Right now it’s not only natural life that’s finding it hard going. Synthetic life is too.

Mountains of investor cash has led to too many ideas and not enough focus. Amyris, for example, had nearly a dozen products in the pipeline, but none could generate the revenue to support the company’s highly trained personnel and sprawling infrastructure of industrial fermentation vats.

Early on it is good for companies to be starved of money. It forces you to choose what not to do.