[HN Gopher] Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies
___________________________________________________________________
Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies
Author : bob_theslob646
Score : 1325 points
Date : 2026-03-28 17:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (sytse.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sytse.com)
| anderber wrote:
| That's pretty amazing. I believe he's also a founder/investor in
| Kilo Code which I use and really like.
| twostorytower wrote:
| Really awesome that he was able to do this and give back, but
| none of this would have been possible without his unfathomable
| wealth and access.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Feeling inspired?
| croes wrote:
| It's more like I hope more bad things happen to rich and
| powerful people so they start doing something against it. As
| long as it happens to ordinary people most of then hardly
| care.
|
| Reminds me of the GOP who was against stem cell treatments
| until Reagan got Alzheimer's
| rvz wrote:
| > ...but none of this would have been possible without his
| unfathomable wealth and access.
|
| ?
|
| What's that supposed to mean? Is that bad?
|
| You can do the same thing as he did, what's stopping you?
| croes wrote:
| Wealth is mostly based on either luck and more often
| heritage.
| rvz wrote:
| Not only Sid didn't come from any of those backgrounds,
| neither did the founder of Freshworks who literally started
| his company based on reading a hacker news comment. [0]
|
| So I only see more excuses here.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28336815
| croes wrote:
| So it was luck
| rvz wrote:
| Nope. He applied to YC and took that risk and already
| knew how to make money.
|
| You miss 100% of the shots if you do. not. try.
| croes wrote:
| But you don't hit 100% if you try. That's where the luck
| part comes into play.
|
| Right time, right place
| rvz wrote:
| > But you don't hit 100% if you try. That's where the
| luck part comes into play.
|
| Nope. Sid just knows how to make money and that's him
| being more than 'lucky' with his experience and marketing
| GitLab _right here_ which you could have done that as
| well.
|
| > Right time, right place
|
| Just use Sid's story as motivation for yourself.
| TobTobXX wrote:
| wealth and access that is merely fathomable
| rvz wrote:
| You can _literally_ apply to YC, just like Sid and now you
| are reading his story.
|
| He did not come from any of those backgrounds.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| That's not a "but". _Because_ he developed wealth and access,
| this is possible for one person when before it wasn 't possible
| for anyone. This is how societies developed everything from
| refined sugar to rockets, as they passed various thresholds
| where individuals could afford to try things out.
| perch56 wrote:
| According to some online sources his total wealth is under $3B.
| Hardly 'unfathomable wealth' IMO. Sure, billionaire territory
| but nowhere near the ultra-wealthy.
| amazingamazing wrote:
| 3 billion is ultra wealthy, you can't be serious.
| perch56 wrote:
| It's entry-level billionaires club. The top 10 each hold
| $100B-$300B+, so the wealth distribution is extraordinarily
| skewed even within billionaires themselves. Musk is
| hundreds of times richer. Hardly obscenely rich.
| amazingamazing wrote:
| I must be talking to AI
| perch56 wrote:
| This AI recommends you visualize inequality at scale and
| see the difference between 1B vs 300B.
| https://youtu.be/c7sr46hxVM4
| amazingamazing wrote:
| The percentile ranking increase is greater between median
| human and 1B compared to 1B and 300B. Bad AI
| tock wrote:
| It's entry-level obscenely rich club.
| chaps wrote:
| Friend, $3B is unfathomable wealth for an individual.
| perch56 wrote:
| I can fathom 3B, I can't fathom 300B
| orf wrote:
| Yes, big number better, everyone gets it.
|
| The point is that you're deluding yourself if you think
| that there is any difference in terms of relative
| "unfathomability" between 3 billion and 300 billion.
|
| 3 billion generates more in interest per day than 99.99%
| of people make in a year. That's unfathomable volumes of
| wealth for even the very rich.
| crote wrote:
| Quick, without doing any kind of Googling or calculation:
| if I asked you to count 3B grains of rice by hand, how
| long would that take you? How big would that pile of rice
| be? How long would it take you to _eat_ it?
|
| A billion is already unfathomably large. If you think it
| isn't, you just haven't tried imagining what a billion of
| _anything_ would be like.
| arjie wrote:
| The problem with this exercise is that I have a few
| million in wealth and I cannot actually visualize a few
| million grains of rice but I am fully aware of my total
| capacity to allocate capital to problems.
|
| Neither $3b nor $300b are realistically unfathomable to
| me. I find them easy to consider in terms of the projects
| I can build if I achieved each of these amounts.
|
| As an example I'd have to allocate somewhere between $50m
| to $250m to get people to vote on a California
| proposition. I'd need to spend $1.5b to create a wing of
| a major hospital. I'd need between $100m and half a
| billion to create a new K-12 school in my city.
|
| These are large sums of money and are currently out of my
| reach so if AI doesn't destabilize everything my best bet
| is to take the same approach each of my ancestors did.
| Move my children one level up the wealth ladder and
| hopefully give them the values that help them prioritize
| these actions and the optimal way of getting there. I
| think that involves some amount of compounding and then
| some amount of spending.
| chaps wrote:
| Friend, it's truly great that you can do that. But you're
| missing the damn point.
| dudul wrote:
| This comment left me speechless... There are just a bit over
| 3000 billionaires in the world, 900 in the USA. If $3B isn't
| "unfathomable wealth" I don't know what is.
| peyton wrote:
| There are grad students babying organoids right now. Saturday
| morning. If you can work a pipette you can do this.
| esafak wrote:
| This is an excellent use of his wealth and skills. Much better
| than Steve Jobs' response.
|
| I remember reading a similar article about a (cancer?) patient
| who used 3D printing for his personalized cure.
| fragmede wrote:
| And all of a sudden, I was bestowed with the greed to acquire
| more money than I can spend in a single lifetime. If I get
| cancer, I'd rather be rich and be able to do stuff like that,
| rather than die quietly.
| Axoncode wrote:
| I hope he will feel better.
| ashwinnair99 wrote:
| Most people slow down when something like this hits. Starting
| companies is a very specific way of refusing to.
| asim wrote:
| Kudos to Sid for trying it and hopefully it benefits others in
| the long run. Not everyone has the money, will or commitment to
| do this. My own father died with a battle of myeloma, a blood and
| bone marrow cancer, after 2 years, it wasn't the disease
| specifically that got him, it was the secondary conditions that
| caused irregular heart rhythm and eventually one day it stopped
| and no one was there to help. 2 stem cell transplants, rounds of
| chemo, almost full failure of kidneys. The cancer did its job.
| Ultimately what I'm saying, the medicine gives us time, but no
| one beats death. Maybe the treatment gives us time to come to
| terms with that, hopefully my dad did. I was in total denial.
| Anyway good luck to you Sid.
|
| All the best to all the cancer survivors out there, and to the
| loved ones who lost them.
| grokcodec wrote:
| https://time.com/7213490/why-are-young-people-getting-cancer...
| storus wrote:
| Maybe it's time for him to give the metabolic cancer theory a go
| and try to bump up his mitochondrial function as much as
| possible? It's practically untestable due to science testing all
| compounds in isolation instead of a cocktail over longer period
| of time that can't be properly controlled even if it might be
| true. Every single cancer cell has a damaged mitochondria and
| often switching it properly on leads to cancer cell's apoptosis.
| He should also take desloratadine as some Swedish hospital
| observational study showed a significantly increased
| survivability on all tumor types with it. Some people had success
| with the combination of DCA, R-ALA, B1 HCl megadoses >2g, CoQ10 +
| PQQ, glucosidic astaxanthin,
| nattokinase/serrapeptase/lumbrokinase, low-dose aspirin,
| pancreatic enzymes and lactoferrin, with complete removal of
| fructose from the diet (as the cancer explosion can be correlated
| with years when fructose started getting introduced into diet in
| large quantities).
| azinman2 wrote:
| You said it's untestable but then said a Swedish hospital did a
| study on it? I don't see why things can't be tested over a long
| term. There are many such studies.
| storus wrote:
| Swedish hospital study was about desloratidine:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33550204/
|
| Metabolic theory of cancer is untestable in practice as you
| can't control all variables over long time.
| menno-dot-ai wrote:
| There's a crazy story in here where Sytse invested in a click
| chemistry cancer research startup (Shasqi) in 2017 and ends up
| becoming a customer six years later.
|
| I sincerely hope it works out for him.
| bob_theslob646 wrote:
| It's mentioned in the slide deck on the url linked. I highly
| recommend clicking through all the slides. It's absolutely one
| of the most fascinating decks I've come across. His sheer will
| to want live is impressive and inspiring.
| HorizonXP wrote:
| Also helps we were all batchmates in W15, so the serendipity is
| even higher.
| sytse wrote:
| Yes, it felt like the universe provided in this case. I
| invest in my batch mate. We end up becoming best friends, our
| wifes become best friends. Biotech VCs are afraid click
| chemistry isn't hot enough. I lead multiple rounds and become
| the biggest investor and it becomes my biggest investment.
| The year I get cancer click-chemistry wins a Nobel prize. And
| I become a patient. Unbelievable.
| swyx wrote:
| karma is real, guys
| fallat wrote:
| or the top 1% of value holders means your connection to other
| holders is vastly smaller than the other 99%. also highly
| likely to get cancer no matter who you are. i think the odds
| are better than people think, was just a matter of time
|
| regardless of that observation: i am glad it's good people
| working with good people on these problems!
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| The linked post about his treatment is basically a vanity
| article; low in useful information, but high in vague assertions
| and platitudes. There's also a link to a post griping about the
| red tape someone experienced while trying to self-treat their
| dog's cancer that's weird. I clearly live in a different world
| than these people.
| bob_theslob646 wrote:
| Here is a video if you want more detail.
|
| https://forum.openai.com/public/videos/event-replay-from-ter...
|
| "Event Replay: From Terminal to Turnaround: How GitLab's Co-
| Founder Leveraged ChatGPT in His Cancer Fight"
| dekhn wrote:
| This is a common trope in the tech field- successful tech
| person who is good at tech gets disease and wants to help cure
| it. It's easy to generate a lot of data these days (whole
| genome sequencing, various tests) but the reality is that
| turning that data into actionable knowledge is remarkably
| difficult.
|
| Much of the red tape exists to help people avoid making common
| mistakes that aren't obvious until you've been through the
| process a number of times (other red tape just exists to
| gatekeep unnecessarily).
| inglor_cz wrote:
| To be somewhat more optimistic, digging useful connections
| and correlations from a heap of data is something that AI is
| really good at.
|
| IIRC there is a cancer lab in Vienna, Austria, where they
| feed genome sequence of a tumor into an AI and it sometimes
| recommends unexpected-but-efficient treatments.
| dasil003 wrote:
| It's wild to me to hear this being spun as vanity, like it's
| some influencer clickbait or linkedin slop. You could argue
| anyone posting anything online is driven by vanity, but in this
| case we're talking about someone who took agency in his own
| medical outcome, and essentially experimented on himself. Sure
| it was selfish in the sense that he didn't want to die and he
| bent all his effort and resources to it, so what? I don't see
| exercising ones will-to-live in this way being a huge moral
| gray area. Other commenters are saying why don't we fund more
| research? Well sure we should do that too, but it's important
| to recognize that the type of approach he took here only works
| because it was one individual willing to combine a significant
| amount of personal effort with his own moral authority to try
| out risky things on himself. Even with orders of magnitude more
| funding, you can't ethically do this kind of thing without the
| consent of the patients, and there's not enough data on these
| types of approaches to adequately describe the risks to
| patients if they aren't specifically motivated to lean into the
| details like this guy did.
| 113 wrote:
| Because it's only an option if you're rich and most of us
| aren't rich.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Others won't benefit ?
| dsign wrote:
| When it comes to cancer, there is an awful lot of legacy thinking
| and "way things are done" taking lives. Starting with the so
| called "standard of care", which makes patient lose precious
| treatment windows while they wait for a possible miracle from
| "first-line drugs" from thirty and forty years ago which frankly
| are not that good. But it's hard to reform because the fraction
| of people who ever think about cancer as a problem to be solved
| is quite small; and it ought to be far larger, given that cancer
| is the second or even first leading cause of death across much of
| the world. I wish Elliot Hershberg every success.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm pretty much a pessimest when it comes to fighting cancer. I
| think it's just one of the bugs in our genetic code that
| evolution didn't shake out. I say that not as a biologist or
| anyone who has done any work in the field. But I've seen people
| close to me die of cancer and it seems like the treatement is
| almost worse than the disease. I agree that the standard first
| attacks are very crude and have broad systemic side effects and
| the attitude seems to be "you'll die without this so that
| doesn't matter."
|
| I read some stuff about mRNA treatment a while ago that seemed
| like it might be promising.
| pavas wrote:
| > I think it's just one of the bugs in our genetic code that
| evolution didn't shake out. I say that not as a biologist or
| anyone who has done any work in the field.
|
| I'm just curious, do you know what the opinions about this
| stuff are from people that work in these fields, or that have
| dedicated their lives to it?
| bashkiddie wrote:
| I am guessing: There is an evolutionary "shadow". Genes for
| getting old and healthy are not selected for, because you
| get old after having children. Evolution optimizes for the
| survival of your children.
|
| Might be that cancer hits after creating offspring.
| Nursie wrote:
| In a social species such as ours, with such a prolonged
| childhood, having healthy parents and grandparents is
| likely to affect the survival of children so there will
| be some selection pressure on a long life there.
| bglazer wrote:
| I work in this field. It's more or less correct but kind of
| lacking in detail. Cancer is a property of all
| multicellular life. I think it's best understood as the
| behavior of a dynamical system that loses the feedback
| control that keeps cell growth under control.
|
| Check out this paper from the Lander lab:
| https://elifesciences.org/articles/61026
|
| It's a bit jargon heavy but it's a nice case study in how
| tumor growth is controlled through all the same mechanisms
| that normal tissue growth uses. Even cells with an outright
| cancerous gene mutation are basically still just doing
| normal growth and development.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| " Cancer is a property of all multicellular life."
|
| In practice, though, some species are way less prone to
| cancer than others. Orders of magnitude of a difference,
| even in mammals. Bats, notoriously. Or naked mole rats.
| On the other hand, mice get cancer fairly reliably.
|
| Which means that there are biologically realistic way how
| to keep the danger at bay, and they seem to involve the
| immune system.
| testaccount28 wrote:
| i'm pretty much a pessimest [sic] when it comes to fighting
| smallpox. i think it just exploits one of the bugs in our
| genetic code that evolution didn't shake out.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > seems like the treatement is almost worse than the disease.
|
| I think that's what the poster above you was saying.
| "Oldschool" chemo is basically poison, and the hope is that
| it kills off the cancer before the patient. But there are
| newer drugs that are extremely effective with way way way
| less side effects out there, depending on which type of
| cancer one has. Things like immunotherapy are really
| effective if you happen to match their targeted types of
| cancer, and some have basically 0 side effects, leading to a
| QoL improvement if they happen to work. People have gotten
| nobel prizes for some of these discoveries, it's really
| insane how far we've come in the last 30-40 years.
| com2kid wrote:
| I read a theory that we actually evolved cancer to ensure
| that something kills us.
|
| Mortality is a feature when it comes to species level
| fitness. Sucks for the individual though.
| ungovernableCat wrote:
| Cancer is too broad of a term. Some cancers like Hodgkin's
| lymphoma or testicular cancer respond extremely well to
| treatment. Some cancers are caused by cell damage from
| viruses such as HPV and can be prevented by vaccines.
|
| I get the pessimism because "curing cancer" can essentially
| be interpreted as "curing aging" but progress is being made.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >it seems like the treatment is almost worse than the
| disease.
|
| You seem to be indeed factually correct in most cases,
| judging by views of physicians who have gone against the
| orthodoxy.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| > there is an awful lot of legacy thinking and "way things are
| done" taking lives.
|
| I think one of the legacy thinking is to treat it like an
| infection rather than a systemic disease.
| dominotw wrote:
| so many of these now. it is so sad and scary.
|
| been thinking about prenuvo all the time now but not sure if
| thats going to help or make me more paranoid.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Not really. Osteosarcoma rates have remained very stable for
| decades. Some young people are getting diagnosed with
| colon/breast cancer at increasing rates, but most of that comes
| down to better diagnostics and imagining, catching things at
| earlier ages.
| moooo99 wrote:
| But isn't colon cancer in young people primarily an example
| of rates actually increasing, because young people
| specifically often get easily dismissed based on their age.
| arjie wrote:
| Before I got my Prenuvo MRI everything online said "don't do
| this, man. You'll find all sorts of things that will worry you
| that you wouldn't be worried about if you didn't do it". That
| makes no sense to me. Totally irrational. So I did the scan and
| saw a bunch of things which had no clinical significance -
| including the amusing thing that I'm missing the transverse
| processes on a couple of vertebrae (easily explainable from a
| motorcycle accident that put me in the ICU). So I moved on,
| scan done, and with the docs in my family reviewing.
|
| But a friend of mine went through a different diagnostic
| procedure and found things of equal clinical significance and
| went through a large number of interventions which he didn't
| really need it now turns out. And then I understood why people
| provide this warning.
|
| So the first question to ask yourself is which kind of person
| you are.
| andrewlacy wrote:
| There is a chicken and egg problem with advanced diagnostics
| like Prenuvo. I'm optimistic that if all disease were to be
| caught early, (1) the health system would evolve what is
| standard of care downstream in the working up and treatment
| of findings and (2) as individuals we would be less likely to
| overreact in chasing stuff down and feeling anxious. As CEO
| of Prenuvo, we do our best to contextualize and risk stratify
| in what is an evolving practice.
| nextos wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47550016
| appstorelottery wrote:
| This is the most supremely motivating post I've seen in a long
| time. I know what it is to be diagnosed with cancer, being rushed
| to surgery - it's amazing how quickly the medical-industrial
| complex can move once you've got a diagnosis (at least in
| Australia). I had a short period of contemplating terminally,
| because cancer claimed the life of most of my family. Thankfully,
| after surgery it was gone.
|
| To see Sid use his motivation and resources to solve his own
| problem is the core message (IMHO) of the hacker community.
|
| It makes me look at my own problem (Peyronies) in a different
| light; a disease which has affected my life in ways which cannot
| be overstated. Yet, all the money in the world right now can't
| fix Peyronies - yet in reading his journey my mind has been
| changed about this.
|
| His slide title: "I'll talk to anyone, I'll go anywhere, and I
| can be there anytime" is certainly the mindset!
|
| Thanks for posting this - I'm inspired to take similar action for
| Peyronie's. Anything is possible.
| elric wrote:
| I commend you for speaking openly about Peyronie's, I imagine
| that isn't always an easy thing to do (or to deal with). Best
| of luck, and I hope you manage to make progress with it.
| Effective treatment wouldn't get as much airtime as effectice
| cancer treatments, but it would certainly have a positive
| effect on the lives of millions of men.
| appstorelottery wrote:
| You are right on the mark. What triggered me was the slide in
| Sid's presentation: "Assessing Fibroblast Content of Tumor".
| Peyronie's is all about Fibroblasts. I actually typed my
| reply quite a few times, deleting mention of Peyronies and
| retyping it. It's a shameful condition for me, and I realize
| that I have to get over this. Peyronie's affects 1% to 20% of
| men, primarily because it's (if you're anything like me) - is
| impossible to talk about.
|
| Again, you're completely right. Talking about the disease is
| the first step.
| girvo wrote:
| It's not quite the same, but I had a frenulectomy done due
| to severe phimosis leading to pain and bleeding. It was
| absolutely horrible, and I was shocked at how hush hush we
| all treat conditions like this.
|
| Thankfully there's a straightforward surgical treatment for
| it, and I hope that you're successful on your quest around
| Peyronie's!
| appstorelottery wrote:
| I had to google your condition to empathize, but wow -
| terrible. I'm truly happy for you that you could solve
| it! Thanks for your best wishes!
| emerongi wrote:
| This reminded me of my own story, when I was 15 and had
| phimosis. I was embarrassed to talk about it with anyone,
| so in my desperation I posted about it on a forum that
| claimed to help kids in need of help. Someone responded
| and gave me instructions that they claimed had a high
| success rate at treating the condition.
|
| I followed the instructions for a few months and it fixed
| it. I went back and sent the biggest thanks to the
| responder. I did not expect to get any help from a random
| forum.
|
| There has to be swathes of kids struggling with
| "embarrassing" (in quotes, because they actually aren't
| embarrassing at all) issues like this. I hope today's
| internet can provide help to the ones that have nobody to
| discuss them with.
| baxtr wrote:
| What instructions were you given?
| girvo wrote:
| If it's similar to what I read: various stretching
| exercises, couple with creams to soften the tissue
| djmips wrote:
| Bravo, I didnt even know about this condition so thanks for
| bringing it out into the open.
| appstorelottery wrote:
| Thank you, I'm seeing that awareness is key.
| MindTwister wrote:
| Several years ago I was doing advertising websites, one of our
| customers was (Pfizer? Bayer? both were customers) they had
| developed a drug against Dupuytren's contracture[1] and
| apparently found it effective enough against Peyronie's that we
| were asked to create a website describing this (possibly off
| label) use of that drug.
|
| Honestly I have no idea if it was effective or not, nor do I
| know anything about the side effects, but just in case you were
| unaware of that particular option I want to put it out there.
|
| From what I can find, doing an online search along that path it
| might have been Xiaflex/Xiapex by Pfizer.
|
| (Not paid by anyone in this particular business anymore, just
| remembered it when I read your comment).
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dupuytren%27s_contracture
| appstorelottery wrote:
| Thanks for your comment. I'm aware of Xiaflex, and it's been
| clinically proven to work against early-stage Peyronies. When
| the disease has reached the chronic phase (and calcified) -
| Xiaflex hasn't been clinically proven. Xiaflex is now on-
| label for treating Peyronies.
|
| My mistake wasn't acting earlier, because I had no idea what
| was happening. But thank you again for your comment. Thank
| you!
| gen_1 wrote:
| Fellow Australian with Peyronie's here. Do you know about Dr C
| Love? I have just had a PIG surgery with him. It is too early
| to make a definite statement on the result yet, but things are
| looking a lot better than before.
| appstorelottery wrote:
| I live in the EU at present, I haven't heard of Dr C. I've
| seen a little Doctor Worship on Reddit, but no doctor who can
| deal with Chronic conditions. In the NL the only option was
| Tunica albuginea plication (TAP) which results in a loss of
| length. I've read that PIG in 44% of cases fixes this,
| however... ugh... surgery. From the bottom of my heart I wish
| you success in this, and I'd love to stay in contact and hear
| of your recovery - but how on HN?
| gen_1 wrote:
| ---
| appstorelottery wrote:
| @ aol... so retro ;-) - sent you an email.
| sytse wrote:
| Thanks for you kinds words, glad to hear you recovered from
| Peyronies.
| appstorelottery wrote:
| I have not recovered, I took the opposite path to you - when
| "standard care" wasn't an option - I gave up. But your post
| has motivated me, and shown me a roadmap of what is possible.
| Eternally grateful.
|
| p.s. "I'll talk to anyone, I'll go anywhere, and I can be
| there anytime" - for me, unfortunately $ is the problem for
| going anywhere, anytime. Perhaps you can help? I've sent you
| an email - I'm motivated. ;-)
| SilentM68 wrote:
| "Anything is possible," is the correct mindset when it comes to
| chronic or incurable diseases.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| I am watching DTF St. Louis (which is not a terrible reality
| show about a third tier city like the title implies, actually a
| Jason Bateman kind of dark comedy/whodunit), and Peyronie's
| features in the story. The show also has the first commercials
| I've ever seen for a Peyronie's treatment, and apparently it's
| an official ad partner of the show. I wonder if some
| enterprising show exec decided to go pitch the perfect
| sponsorship or if the company making a treatment commissioned a
| show...
| appstorelottery wrote:
| A cure for Peronies which is non invasive, works on
| chronic/non-chronics is worth countless billions.
| dexterdog wrote:
| DTF STL is a fantastic show as are all of the series done by
| Steven Conrad.
| cade wrote:
| Given your personal experience, I expect you know significantly
| more than I do, but I just wanted to note: about 20 years ago,
| I was part of a small company that filmed and edited
| educational, medical videos for various clients. One of the
| main things we filmed for a while were Peyronies repair
| surgeries. They were using a product called Surgisis from Cook
| Medical as a tissue scaffold to straighten things out. It looks
| like, sometime in the past 20 years, Cook may have moved on to
| a new product called Biodesign:
| https://www.cookmedical.com/surgery/the-path-from-
| surgisis-t..., but I don't know anything about that.
|
| You may know all of this already, and it may not be relevant to
| your situation at all, but in the slim hope that my experience
| of editing scores of Peyronies surgery videos may help nudge
| you in a new or helpful direction: there you have it!
| appstorelottery wrote:
| Thanks for your thoughtful comment! You're right - Biodesign
| can be used in Plaque Incision and Grafting (PIG) for
| Peyronies. Unfortunately PIG IMHO has (in some studies I have
| read) a 50/50 chance of erectile dysfunction, nerve injury,
| instability and so on. In essence, PIG might be rolling the
| dice to make a bad situation completely untenable. But again,
| I do thank you for your comment!
| cade wrote:
| Thanks for the kind response, and for teaching me more
| about the possible risks and downsides. I was just involved
| in the editing of the surgical footage, so I never got the
| "here's the potential drawbacks" speech. I wish you all the
| best in finding improvement for your situation!
| appstorelottery wrote:
| Let me tell you, I've seen more than my fair share of
| surgery videos involving "de-sheathing" in my research: I
| don't envy your editing work - but I envy your stomach
| ;-) But thanks for your reply, the community here can be
| great at times!
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Someone who is conincidentally both rich and has cancer tries
| to find a cure for his cancer by... spending money and being
| desperate enough about it to be available 24/7.
|
| What about this exactly is inspiring?
| jchook wrote:
| > To see Sid use his motivation and resources to solve his own
| problem is the core message (IMHO) of the hacker community.
|
| Hacking is about exploration beyond the known, and iterating
| towards a clear understanding.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| (slightly sarcastic) So we should give rich people diseases so
| they are incentivized to fund medical research?
|
| Sid seems like a decent person. I'm glad that he's able to push
| cancer research forward on his own. Hopefully his work will make
| things better for everyone else with bone cancer. Seems like that
| is well under way. (and I guess I should recognize that he funded
| a cancer treatment company years before he knew he had cancer
| further reinforcing that he's not purely self-interested)
|
| I'm a little melancholy that my aunt, who was a millionaire just
| not a mega-millionaire, didn't have the resources to do this
| before she died of cancer. She was able to pay for a high
| standard of care, but couldn't single-handedly fund teams of
| scientists to work on her case. I know she would have done so if
| she could, her biggest regret was not being around longer to see
| her grandkids grow up and she was very driven to watch over her
| family.
|
| It is a little sad that the world's medical research apparatuses
| couldn't seem to fund this on their own. Not just the US medical
| system, but Europe and China also don't have better treatments
| until a rich guy came along. It seems that it's not for a lack of
| ideas, just that some of these ideas couldn't be funded. Is it
| that this type of bone cancer is super rare and the cost just
| isn't worth it? Or are we just under-funding at the level that
| several ideas with a likely positive ROI aren't able to get
| funded?
| melling wrote:
| Why can't we just ask our governments to spend more on
| research? Want some rich person to donate $100 billion on
| cancer research?
|
| The US government and European governments could find that
| amount of money every year.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| The United States and world spend huge amounts of money on
| this, not even to mention the enormous amounts of private
| research.
|
| The takeaway here is getting money into the hands of smarter
| and more motivated people.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| No we absolutely don't. The US hardly spends anything on
| research.
|
| The entire yearly budget for the National Cancer Institute
| is $7 billion dollars. To put this in perspective, that's 3
| days of funding the DoD. For cancer. That kills well over
| half a million Americans per year.
|
| The takeaway is that we should invest in research rather
| than letting people die.
| miki123211 wrote:
| It's a problem of incentives.
|
| Governments have a limited (although large) budget, and no
| incentive to spend it well[1]. You don't get promoted as a
| government administrator if you approve a Nobel-prize-
| winning grannt.
|
| If you don't get rewarded for good work but may get
| punished for taking risks, you optimize for risk
| minimization, even if this means a lot of potentially-good
| work not getting done.
|
| Nobody blames the FDA when millions of people die from the-
| medicine-hasn't-been-invented-yet-itis, everybody blames
| the FDA when ten or so people die from a side effect nobody
| saw. This impacts FDA policy.
|
| This person has the best incentive there is in the world,
| the incentive to live. He didn't care whether the people
| getting his money correctly filled form 437-F, or whether
| they have the relevant paperwork that verifies their
| legitimacy in a way which can be described by legal rules.
|
| [1] Incidentally, finance has (had?) the opposite problem.
| If your bonus is calculated as min(0, percentage *
| profit_generated), you will maximize risk, optimizing for
| bets that give you great returns most of the time, but wipe
| you out completely some of the time, as your losses are
| clamped to 0.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _If your bonus is calculated as min(0, percentage_
| profit_generated)*
|
| I assume you meant `max(...)`? Otherwise you will at best
| get zero dollars in bonus, and at worst owe your employer
| money. ;)
|
| (I get min/max backward all the time too.)
| BobbyJo wrote:
| You can't compare the output of small teams driven by a
| fanatic with a single output metric with government funded
| research. NIH invests about 40 billion in research a year in
| the US as it is I believe.
| melling wrote:
| I asked Gemini AI and it says the NIH spent $7.3 billion
| last year.
|
| Would it be a big deal to double that?
| VectorLock wrote:
| In another timeline they're doing a "Cancer Moonshot" right
| now.
| PowerElectronix wrote:
| We are not the bosses of the people in the government, so
| asking does very little.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| > The US government [...] could find that amount of money
| every year.
|
| Sorry, that money is already earmarked for killing Iranian
| school girls and funding a gestapo to terrorize immigrants
| and American citizens. Ain't got enough left over after we
| cover those essentials.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is a bit simplistic to assume that more money translates
| into better research outcomes.
|
| Alzheimer's is a warning tale. Lots of money flowed into
| research of this condition, and was mostly wasted on a flawed
| hypothesis supported by scientific VIPs who had a face to
| lose in case it proved incorrect.
|
| We don't necessarily need _more_ money in research, but
| _smarter_ ways of spending it. The current grant system
| rewards established players and reliable production of
| mediocre (or even fraudulent) papers over honest failure and
| actual innovation too much.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| >Not just the US medical system, but Europe and China also
| don't have better treatments until a rich guy came along. It
| seems that it's not for a lack of ideas, just that some of
| these ideas couldn't be funded. Is it that this type of bone
| cancer is super rare and the cost just isn't worth it? Or are
| we just under-funding at the level that several ideas with a
| likely positive ROI aren't able to get funded?
|
| Cancer research, and all research in general, is massively
| underfunded. The US spends $7 billion dollars per year on the
| National Cancer Institute. The EU spends about as much as well.
| That's $14 billion per year for all cancer, never mind bone
| cancer. This just isn't a lot of money. That's like 6 days of
| running the US DoD. For cancer.
| wyager wrote:
| The bottleneck isn't research funding, it's getting past the
| FDA
| nextaccountic wrote:
| > The bottleneck isn't research funding, it's getting past
| the FDA
|
| Incidentally, that's the first point on his proposals to make
| the industry more healthcare first (slide 15)
|
| He also links this https://www.writingruxandrabio.com/p/the-
| bureaucracy-blockin...
| bluerooibos wrote:
| The bottleneck is capitalism, in which only things that turn
| a profit are deemed worth doing.
| Fordec wrote:
| In individualistic societies, the cultural motivation isn't
| going to come in the name of collective action. In the era of
| how much state funding of state driven science in the US is
| being pulled, you're 100% correct that all that will be funded
| will be rich people looking to cure themselves. But just
| because it's factually correct, doesn't mean it's not an
| indictment of the society we've built.
|
| mRNA research, first discovered in the 1960s, couldn't get much
| funding for years/decades and had to scrimp through what they
| had. And then it got a burst in funding and was publicly
| available in a year.
| stuffn wrote:
| There are so many diseases that can be solved if money isn't an
| issue. The problem is even if this wealthy guy cures his own
| cancer the treatment will never be available to us. We still do
| not have cheap genetic targeting and immunotherapy. The average
| person will be bankrupt just from the discovery.
|
| I'm of the opinion most types of cancer can be targeted and
| cured. There's just not enough money in it to produce the cure.
| The entire industry is locked behind a paywall.
| moralestapia wrote:
| "maximum diagnostics"
|
| Love this! This is the way! And he proved it correct.
|
| I remember one time I mentioned this in a casual conversation
| only to get back very low IQ responses with some fatuous
| arguments that the tests caused the disease or something.
|
| There was this one guy Tomas something (can't remember the last
| name, a weird one), doesn't matter, what I do remember is how he
| was desperately trying to explain how more tests led to more
| diagnoses and that was ... somehow bad? Lmao.
|
| Something I've observed, I've lived in Canada/US and Latin
| America, in the former you have to wait months for a CT scan, in
| the latter you can get it the same day you need it. If the
| "third-world" can do it, there's no excuse.
| universa1 wrote:
| I am fully on your side, but tests are not 100%: False
| positives and false negatives.
|
| The way out is obviously better tests and not less tests :-)
| jwardbond wrote:
| Could Tomas something have been referring to some of the risks
| mentioned here [1]? Particularly the overdiagnosis bullet.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_screening#Risks
| bfbsoundetch wrote:
| A very motivating post. What he said "It became my own job to
| keep myself alive. Nobody else was going to do it for me at this
| point" really stayed with me. It's powerful to see someone take
| that level of responsibility in such a difficult situation. I
| also appreciate how his ability to fund his own treatment can end
| up benefiting the broader community. Wishing him the best. Cancer
| is awful, and it just took one of my professor life just a few
| months ago.
| kaapipo wrote:
| Had the pleasure of meeting him a little over a year ago. A super
| cool and down-to-earth dude.
|
| I hope him all the best.
| vldszn wrote:
| Wishing him a speed recovery
| goatlove wrote:
| I found another story of using AI for a new vaccine the other day
| . https://x.com/paul_conyngham/status/2036940410363535823. Its
| interesting and motivating to see how people are using new
| technology to save lives regardless of their totally professional
| background and how informations are useful if you use it the
| right way. I wish him the best.
| 101008 wrote:
| This is wonderful but I feel bad for all the people who doesnt
| have the resources to go through the same. For 99.9% of the
| population, a diagnostic like his means a really different
| outcome. I know he is trying to fix this with his investments and
| companies, but sharing this story could be seen as "boasting"...
| "I went through this and I survived, while your loved ones
| wouldn't"
| necovek wrote:
| While that is just a natural reaction to "unfair" world where
| not everyone gets the same level of access to the best level of
| care, I'd also say that it's a reminder that money can't and
| won't solve all problems people are hit with in their lifetimes
| (or he'd not be facing cancer diagnosis in the first place).
|
| This story is of someone with resources putting them to good
| use to save themselves, but also have that benefit others:
| medical research is expensive and for good reason restricted,
| and just like lots of open source was driven by individual's
| need, so lots of good stuff can come out of this. I suggest to
| see it that way.
| ares623 wrote:
| I agree. It would've been so easy to address that too. Just
| acknowledge it and be vocal about supporting policies that make
| it better for others.
| mgfist wrote:
| Oh c'mon. Here's what Sid's done to help others in the
| process
|
| * Started 10 companies to enable access to others * Detailed
| policy proposals to make this easier process for others *
| Open sourced the entire process _and_ all of the associated
| data (25TB)
|
| and probably other things I missed.
|
| But nah, what would reaaally help is an acknowledgement.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The novel part of his post is the summary of what worked. That
| information you cannot get except from him. You need his
| experience.
|
| But this extra text you want can be obtained from LLM so if you
| require this "decoration" on top of information why not simply
| write yourself Chrome extension that reads page and adds that
| text to it at the bottom?
|
| This will help you not feel bad.
| allpratik wrote:
| Wish the best for Sid! My father was unlucky with his TP53
| mutation which resulted in AEL and he passed away suddenly. 100%
| fit to vanishing away straight in 8 months. It was pretty rough
| for me especially to see how these doctors (most of them but bot
| all) are so non-experimental in their attitude.
|
| Sid is right, Staying alive is our own job and definitely what he
| is doing will give him and his loved ones enough hope to get
| through this and sometimes he eventually he will get through.
| manmal wrote:
| I guess experiments will get a doctor sued.
| sytse wrote:
| Certainly hospitals are in the business of minimizing
| liability while patients would prefer maximum survivability.
| Those are very different goals.
| seb1204 wrote:
| I assume you have been signing legal waivers left right and
| centre to be able to go through these unique treatments.
| sytse wrote:
| There are lots of waivers but the law prevents you from
| signing away liability for treatment.
| jnpnj wrote:
| I remember steve yegge complaining about using brain and
| computing so sell clicks. I wonder how many people would do the
| same as Sid these days.
| hubrix wrote:
| This story and the guy curing his dogs cancer leads me to believe
| what's missing is a jurisdiction that allows people with money to
| do whatever experiments they want/need to move medicine forward.
| ares623 wrote:
| Jesus fucking Christ we are so fucked.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Do you really expect people to let you possibly kill people
| with medical experiments without even having to file some
| paperwork?
|
| Countries are already trying to attract clinical trials, and
| that includes streamlining approvals.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I have met people who credibly are able to do some of this at
| Prospero. The downside to this siting is that the local
| government are not super reliable but it's possible.
| ex-aws-dude wrote:
| Sorry but that's an insane statement
| ArlenBales wrote:
| Paolo Cortazar, is that you?
| sytse wrote:
| Thanks for posting this. Happy to answer questions!
| rvwaveren wrote:
| How are you now?
| sytse wrote:
| Doing well. We've not seen the cancer for 10 months (not for
| lack of trying) and I'm enjoying an international trip for
| pleasure!
| rvwaveren wrote:
| Glad to hear! After losing my wife to cancer (highly
| aggressive brain tumor, she only had six weeks), I'm happy
| that you had the time, resources, strength, will to take
| cancer by the lurven
| sebmellen wrote:
| Not my thread, but I just wanted to express my
| condolences for losing your wife. That must be so tough.
| My wife is my best friend and I cannot imagine how
| painful it would be for me to lose her or vice versa.
|
| I'm praying for you both and hoping that you've found
| peace and comfort since she passed. And I hope that you
| are doing well. I know she would be proud of you for
| keeping on!
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I am so sorry that you had to go through this tragic
| event, Here's a hug my friend, that must've been
| incredibly tough on you, I am not religious but I know
| that She is in Heaven and watching you from above and she
| will always be within your heart and all the cherished
| memories you had together.
| neal_jones wrote:
| Yea, it is incredible to see what could be accomplished
| with time and technology.
|
| Someone in my immediate family had Glioblastoma, it felt
| like fighting a hurricane.
| _joel wrote:
| Fantastic. Wishing you all the very best. A very close
| family member just with Stage 4 just got the pass for the
| next 3 months. We're 3 years in now. For them, the
| immunotherapy seems to be working, the radiotherapy has
| actually left the area affected worse (althogh we'd have
| never known the outcome if it wasn't tried, so it was a
| price worth taking).
| silentsea90 wrote:
| How do you deal with setbacks both in work and life, and show
| resilience and belief you can find a solution? Is this innate
| or something you worked on? Also, are there things you think
| are impossible for you to do?
| sytse wrote:
| I have a stoic mindset, I try to not care about things that
| are outside my sphere of influence. While the cancer was
| unfortunate it was out of my control. Having my YCW15
| batchmate step up for me during my initial set of treatments
| to get me Shasqi opened my eyes that I could help create and
| take new medicines. It was within my sphere of influence.
| When I reached the end of standard of care I stepped down
| from the CEO role of GitLab and pushed to do this for me.
| While it was hard it was easier than I expected and I created
| companies to help other patients in the same way (maximum
| diagnostics and single patient IND pathway).
| WJW wrote:
| Philosphical treatments have got a bad rap because it is so
| easy for conmen to convert them into fake hope, but when
| properly applied they are still amazingly effective. It's
| just that "properly applied" is very often not profitable
| because all the applicable texts and practices have been
| quite literally known for thousands of years and are
| available through well known texts in the public domain.
|
| And Sytse if you read this: beterschap en als dat niet
| helpt: sterkte. Cancer sucks.
| sytse wrote:
| Dank je!
| swyx wrote:
| how do you handle GitLab + Kilo + all this personal work? what
| system have you figured out? sorry if you've written about this
| somewhere, i think there's a meta lesson you have that we all
| can use.
| sytse wrote:
| All of these companies (including the Even One Ventures and
| Open Core Ventures ones) have CEOs who run them day to day. I
| try to help with positioning and setting ambitious goals. Y
| Combinator really opened my eyes to how helpful setting clear
| and hard to reach goals is.
| swyx wrote:
| thanks Sid! i think a lot of people incl myself aspire to
| be where you are - I have effectively 3 businesses and have
| only hired one GM (on track to be CEO), but the other 2 I
| am effectively CEOing. yet I have this maybe misguided
| asian/protestant theory that I haven't "earned the right"
| to multicompany yet, and if i take my hands off the wheel
| the whole thing might be at risk. With GitLab obviously you
| were driving for many years and it feels like only with
| your cancer diagnosis you started letting go.
|
| no question in there, just a comment, love your openness
| and giving back to the community, wish you full success and
| recovery.
| nextos wrote:
| This is very impressive, top labs doing research often don't
| have experimental designs that are this elaborate. Was the TCR
| and BCR-seq you conducted helpful to design cell therapies,
| neoantigen vaccines, and monitor progress?
|
| Given that you carry the HLA-B*27:05 allele, you might have
| been blessed by being predisposed to a better response. But
| probably you want to keep an eye on future autoimmunity issues.
| Talking from experience...
| sytse wrote:
| Thanks for the warning, I hope that it wasn't a personal
| experience for you.
|
| Thanks for the compliment about the elaborate design. I think
| that when you make something for one or a few patients it is
| easier to be more elaborate, even with the same knowledge and
| equipment.
|
| Maybe the TCR and BCR-seq was most helpful for mRNA design
| and effectiveness monitoring, but hopefully someone else on
| my team will answer that better.
| jacobjstern wrote:
| The TCR sequencing has been helpful for downselecting TCRs
| for a TCR based cell therapy, and for monitoring response
| to various immune therapies (including the vaccines)
| nextos wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for your replies.
|
| You should consider publishing a patient case report
| somewhere, as I believe there are lots of valuable
| conclusions to be extracted from your work.
| DEDLINE wrote:
| I have worked as an architect in HCLS technology for 10 years
| with Google and AWS.
|
| Listening to you stitch all the technology and innovation
| together, moving from the information world to the physical
| world, as a patient, almost brought me to tears.
|
| You said this will be the standard of care in 30-years, but the
| capability is here today. Listening to your recording is a
| profound moment in my life.
|
| Thank you for sharing your journey.
| sytse wrote:
| Really appreciate it. I agree the capability is here today.
| I'm trying to get it to more people so that the learning
| effects and economies of scale can bring the costs down.
| wvlia5 wrote:
| Is there a way I can start using this tech for myself as a
| solo dev? Is there some OSS project?
| appstorelottery wrote:
| Thanks for the inspiration! Is there anything new you've
| learned about fibrosis in your journey?
| sytse wrote:
| I'm not knowledgable able fibrosis except that my tumor
| expresses a lot of FAP and it is a workable target for radio
| and immune drugs.
| appstorelottery wrote:
| I have sent you an email - any help you can provide in this
| area.
| sytse wrote:
| Thanks, I replied to your email.
| appstorelottery wrote:
| I'm humbled. Thank you!
| bob_theslob646 wrote:
| My pleasure! How does someone support someone going through
| cancer? I would especially like to know how to best support
| someone upon initial diagnosis. It seems like you have an
| amazing support system and I would like to be that for someone.
| sytse wrote:
| Of course it depends on what they need but please email
| cancer@sytse.com with a screenshot of this message and we can
| discuss.
| robomartin wrote:
| Just a few notes:
|
| Fasting (1 to n weeks) is said to provide potential benefits
| for certain types of cancer treatments. Pre-cancer, it is said
| to potentially prevent cancer onset. This is potentially
| powerful for those of us with a family history with cancer.
|
| I have been fasting for a couple of years. My longest fast was
| 21 days last year. I am on track for a four week fast right
| now.
|
| Note that there seems to be research indicating that prolonged
| fasting with cancer might not be good, fasting around treatment
| is a different story.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EGUtr9w_HtE
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDG1m_b5Ih0
|
| Sunlight exposure is also said to be critical with treatment of
| disease. It isn't just about vitamin D.
|
| Here's a Huberman episode with Dr. Roger Seheult on the
| subject:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5DAW8mkJ6Y
| rand846633 wrote:
| Saw your post, read the first sentence and was curious to see
| what sources you would provide. YouTube is hardly an
| acceptable source as videos do not let people discern
| information well. It's basically only a hit better than
| telling ppl to google for themselves..
| stef25 wrote:
| Not the time nor the place
| robomartin wrote:
| I was afraid of that. I hope you find a path.
|
| Having lost several members of our family to cancer over
| the last several decades, including my mother, I sometimes
| question where all the money going into cancer research has
| gone. Maybe what has been lacking are motivated patients
| with both the means and the intellectual capacity to drive
| for solutions. Again, I hope you find a path.
| RS-232 wrote:
| > Fasting (1 to n weeks) is said to provide potential
| benefits for certain types of cancer treatments. Pre-cancer,
| it is said to potentially prevent cancer onset. This is
| potentially powerful for those of us with a family history
| with cancer.
|
| It makes sense. Cells need nutrients for the cell cycle,
| similar to the way computers need RAM to execute programs.
|
| Fasting not only deprives cancer cells of nutrients, but also
| triggers a homeostatic response in the entire body. This
| response includes putting its garbage collection system
| (autophagy) into overdrive mode so that it can reclaim the
| limited resources it has left to survive. Fasting is a
| reductive treatment, like purging oxygen from a server room
| on fire. It might help slow it down, but it can take healthy
| inhabitants along with it.
|
| Additive treatments offer more options. If you catch the fire
| early and it's contained (non-metastatic), you can target it
| with a fire blanket (surgery, stem cell transplantation) or a
| fire extinguisher (small molecules, biologics, peptides, gene
| therapy, etc.) to put it out. The sprinklers are a last ditch
| effort for larger fires (chemotherapy, radiation), which
| could save the building, but result in significant collateral
| damage.
| zie1ony wrote:
| Have you just "ordered the cancer vaccine" or this is not yet
| that easy?
| sytse wrote:
| Not that easy but started Echo to make it easier
| https://www.echoimmune.com/
| agumonkey wrote:
| Have you run into other people doing the same ? it could be a
| nice new movement.
|
| take care
| sytse wrote:
| Yes, I've met many people already. Feel free to reach out if
| you have questions cancer@sytse.com
| seehafer wrote:
| Sid -- I'm at FDA and would like to talk to you about your
| proposals to make industry more patient friendly. Will
| reach out to this address unless there's a better one.
| sytse wrote:
| cancer@sytse.com is a good address to reach out to.
| Thanks for reaching out. I look forward to discussing.
| You can find some of my ideas in slides
| https://share.icloud.com/photos/020eRAUd5TqDwlypQCT-qhK7w
| d0mine wrote:
| related: "ChatGPT and AlphaFold Help Design Personalized
| Vaccine for Dog with Cancer" https://www.the-
| scientist.com/chatgpt-and-alphafold-help-des...
| lzqqqqqq wrote:
| Such an inspiring read. As a bioinformatics researcher I'm awed
| by the depth of the deck. How do feel about the process of
| learning cancer biology and bioinformatics?
|
| Ps. I work for BillionToOne oncology and we build some of the
| most sensitive liquid biopsy tests
| (https://www.northstaronc.com/). Feel free to reach out if it
| pique your interest!
| sytse wrote:
| It wasn't easy to learn it while dealing with the side
| effects of chemo. But AI helped a lot, also see the OpenAI
| forum talked linked on the page. Love BillionToOne, also see
| https://osteosarc.com/timeline/ MRD Northstar for my results
| with it.
| jenniferpenaNP wrote:
| Thanks for your interest, we use Northstar monthly to track
| for Sid.
| jaredchung wrote:
| Your cancel journey is incredibly inspirational and I will
| share it on.
|
| But actually, I'm writing to tell you that many of the OTHER
| things you have done have had a huge positive impact. Gitlab
| foundation, for example, has been extraordinarily impactful on
| our organization and many others.
|
| This is the way!
| sytse wrote:
| Glad to hear that!
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| in light of everything you've learned about the pharmaceutical
| industry and biotech venture, is there anything in particular
| about oncology that makes it well suited to venture?
|
| like why is it people with cancer? why isn't it people with
| muscular diseases?
| meew0 wrote:
| Sorry if this is too specific/personal, but I've been
| wondering, why does the treatment timeline include antibiotics
| (dalbavancin)? Does dalbavancin have any suspected antitumor
| effects, or was it simply to treat complications of surgery /
| catheter infections?
|
| (edit: actually now that I checked the treatment timeline again
| it seems to be gone now. It was there 2 weeks ago!)
| jenniferpenaNP wrote:
| Chiming in from Sid's care team, the Dalbavancin was used to
| treat an infection post surgery, thanks for asking!
| JakeSc wrote:
| Thank you for sharing--very inspiring. I'm interested in the
| operations of starting and managing these companies in
| parallel. How did you go about finding people to run the
| companies? How much involvement do you have in their day-to-day
| operations? Are they "your" companies, or do you consider
| yourself just Customer #1?
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Why does Gitlab pay employees less based on their location, but
| doesn't adjust price based on location?
| xvector wrote:
| What an incredibly tone deaf question
| rand846633 wrote:
| The question is absolutely legitimate in nature and neutral
| in tone.
| tibbar wrote:
| Sure, but this isn't really an AMA thread [despite the
| offer to "answer any questions"]. This is about Sid's
| journey with (extremely advanced) cancer. Airing
| grievances about Gitlab is just out of place here, you
| gotta read the room.
| xvector wrote:
| This post is about a man's struggle with a deadly cancer.
|
| I cant understand how you could possibly think this
| question is not "tone deaf" unless you are genuinely
| autistic - not using it as an insult, genuinely curious -
| since such a question would be simply beyond the pale in
| polite society, given the context.
| fuzzy_biscuit wrote:
| While factually true, your answer lacks context awareness
| and decorum. It's not appropriate for this discussion in
| my opinion.
| linohh wrote:
| I've met you at SHA 2017 in NL and I wish you all the Best!
| devops000 wrote:
| Have you ever found out the cause of the cancer?
|
| They say to eat a healthy diet, exercise, get enough sleep, and
| avoid smoking/alcohol.
|
| Have you discovered more specific reasons over the years?
|
| Were you lacking in any of these?
| david_shi wrote:
| Can't wait for the movie about this to come out.
| jdcaron wrote:
| I wish you the best, my brother-in-law (also a close friend)
| lost his fight against cancer in 2019, it changed my perception
| of life forever. What we live is a bit like how we die, I had
| some of the best moments with him while he was more aware than
| myself about how we are all going to die, he changed my
| perception of caring much more about the uniqueness and the
| present moment. One of my favorite quotes is from Buckminster
| Fuller, "You belong to the Universe. Your significance will
| remain forever obscure to you ... (see full quote on
| Wikipedia)". Thank you so much for all the creation you have
| done in this world Sid, just for Gitlab it's plenty. I am a
| long time & very satisfied Gitlab customer, I switched a long
| time ago for its superior CI/CD integration and its super
| inspiring handbook. Another favorite quote is actually from you
| ... "My reasoning was I got to tell everyone what I do, and I
| want it to be a really good story." Lately I fundamentally
| changed my perception, the most important computer of all is
| the planet Earth, you seem to be aligned with this vision as
| well, correct me if my perception is wrong. I hope you keep
| going on with all those beautiful stories, we are lucky to have
| you with us.
| konaraddi wrote:
| Full quote from Fuller for others
|
| > You do not have the right to eliminate yourself, you do not
| belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance
| of you will forever remain obscure to you, but you may assume
| that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply
| yourself to converting all your experience to highest
| advantage of others. You and all men are here for the sake of
| other men.
| clarkevans wrote:
| Sid, Thank you for funding Arden Bio. Rheumatology patients and
| their clinicians are often left to throwing darts from afar, in
| series and often with significant & permanent function loss
| with each dart. Moreover, proper care of refractory rare
| diseases is not something that insurance funds: my otherwise
| excellent coverage expressly denies "investigatory" treatments,
| for example. As a small fiber neuropathic vasculitus patient
| with secondary Sjogren's I really look forward to progress in
| this field, it cannot happen soon enough. Best of luck in your
| own care and profile. - Clark
| markphip wrote:
| It was hard to tell how he is doing and whether any of these
| treatments are working, but I sincerely hope for a good outcome
| for him. He has always seen like a genuinely good person. Cancer
| sucks.
| sytse wrote:
| Thank you! I've been cancer free for 10 months now. If you're
| curious please see https://osteosarc.com/timeline/ > MRD >
| Personalis.
| dangus wrote:
| Sounds like some lame ass tech founder bullshit if I'll be
| honest.
|
| If I had cancer the last think I'd be thinking would be to make a
| slide deck about it.
|
| Can these robot people come back down to earth and have a genuine
| human experience for a chance? Not everything has to be framed in
| the view of a startup company or a data analysis exercise.
|
| Maybe focus on spending time with your family and friends? If
| they still like you after years of being an insufferable tech
| bro.
| justin wrote:
| Who hurt you?
| dangus wrote:
| Tech bros who are taking my job with AI and trying to fuck up
| the world for profit?
| arjie wrote:
| He's been public that he's ten months clear now. Some prefer to
| accept undesirable circumstances. Others prefer to oppose them.
| He's one of the latter. A little paraphrase of Dylan Thomas'
| work here is something I'm fond of:
|
| _Do not go gentle into that good night
|
| Rage, rage against the dying of the light_
|
| And if he's successful, which hopefully now he has a much
| better chance of, there are all these new medical results out
| that are useful.
|
| As an example, a close friend is using one of the personalized
| medicine companies that sytse's "CEO of care" has invested in
| to diagnose a persistent debilitating condition with no
| specific cause.
|
| Or to quote someone else: All progress depends on the
| unreasonable man.
| dangus wrote:
| That's so cool.
| z0r wrote:
| If you can cure a cancer by framing it as a data analysis
| exercise that doesn't seem to be a bad thing.
| SilentM68 wrote:
| He is lucky to have the resources and determination to start his
| own companies and tackle the problem himself. I wish the majority
| of tech bros would act in a similar fashion.
|
| The sad truth is, that in most countries, health systems do not
| allocate sufficient resources or financial support to doctors to
| correctly diagnose medical conditions accurately as it is not in
| their economic, interest to do so.
| CommenterPerson wrote:
| Hmmm .. where have we heard this story before? Tech bro tries
| alternative treatments for cancer .. somebody at Apple?
|
| I wish him all the best and good luck. Maybe in 50, 100 years
| we'll have more definitive cures for cancer. Till then it's
| mostly slash, burn and poison, unfortunately.
| plasma wrote:
| I think you'd find Dr. Richard Scolyer's story really relatable.
| He's an Australian cancer expert who, along with his colleague,
| is using himself as "patient zero" for a world-first treatment
| for his own brain cancer. They're basically doing the research
| and the treatment in parallel to find a new way forward:
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-30/dr-richard-scolyer-sp...
| archon810 wrote:
| Unfortunately, I found this from 12 days ago
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15655909/Dr-
| Richard.... Glioblastoma is a horrible disease.
| tootie wrote:
| 3 years is already beating the odds with a stage 4
| glioblastoma. It's one of the worst
| binsquare wrote:
| I found his story to give my mom hope when her cancer had
| metastasized to her brain in 2025.
|
| Cancer cells in the brain are in a nutrition rich environment
| for growth and at the same time dangerous for treatment for
| removal and to prevent growth. The expected 5 year life
| expectancy is less than 5%.
|
| Dr. Richard Scolyer had been diagnosed at 2023 and is still
| with us today. I hope he succeeds in his work.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Love seeing Sid posting about this and taking the initiative he
| has. I wish I'd had the resources and time (and abilities of Sid)
| when my Dad got ALS considering the relatively poor state of ALS
| treatments.
| andybak wrote:
| Took me a while to parse the title
| dbcooper wrote:
| For those interested in radioligand therapy against FAP antigen
| expressing cancer, Ratio Therapeutics is recruiting for a Phase
| 1/2 Open-label Study (NCT07156565).
|
| Eligibility requires history of relapse and refractory soft
| tissue sarcoma. Recruiting in US and Canada.
|
| https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07156565?tab=researcher#...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Sytse is one of a kind, not a doubt about it.
| greekrich92 wrote:
| Mountainhead was a documentary.
|
| "Bureaucracy" isn't blocking new and better treatments,
| privatized healthcare and research is.
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| Incredibly badass. This is the best news I've read all year --
| world is better with Sid in it.
| dschol wrote:
| I'm grateful to Sid for what he's doing--his companies are
| helping me battle my cancer. I hope more tech entrepreneurs will
| tackle healthcare and medicine like he is.
| cancerisfake wrote:
| BULLSHIT ALERT
| replwoacause wrote:
| This man is incredible. I wish I was 10% as smart, resilient,
| resourceful and determined as he is. Truly amazing stuff.
| agluszak wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you already are. He's just rich.
| ianm218 wrote:
| I don't really understand this comment - most people are not
| this resourceful within the constraints of their own lives.
| tsoukase wrote:
| Amazing. When motivation meets innovation this is the result.
| Although a doctor, I cannot follow all the mechanisms. Cancer is
| a hard problem from the ground up (biology until engineering).
| You get ill and well multiple times before you or it wins. And
| the known therapy modalities remain the same since 2500 years
| (surgery, toxin, burn). Genetics failed loudly in this field.
| It's all statistics, prevention and luck. Hope all well to the
| guy.
| thumbsup-_- wrote:
| The article said he gathered information and that cancer is a
| disease of information and in next para that the cancer is in
| remission. How? Did I miss something?
|
| Did cancer got scared of the massive google doc? Just share how
| if you have found a treatment and if you truly care about people
| and the world. Just Share
| sungam wrote:
| This is fantastic and I would do something similar if I had the
| same resources.
|
| Whole genome sequencing and single cell sequencing are actually
| surprisingly inexpensive (compared to the cost of almost any
| cancer treatment) and there is a good argument that we should do
| this by default for any type of cancer for which there are not
| effective treatments.
|
| I would encourage all patients to learn as much as possible about
| their own diagnosis. There may be clinical trials available in
| another centre that your clinician is not aware of or tumour-
| agnostic trials that target specific mutations that are present
| in a range of different cancers.
|
| There is a good argument for allowing patients to try
| experimental treatments once standard treatments are exhausted.
| The provider liability issues could easily be solved by
| legislation. A bigger issue is that there will always be people
| who want to exploit vulnerable cancer patients by charging
| exorbitant amounts for plausible-sounding treatments which have
| no evidence base.
|
| As an individual trying multiple experimental treatments at once
| is the logical approach if there is no other option. However it
| will not be possible to know which of these is effective and
| which have caused side effects so to develop more effective
| treatments we do need structured and carefully controlled
| clinical trials. Unfortunately there is a huge regulatory burden
| for any kind of clinical trial at present and this should be
| massively streamlined for cancer patients where even if the
| treatments cause harm the alternative is death.
| rurban wrote:
| Does the HN title make any sense? What should the "by founding
| companies" mean?
| agluszak wrote:
| Keeping you alive should be the job of public, free healthcare
| and state-funded research.
| cocothem wrote:
| Question - do you need doctors to stamp your plans, prescribe
| treatments or are you allowed to try anything you decide to?
| coatmatter wrote:
| > Happy to answer questions!
|
| Are you aware that SARS-CoV-2 is oncogenic, and that repeat
| exposure increases risk?
| seanparsons wrote:
| Good luck to him, fuck cancer.
| pantsonfire2 wrote:
| This guy is a liar. He doesn't have "cancer"
| pantsonfire2 wrote:
| Who does a cancer AMA?? Insufferable idiots. Gofundme coming next
| ctdinjeu6 wrote:
| This guy is so full of shit.
|
| I just deleted my GitLab accounts.
|
| We're back to that "Lyme Disease" phase of dev.
|
| Whenever someone is a retard who doesn't get enough attention,
| they always do some shit like this eventually, like an AMA for a
| minor or non medical issue.
|
| Look he's already here taking questions lmao
| jenniferpenaNP wrote:
| Sid, it's truly a privilege to work alongside you on this cancer
| journey. Your innovation and transparency around all things helps
| pave the way for others in a way like I've never seen in 25+
| years of healthcare.
| looneysquash wrote:
| I've only interacted with him a couple of times, years ago, but
| he was very helpful and accepted my MR.
| nunez wrote:
| This is one of the most punk rock things humanly possible. "F**
| the doctors; I'll fix the cancer myself!" Gigantic respect, and
| massive congrats to being right!
|
| Good on you, Mr. GitLab!
| Andrew_McCarron wrote:
| Launched my own company three days ago after two years of nights
| and weekends. Reading this while checking overnight signups. Your
| framing around "purposeful work in the face of mortality" will
| stay with me. Wishing you a full recovery, Sid.
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