Celebrities for Prostate Cancer

A solemn note, if you’ve ever had a father, brother, son, business partner or friend who has suffered from prostate cancer, and we at Lux have, then you know the terrible impact it can have. 16 million currently face the disease. Next week Mike Milken & Jonathan Simons, MD host their amazing annual Prostate Cancer Foundation Dinner. Milken has long championed the most valuable form of capital: human capital.

And this evening focuses on funding the 2010 class of Young Investigators and building the human capital supply for continued research. They’ve already funded 20 and are targeting a total of 100. I’ve heard inside word that attendees include leading American philanthropists David Koch (Koch Industries), Peter Grauer (Bloomberg), Darius Bikoff (founder of Glaceau and Vitamin Water), Richard LeFrak (LeFrak Organization), Ambassador Earle I. Mack, Ted Virtue (MidOcean Partners), among others. Also, Jean Fogelberg, wife of Dan Fogelberg, the famed recording artist who died of prostate cancer in December 2007. If you’d like to attend contact jhaber@pcf.org or 310 570.4700.

Founded in 1993 to find better treatments and a cure for prostate cancer, the Prostate Cancer Foundation has become the world’s leading philanthropy for funding prostate-cancer research, almost like a venture fund that solicits and selects the most promising research programs and quickly funds them—now to the tune of 1,500 programs at nearly 200 research centers in 20 countries around the world. It’s helped to build a global research enterprise of nearly $10 billion.

Groundbreaking Lux Report and Shaving with Occam's Razor

I always tell our analysts at Lux to shave daily with Occam’s Razor. With my recent Forbes interview with Lux Capital portfolio company, Luxtera (the leader in nano-photonics, turning light to electrical signal and back for communications at the speed of light), and my wife’s prodding, I realized I needed my own shave. I was being mistaken for a certain—ahem…unflattering, unwelcome—U.N. persona non grata.

But when I say Lux’s team should shave with Occam’s Razor, it means this: find the simplest solution. When analyzing startups and their technologies, ask: “Is this the simplest way to do it?” Unlike Olympic divers, we don’t win any points for technical complexity. Engineers, like oenophiles prize “elegance”, “robustness” and other abstractions. We prize simplicity.

And speaking of simplicity, see the original groundbreaking report from Lux Research on ‘water wedges’. It’s called “Malthus Returns: Solving the Unsustainable Agricultural Water Demand Conundrum”. A sneak peek at the executive summary says: “The lion’s share of global water use is directed towards agriculture, and agricultural water usage already exceeds renewable supplies in the regions where people live and grow food. Water demands are set to skyrocket by virtue of population growth, economics expansion, and biofuel adoption. However, because recapture and recycling are out of the question, only technologies and practices that improve water efficiency can move the world towards sustainability. In this report, we forecast water demand and examine water reduction strategies – referred to as “water wedges” – that in certain scenarios bring water demand in line with renewable supply.”

Most valuably they outline the unintended consequences as well as all the new ag technologies that can lead to direct savings and boosted yields. Get access by emailing Lux Research at info@luxresearchinc.com

Noble Nobels

We’ve got some amazing upcoming interviews to share with you--all of whom happen to be part of my Lux Capital partner Larry Bock’s USA Science Festival. In the past week, I’ve sat down with Nobel Prize winning chemist Karry Mullis who invented PCR (polymerase chain reaction for amplifying DNA sequences); Nobel Prize winning physicist John Mather who helped prove the Big Bang Theory (with cosmic background radiation); Nobel Physicist Carl Weiman who discovered the Bose-Einstein condensate. And Nobel Chemist Alan Heeger who invented conductive polymers (think: OLEDs or plastic light).

Here’s one preview factoid gleaned yesterday while sitting with Nobel laureate Bob Grubbs talking about chemistry and war. When people remember World War II and the Battle of Britain in 1940, few remember the role of chemistry. A Northwestern University chemist invented a catalyst that gave the Allies a huge edge. The chemist was able to turn useless crude into 100-octane gasoline replacing the 87-octane everyone was using. The British Royal Air Force's Spitfires and Hurricanes could now go 30mph faster than the Germans. Outmatched, the military balance tipped to Britain and Hitler abandoned the British invasion and turned east. Just months earlier, the same British planes were being beat handily by Germans in battles over France. Same planes, different fuel: super fuel.