the interpretation of the information, as well as educating doctors oftentimes, because most doctors that are working today. Yeah, like when they went to medical school, they had one lesson on genetics probably that's kind of that was more focused on pregnancy.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they can come on the color website, purchase the test. If they have a doctor that they're already working with, their doctor can easily go on our website and place the order. If not, if they don't, we can help them with a referral to third-party physicians who they can work with as well.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A few weeks ago or a couple months ago, we had this woman who didn't have a huge amount of family history, got tested through her employer and discovered she has care of a BRCO1 mutation. And because of that, she was like, okay, came from one of my two parents. She went and got her parents tested. And turned out her mother is the carrier. And her mother had never had cancer before. But because of that, she went to see her doctor who got suspicious and they found that she had the stage three ovarian cancer. But it was not yet metastasized, so much easier to treat. And this same woman by default would have shown up a year or two years from now with most likely a late stage cancer where it's very different outcome. And so when you get these kinds of... Yeah, warnings for people is like a so”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. It's a product where we really try to help through the enterprise. Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of, and in that case, obviously for employers, it's a big benefit because there's a kind of a ROI component to it, but also there's a very direct human impact to it. And now every week, pretty much we get these incredible stories.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And genetics is an important component, important building block, but it's not the product. And so, and that is translated in a few ways. I mean, one is translated in terms of how we build the product and how we make it available to people, but also impacts how we think about distribution. So for example, when you think about it as a service, for example, we work with a number of large self-insured employers. So companies like Visa, BlackRock, Tencent, et cetera, that have large populations where they're bearing the cost of healthcare for their employees. And they offer color either heavily subsidized or entirely subsidized to their employee base. And for them, I mean, they're not a...”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, totally. I think one of the big differences with us is that historically when genetics used to be just a lab side of genetics was incredibly expensive and incredibly difficult, any company that did genetics defined itself as a genetics company. And I think one of the areas where we're kind of a big departure from, I think, pretty much everyone else is that, you know, we think of genetics as a part of a bigger service where, you know, when people come to us, I think they don't necessarily care as much about whether they have a BRCA mutation. What they care about is how do they and their family members manage risk of cancer, right? And that's how we think about our service. Like what are the things that we can do to help people manage the most important risks in their lives?”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's essentially, I think, historically that people would think that there was kind of two separate axes one is quality and the other one is access. And if you improve access, it means low quality or kind of like low kind of focus on quality in some sense. And for us, our goal was to think about how can we increase access, but maintaining kind of the”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, what we've done there is our standard was clinical practice. So, for example, every test is physician ordered and every test, for example, includes genetic counseling, you know, so really kind of”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or, yeah, maybe in certain cases. It's a devastating illness. But it's actually a relatively easy to deal with. There's 50 cent tweezers, and that's a pretty low risk procedure. As long as you don't poke yourself in the eye. But when you're dealing with something like cancer, the importance and the impact of that information is much, much higher.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are a few aspects to that. I think, first of all, I think in general in the early days of an industry, there is a temptation to go very broad and to try to kind of do a lot of things to kind of cover the entire space. And that was, again, like one of our big choices is to say, you know, we're going to take something that's well established in terms of there's a very well-established existing model. But we want to just do it at scale, right? That's the first piece. Secondly, there's a kind of, when you are dealing with health, obviously we're, you know, and this is very personal too, right? Like when dealing with people on their family's health, the single most important thing is quality and that you, you know, the information they're delivering to people is Accurate and B Made available in a way that is digested and”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gone haywire that particular company, which the Wall Street Journal has chronicled beautifully. And then you have a 23 in May, which had issues, regulatory issues. Nobody disputed that these spit tests were interesting, and you could find all kinds of things. And I was showing someone my results before the FDA got involved, which were fascinating, actually, and full of great information. And the results today, which are not very helpful particularly. And that's one of the difficulties is that they give you very little information. And treat it like a game versus something that's really helpful to your health. And so, how do you look at how one Silicon Valley looks at these things and how you should be regulated by the government?”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In a small area. But obviously going larger, correct? Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, where do you fit in that? Now, on one hand, you have something like Darren O's, which again could be issues of fraud there. There's obviously some things...”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Companies like this. Yeah, no, absolutely. And that was actually one of the kind of big kind of initial thoughts behind how we approached the space is that we're very depth-first focused where we said, you know, we're going to choose one area where the science is well established and where there's a lot of impact to be had, where the connection of BRCA1 and cancer has literally existed for 20 years now. And today, 20 years later, there are millions of people in the US who are carers of these mutations that still don't know. And the science by now is very not debated anymore. And so what we decided to do is to kind of go for something like that where there's relatively small scientific risk in some sense. And it was very much kind of a More of an application challenge. How do you do this with very high quality at very high scale?”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Were issues around, and obviously theanosis sort of colored everything, was this idea of making it disrupting it in such a way that Seems fantastic, and then maybe isn't quite so much. And I think there's been a lot of headwinds for companies like this.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. But it was one of those cases where it really felt like an opportunity to really use a lot of the background that we had on the software side to have a very meaningful impact on the lives of a lot of people. And it was really one of those cases of combining people from very different fields and taking what used to be science and turning it into engineering essentially. And that's where with my three other co-founders, all of them have scientific or health backgrounds. And so that kind of that combination, I think, is what really allowed us to make a difference.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The technology behind sequencing had gone through a 15 year period where the costs were dropping at an exponential rate. And all of a sudden it started becoming possible to do genetics at a cost point that was completely impossible before. And one of the side effects of that is that it turned genetics into a software and data problem instead of a raw laboratory and science problem. Right. And what that means is that all of a sudden you can start building genetic products or products that use genetics, but in a way that makes it accessible to the entire population, not just for a few extreme cases.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something that I hadn't talked about before color was, so I have a fair amount of cancer history in my family. My grandmother had passed away from breast cancer. My mother survived two of them, and then after her second diagnosis, her doctor's like, well, you know, this seems pretty unlikely that you just have this. So they recommended that you get genetically tested. And she discovered that she has a BRCA2 mutation, a gene called BRCA2, which is broccoli. Yeah, it's one of the two well known Bracca genes, and they're associated with dramatic increases in breast and ovarian cancer risk And I also got tested, and it turned out that I'm also a carrier as well. So I'd been part of my personal and family life, I guess forever. But what happened was we were just kind of coming off this incredible phase, I think, in genetics where”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I run three groups. There are the growth, revenue, and international And essentially, they're all focused on different aspects of scaling the business So we're very privileged to be part of a pretty incredible time in Twitter's history where the process growing really fast and we had we were dealing with some of the really interesting scaling challenges and seeing this amazing product kind of really reaching a very large population.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was called Mixer Labs. We were one of the early developer APIs, kind of how now there's a big wave of companies like Twilio and Stripe, et cetera, they're taking piece of infrastructure and turning it into API for developers to build applications. And we were doing that with geo information. And so we made it possible for, at the time, it was a big wave of check-in apps, et cetera, when the iPhone and Android had just started using GPS through their API. And we built an API that made it easy for people to develop geo-enabled applications.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not quite the traditional background for mouth. So I guess in terms of background, yeah, my background prior to this had entirely been in the software world. I started several software companies. It was at Google for a number of years.”
2017-01-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Othman Laraki, CEO, Color · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT