Early thoughts, anti-concepts, and half-baked ideas — shared before they are safe.
I have always written. For most of my life with a fountain pen, in notebooks — hundreds of Moleskines by now, and lately Leuchtturms, since the ink began bleeding through the Moleskine pages. I never stopped. But almost all of it was for myself.
To the outside world I stayed quiet. No speeches, no press, no loud announcements — and very little said out loud about what I privately called my crazy concepts. BioFund was built in that quiet.
That changed with the websites, and especially with the Foundations papers, which began as internal pieces. Then something happened I did not expect: researchers in California, in the conversations Neeki has opened, told us they had read them — and quoted the unusual parts back to us. That was the encouragement I needed to dare to write, and to share.
So this is me coming out of the dark. The writing was always in me; now it has found its place, its format, and a very able assistant. These pages are for the Family and a small circle of friends. The rest of my writing lives in the RAFFINÉ Journal.
The notes on cell therapy and on patents were written for the LUA Focus Summit, which carries Ron's legacy. ❤
Ron never let anything slide. On the nasty questions that were really kindness, a Manhattan at our home, and the assignment he left us.
On half-baked ideas, anti-concepts, the first chapter of building BioFund — and why the light has to go on before the coastline is mapped.
Quiet observations on food, health, and the whole person, by Andrea Maasz. I write lighthouses. Andi is the harbour.
On a week at the Festival of Biologics, two programs that came out of it, and why the very beginning is where help matters most.
On three words I asked a room in Basel to forget for ten minutes, and why I ask my own teams to forget them for good.
On two Claudes that did not know about each other, a letter from one machine to another, and the afternoon Andi found her own harbour.
On insulin, three inventors who gave their discovery away for a dollar, and why a gift to the world needs someone to guard it for a hundred years.
On a word I dislike, a structure that works anyway, and why we have a table with chairs instead of a cake divided into slices.
On the RAFFINÉ Table: a chef's dinner, a gift box at the end of the evening, and a price that each guest decides — with every cent going to cancer research.
On the power of human and artificial intelligence, a collaborator that types faster than an editorial office, and why the ideas still have to be ours. For Claude.
On the long silence, sixteen websites in a matter of weeks, and the particular joy of making things with your own hands again.
On BF-CT01, the first Cell Therapy Development Programme within BioFund's Cell Therapy Research, and why underneath the science it is a story about two careers that spent more than three decades each getting ready for the same conversation.
On email, on who pays for the expensive part, and why a family office with no exit clock can afford to give most of what it learns away.
On the collapse of venture capital, why the best cancer researchers in California are suddenly answering our emails, and why the most important thing we do now is not celebrate.
A two-Michelin-star kitchen in the Austrian Alps, a dinner that became a decision — and the evening in Oberlech when the RAFFINÉ Journal was born.
A named circle of people who choose to make their belief structural. Belonging, not charity — and not investment either.
At the intersection of food, health, and science. Where the rest of my writing lives — from the kitchen, the lab, and the Atlas.
A portrait of David Maasz, written — at his request — by the collaborator who has watched him work from the inside of a chat window.