Biotech executive and investor.
Minnesota
Joined March 2009
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Jeff Weness retweeted
Formation Bio CEO @BenjamineYLiu predicts AI will solve drug discovery long before it solves clinical trials:
"In our industry, there's three consequential predictions. Drug design, what might cause a tox issue in a human, and clinical efficacy."
"The things that will get solved first are where the data's the most copious, the benchmark's the cleanest, and the feedback loop’s the shortest."
"Drug discovery is getting increasingly efficient, and arguably we think it will be commoditized over time, because the data is very copious. It's physics. It's chemistry. Understanding whether a drug binds a target is minutes to days of experiments."
"Tox is weeks to months. If every trial takes a few years, closing the loop just takes longer, and the data around human-based perturbations doesn’t largely exist yet."
"Our society's gonna have drug abundance of ideas and candidates, but until you empirically prove them out in clinical trials, that’s gonna be a fundamental bottleneck."
@formationbio
Today we’re announcing the $600M Formation Bio Drug Development Accelerator Fund.
@lintaho and I started @FormationBio because we believed the biggest bottleneck in bringing new medicines to patients wasn’t drug discovery, but drug development.
As AI dramatically accelerates discovery, that bottleneck is only becoming more acute. Without the capital and capacity to advance promising drugs through clinical trials, much of that progress won’t translate into medicines for patients.
Our new Fund brings together dedicated capital, drug development expertise, and AI-powered development capabilities to acquire promising drugs and advance them through the clinic.
Jeff Weness retweeted
Why the Somali daycare fraud is a big deal. From a young father who works on @theallinpod. He’s right. DEPORT
RIP Goldy. 1952 to 2025. Cause of death: push-up fatigue. #gogophers #rowtheboat @Gaardsy @RyanBurnsMN
Jeff Weness retweeted
i’d argue you’re too easily moved by the choice words. “privilege” and “equality” are selected because they confuse the notion of fairness. another way to frame his statement “if you’re accustomed to succeeding due to hard work, ingenuity, risk/sacrifice, and, sure, some amount of luck, having the outcomes reset so that everyone is rewarded more equally feels unfair.”
is succeeding after making good choices, sacrificing personally, and working hard really “privilege”?
is it oppressive that everyone doesn’t get to the same place?
perhaps the real oppression is the loss of individual liberties when naively egalitarian philosophies mutate into marxism, denying opportunities for individual sacrifice, effort, and achievement to be rewarded.
framed as privilege v equality misses the mark.. equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are v different things. silicon valley’s most successful are the immigrants who found america as one of the only places on earth where an individual with zero baseline privilege can struggle and sacrifice and effortfully succeed. calling them privileged after the fact seems hardly the point. but an easy one to make.
Jeff Weness retweeted
GOLD OUT GIVEAWAY! 💛🏈
@GopherFootball is BACK! To celebrate the home opener, we’re giving away a Gophers Gold Out SotaStick shirt!
How to enter:
1️⃣ Follow @SotaStickCo
2️⃣ Repost this
3️⃣ Tag a Gopher fan (or two!) in the comments
Winner announced Monday night. Prize ships Tuesday to arrive Wednesday.
#SkiUMah #RTB #Gophers #GoldOut @GopherSports
Jeff Weness retweeted
it is vitally important for america that mamdani get elected mayor of NYC. he can help maximally and swiftly tax the rich, stand up govt-run grocery stores, eliminate the police force, freeze rents, and make public transportation free..
it’s unlikely that taxing the rich will cause them to move to other cities (collapsing nyc tax revenue), or that city-run grocery stores will fail to increase fresh vegetable consumption in the inner city, or that elimination of the NYPD will cause a rise in crime and decline in quality of life, or that freezing rents will drive landlords to dump properties (collapsing prices and property tax revenue), or that free public transportation will result in union-led kleptocracy. no way. i’m sure this time socialism will be different…
if Americans don’t want to learn the lessons of socialism’s failures elsewhere, we should aim to learn them here as quickly as possible.
let’s make sure one or two cities and states fall apart fast so the rest don’t have to.. elect mamdani!
after accruing $2 trillion in student loan debt, that they will never be able to pay down, it’s no surprise “the college educated in nyc are supporting mamdani 61-39”. the current system has failed them.
but the truth is, more government may not be the answer when too much government (indiscriminate federal student loans regardless of cost or quality of degree or institution) may have gotten them to this moment.
a gentle reminder, though, that an articulate ignoramus isn’t more correct than his less charismatic/authentic political rival. facts, data, truth still stand above theory, innuendo, and bullshit. socialism won’t work. if we have to re-learn that lesson the hard way, let’s do it fast and elect mamdani.
You Heard It Here First. Friedberg's Most Contrarian Belief for 2025: "A dramatic rise in socialist movements in the US."
According to Polymarket, Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani has closed a massive gap on Andrew Cuomo over the past month for the Democratic nomination for NYC Mayor.
Mamdani's chances jumped from ~6% to 55%, while Cuomo fell from 93% to 45%.
On June 23, Mamdani surged ahead of Cuomo after a surprise poll showed him ahead.
This tracks Friedberg's 2025 prediction of a "dramatic rise in socialist movements in the US."
Here was his explanation in early January:
" My contrarian belief is that we'll see a rise, a dramatic rise, in socialist movements in 2025 in the United States."
"And I think that some industries and some companies are going to be huge winners and some companies are going to be huge losers."
"There's gonna be some parts of the economy that are gonna be big winners and some parts of the economy that are gonna be big losers."
"When you have this sort of a change this fast, there are often large contingents of people that are left behind."
"And when that happens, I do think that the socialist policies and the socialist movements gain steam."
Jeff Weness retweeted
After watching the Fox interview with the DOGE team, it’s clear to me that the domestic terrorism against Tesla isn’t bottoms-up vandalism. It’s an organized effort to pressure Elon to walk away from DOGE.
Why?
There are monied interests that have benefited for decades from the organized “leakage” from the government. It’s clear that DOGE is finding and stopping it.
The incentive, then, to hire rent-a-protesters and pay for organized terrorism is clear. What they don’t understand is the Elon will double and triple down.
Separately, the DOJ can uncover all of this by arresting the protestors, making them roll and following the money.
Jeff Weness retweeted
David Friedberg: How to Save Social Security Using Compound Interest
@friedberg with an incredible breakdown on E219:
"The US Social Security Program is meant to be kind of the retirement program for folks that don't have access to private retirement accounts."
"This program was set up in the 1930s after the Great Depression. There's a trust fund, the OASDI, which is the fund that they invest the capital (from)."
"So every year we all put money in with our social security taxes out of our paychecks, (which) goes in there."
"It gets invested in one thing: US Treasuries."
"Which have averaged about 4.8% return per year since the beginning of the program."
"Meanwhile, the S&P 500 has been averaging 11%."
"So here's the math: if in 1971, which was the year that we went off the gold standard in the US, if we invested the Social Security Trust Fund in the S&P, the balance of the social security trust fund today would be $15T."
"That would be roughly one-third of the value of the total S&P 500, which would be jointly owned by all Americans."
"Now here's what's f*cked up: the middle class people who had access to private retirement accounts benefited by buying the S&P 500 and the wealthy were able to access it."
"So all of the equity value that accrued from American enterprise and the prosperity of the American system accrued to the people that had access to the private accounts."
"Meanwhile, the people that only had access to the public accounts got stuck owning treasuries."
"Today, the Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.7T balance, and based on the outflows and inflows, it's going to go bankrupt in 2032."
"So I did the math: If you assume that the S&P 500 continues to grow at 10.5% per year on average, we could put about $500B in the trust fund today, and it will not go bankrupt again."
"And it will continue to grow every year. And then all Americans have participation in American enterprise."
"And importantly, this becomes the world's largest sovereign wealth fund ever. You don't need a separate sovereign wealth fund. We already have one."
"We've totally mismanaged it. And I went back to try and understand why this is the case. Why have we only ever bought treasuries? "
"Early on, the US needed someone to loan money. So they basically forced the citizens to loan the government money in the form of treasuries."
"But today, the social security trust fund owns less than 10%, about 8% of the total treasury bonds outstanding."
"So why are we forcing all the American citizens to participate?"
"Through the social security system, we've created the deep inequity we see in this country."
"If instead we had allowed the social security system to invest in the S&P 500 to buy American enterprises to fund American businesses, then every American would be wealthy and that middle class that uniquely participated by basically arbitraging the market where they forced the treasury bond yields on the poor and they got to take access to the equity yields would have not happened."
Jeff Weness retweeted
Brilliant articulation of America’s new pro growth, regulatory skeptical AI framework by @JDVance. More open. More ambitious. Less scared. “AI will make us more productive, more prosperous and more free.” We are lucky to have JD leading the charge! 🫡🇺🇸🚀@DavidSacks
Rooting for a rock storm here - break lots of legs. No winners - only losers. #skol.
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At #ces2025. Great to be back after a few years away. And one of the first booths I saw featured an Otsuka partnership.
This is the game (as an 8 year old) that I became a Vikings fan for life! #SKOL
December 14, 1980
~ "THE MIRACLE AT THE MET" ~
Trailing by one with :14 remaining, the #Vikings go 80 yards on two improbable plays to win the NFC Central crown.
@Kramer9Tommy, Joe Senser, and Ted Brown first execute a beautiful 34-yard hook-and-lateral.
Ahmad Rashad then makes a nonchalant, one-handed grab of Kramer's 46-yard Hail Mary pass to stun the #Browns, 28-23.
#SKOL
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Jeff Weness retweeted
The @DOGE Plan to Reform Government. We laid out our vision today.
wsj.com/opinion/musk-and-ram…
