What we talked about
Alex Treiner is the Founder and CEO of Make Offshore, the Independent Sales Representative for Foxconn Baja California, and the author of “Sherlock DNA: A Startup Saga,” a #1 New Release on Amazon based on his nearly nine years inside Illumina. A two-time immigrant and self-described serial reinventor, Alex went from electrical engineer to manager, inventor, and founder of multiple startups, including Tailio, which he sold to Nestlé Purina, before reinventing himself once more as a published novelist now developing the book into a TV drama series.
Show notes
Alex Treiner went from electrical engineer to manager, inventor, and serial founder, including Tailio, which he sold to Nestlé Purina, before reinventing himself again as a published novelist. His book, “Sherlock DNA: A Startup Saga,” fictionalizes his nearly nine years inside Illumina, and he tells the story behind the story, from leaving the Soviet Union to surviving a nine-and-a-half-month nightmare in the early, high-stakes years of genetic sequencing.
What we covered
- His path as a two-time immigrant out of the Soviet Union to Israel and then the United States, why he speaks four languages each with the wrong accent, and how that immigrant’s drive carried him into the early, high-stakes years of genetic sequencing.
- What really happened during the nine-and-a-half-month nightmare that opens the book, why he chose to fictionalize true events rather than write a memoir, and how he decided which parts of the story to dramatize and which to leave out.
- What it takes for an engineer to actually finish a full-length novel, how he found the patience to embrace imperfection in the creative process, and the difference between a good story and a bad one.
- The pressure an engineer feels inside a billion-dollar race, what a relentless sprint does to a person, a marriage, and a team.
- Why he believes the screen is the right home for this story, and how he is developing the book into a TV drama series.
- Practical advice for any founder or engineer sitting on a great startup story of their own.
About Alex
Alex Treiner is the Founder and CEO of Make Offshore, the Independent Sales Representative for Foxconn Baja California, and the author of “Sherlock DNA: A Startup Saga.” He is a former Associate Director of Engineering at Illumina and a serial founder whose company Tailio was acquired by Nestlé Purina.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alextreiner/
- Website: https://makeoffshore.com
Episode 160 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the pre Vedet podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today I am joined by Alex Trainer, his founder and CEO of Make Offshore, Independent Cells representative for Foxconn, Baja California, and the author of Sherlock DNA, Startup Saga, a number one Amazon new release based on his nine years inside Illumina.
Alex is a two times immigrant, a serial reinventor who went from electrical engineer to founder of multiple startups, including Tailio, which he sold for Nestle Purina, and now he’s a published novelist developing the book into a T V drama series. Alex, welcome to the show.
Alex Treiner (00:48) Thank you for having me, Valerico. I’m glad to be here.
Federico Ramallo (00:51) It is great to have you here today. so for people meeting you for the first time, can you describe a little bit more what w what are you doing?
Alex Treiner (01:00) Of course. So you already said a few things about me. I just wanted to add that, you know, when I say that I’m a 2X immigrant, people usually ask what countries I’m from. So I say I speak Russian with the Ukrainian accent, I speak Hebrew with the Russian accent, and I speak English with an Israeli accent. That tells you all.
Federico Ramallo (01:19) That’s amazing. I I mean w we I I’m more used to the the Latin America side of the world. So I’m not so familiar with you know, with the European side of the world. Even though I am I’m Polish. I’m a Polish citizen, so I I should be more familiar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I so I I think I I I kind of told you the story, but I’m I’m Polish from my mother’s side.
Alex Treiner (01:35) wow.
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (01:43) they’re golfer and they come so my grandmother moved to Argentina when she was three years old from a a small town called Lots many years ago right and th they eventually grew up in Argentina right and and I moved to Mexico seventeen years ago. So you see like this side of the world is what I’m more used to. I’m not and actually that was
Alex Treiner (02:04) Do you speak any Polish?
Federico Ramallo (02:08) The only question that the Polish ambassador asked me, and I was like, No, I’m sorry. And she gave me a speech of, you know, you’re ask you’re you’re you’re getting the Polish citizenship. You should know Polish. And she was right. I I had no excuse, right? but but
Alex Treiner (02:28) You know, I understand
some Polish because I served… First of all, I obviously understand Ukrainian very well. I speak some Ukrainian. And I served on the Polish border in the Soviet army for about six months. And we used to listen to Polish radio because Russian radio was boring and Polish was full of Western music. So I picked up some words.
Federico Ramallo (02:49) Right.
Right. Interesting. Interesting. So tell us a little more how you know how how you end up in in Russia, Ukraine and and then Israel.
Alex Treiner (02:59) Yes, I was born in the Soviet Union in Ukraine.
which back then it was called All Ukraine, was a republic of Ukraine. And so I’m Jewish, my whole family is Jewish, and when I went on 23 and me, I’m so boring, you I’m 97 % Ashkenazi Jew, but I am 0.3 % Viking. So that’s the most exciting part of me. And you know, every Jew, not every, I can’t speak for every Jew, but you know, every Jew I knew at least, right, always longed to get out of the service.
Federico Ramallo (03:21) Ha ha ha.
Alex Treiner (03:33) union of that prison.
It even says it in my book. you know, whoever came to the US, there was always an American dream. But we ended up in Israel. You know, as soon as Gorbachev came to power, I was serving in the Soviet army. As soon as I got back from the army, we applied and we got out. And we lived in Israel for 10 years. And we wanted to pursue our American dream, so we moved over here. And that’s story, it’s part of the story described in my book.
Federico Ramallo (04:03) Right, right. Very interesting. Do you feel that there is more freedom in in the US compared to Israel?
Alex Treiner (04:12) No, no, it’s about it’s the same. mean, you know Israel is very Israel is a democracy, you know, unlike now many Countries in Europe, for example in the UK they suppressing free speech It’s insane what’s going on there. They invented free speech right and now they’re suppressing it, right? unlike unlike There Israel is an absolutely free country. You can say anything about your government or about anyone for that matter You know, there’s an old Soviet joke
Federico Ramallo (04:14) Or it’s same, right?
interesting.
Alex Treiner (04:39) about the free speech. I’m gonna tell you that. know, an American says to a Soviet guy, says, you know, I can come out to, you know, in front of the White House and I can curse my president. Can you do that? He says, yeah, I can also get out on the Red Square and curse your president.
Federico Ramallo (04:57) Right. Right.
Alex Treiner (05:00) So yeah,
but yeah, answer your question, Israel is a very free country. You feel pretty much the same here and there.
Federico Ramallo (05:11) Right, right. I I want to visit Israel. I want to go and visit kibbutz. I understand it’s an it’s a very interesting I wouldn’t I want to describe it as a social experiment, but it’s actually you know working, so it’s not an experiment anymore. But it’s a unique dynamic that I haven’t seen anywhere else, right? So I want to see what it’s all about. Yeah.
Alex Treiner (05:30) Kibbutz is a failed experiment.
Federico Ramallo (05:33) really? Interesting.
Alex Treiner (05:34) As
much as every social communist experiment in the world, which has been ever conducted, always failed. And yet in the United States now we have a lot of people who are very vocal, who wants to bring this back in the US where capitalism is a flawed system, but it’s the best system we have. And it’s working, right? Anyways, so Kibbutz failed. were idealistic people for a while.
Federico Ramallo (05:54) Right. Right.
Alex Treiner (05:59) They kept going on sheer, you know, idealism and novelty of this, but eventually they all fell apart. They still exist, but they now ran as a capitalist enterprise, you know, for anything, so…
Federico Ramallo (06:12) Right.
They they became a a a a corporation basically or a or a company, right?
Alex Treiner (06:15) Exactly, yeah,
yeah. I mean, we often go to Kibbutz to buy some good food, know, good quality organic food and all that, right? They make furniture, they have factories, know, many of them actually exported to Europe, to the United States. So it’s like it’s an enterprise, the usual enterprise, you know, people work there now, they get salary and all that. And many people actually just drive to Kibbutz to work there for their day jobs. They don’t necessarily live there.
Federico Ramallo (06:21) Right.
Right. interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I I I I thought that, you know, when you have a small community that everybody knows everybody, that it’s easier to do the the shared resources, you know, philosophy. and when you want to scale it, then it doesn’t work, right? but it’s interesting what you’re saying, yeah.
So you know, talking changing subject, talking a bit about Ill Illumina, you spend nine years inside inside that company and then you write a novel about that world. When did you first realize this story had to be told?
Alex Treiner (07:12) Mm-hmm.
To be honest with you, maybe very, very quickly, let’s say what the story is, right? So our listeners will know, right? So first off, Illumina is an amazing company. Illumina is a genetic analysis company who brought DNA sequencing to the world. The very first whole genome, whole human genome, it took 13 years to sequence and it cost humankind $30 million, right? $30 million, 30…
Federico Ramallo (07:26) Yes.
Alex Treiner (07:50) years, genome number one. The second genome with Illumina, so that was pre Illumina technology, right? It was an old sequencing, it was called capillary sequencing. When Illumina brought its technology to market, it took a couple of weeks and it costed $200,000 per second genome. And now it takes a few hours and it costs under 200 bucks.
Federico Ramallo (07:56) Right.
Wow, that’s amazing.
Alex Treiner (08:16) So that’s kind of the progress that, and it’s just to emphasize what an amazing company it is, right? When I joined Illuminate, it was pre-sequencing. So I joined Illuminate when it was only three years old, was under 100 people, and had zero revenue from products. It went, it basically was making, you know, was working on getting NIH grants and doing some services.
So I’m an electrical engineer. So when I joined it, I was hired to develop an electronics of an instrument called, with an internal name, Sherlock. And hence the title of the book. So this is the book right here. And this is Sherlock. That’s why I call the book Sherlock DNA. That good-looking guy is not me. I used to have a full head of hair. Right? I can make even that same thing like that guy.
Federico Ramallo (09:01) Ha ha ha.
Alex Treiner (09:05) But that’s not me, that’s AI. It’s Canva and AI. So anyway, so now to the point, right? So basically I worked there for almost a year. I did everything that I promised. I was the only electrical engineer on that project. And I single-handedly developed the entire electronics, which was like six boards and like 20, 30 cables of that Sherlock instrument. And it worked fine. it worked fine for several months. Everything was fine until one bright morning, a guy comes to
work and two instruments that very first instruments that were in an instrument manufacturing that were supposed to be shipped to a customer within weeks they were dead. DOA, dead on arrival. So he calls me I come in you know very very overconfident you know because it’s my baby I know it’s inside and out and I can’t figure out what’s going on. And this went on for nine and a half months.
Federico Ramallo (09:43) Ha ha ha.
Alex Treiner (09:54) It brought Illumina to its knees because we weren’t able to ship anything. So it was not an easy experience, right? That’s kind of the premise. That’s the core of the story. And of course, in the book, I also tell the story how Illumina was founded. It’s very, very interesting anecdotes. I got to know every founder of Illumina and they got to know me because I was a hero or maybe an entire hero of that nine and a half months long troubleshooting effort.
Federico Ramallo (10:18) Hehehe.
Alex Treiner (10:22) And before writing the book, I just published six months ago, I’ve interviewed over 50 people who all of them are characters in the book.
Right? Every single… Now, the book is written as a fiction novel. The company’s name is changed, people names are changed, right? To whatever they elected to be a fictional name for them. So that’s just very quickly to give you kind of a background about the story. Now, before them, you know, I was a pretty good troubleshooter and, you know, like you always have some bugs and problems and all that. Typically it takes between minutes to hours to solve, sometimes few days. I never had anything that I would work on more than two days.
to solve, right? And this is ongoing, know, first day, second day, days turned into week, then weeks, and I’m starting to realize that it’s something extraordinary. I can’t figure out what’s going on, nobody can. You know, the company brought five very highly qualified consultants, electrical engineers with way more experience than I had back at the time, and they couldn’t figure out what’s going on. So as the story progressed, I already
realized something extraordinary, like it’s really, really unusual, right? And eventually when it was resolved, of course, I’m not going to spoil, I’m going to spoil by saying the book has happy ending, the Illumina story has a happy ending, and the actual Illumina story is still ongoing, right? The company is thriving and everything. But I’m not going to say what it was and all that, right? I’m not going to spoil it, of course. But when…
Federico Ramallo (11:32) Ha ha
Right.
Right. But it’s a it’s
a near near death experience, right? for for the company, right?
Alex Treiner (11:54) Yeah, you’re And so
just to answer the question, started, me and 50 other people started realizing that it’s something extraordinary while the story was unfolding. And then after the successful resolution of the story, when people were telling their relatives and their friends or colleagues from, know, friends from other companies, what was it? Like it became, you can’t make this shit up type of story. Like people wouldn’t believe that this
this happened. So that’s how extraordinary the story was.
Federico Ramallo (12:26) Right, right. That’s amazing. I mean I I I think that it’s it’s interesting to share these stories because it’s it’s a great way to get into the insight of how companies operate and how I mean it’s it’s a com it’s a combination of of passion, you know, skills and a little bit of luck as well, right?
Alex Treiner (12:46) Yeah, yeah, every component should be there, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (12:50) so the y y you mentioned that that you’re a a mechanical engineer, right? electrical engineer, sorry. so for for for this project, were you using the screen components? Were you able to use integrated components, microchips already? or were you using el you know, electromechanical components to build it?
Alex Treiner (12:54) Electrical. Electrical engine.
I see. So yeah, so I’ve developed several boards. I actually can show you one of them.
Federico Ramallo (13:14) nice.
I in the meantime I’ll share my there you go. Go go go. Yes.
Alex Treiner (13:15) You know, say picture worth 1,000 words and
video probably worth 1,000 pictures. So this is a board that I developed. It’s a main board. It’s a character in the book. And I’ll bring it closer so you could read. Can you read it?
Federico Ramallo (13:27) It’s amazing.
It says Alex Trainer, thanks for the genetic energy.
Alex Treiner (13:35) Yeah, so when I left the company and there’s a bunch of, I don’t know if you can see this, there’s a bunch of signatures here and good wishes, right? So this is one of that I developed and they signed it for me, like the entire team signed it for me. So that was my go away present. So this is one of those boards and you can see there’s like bunch of components here, right? The heart of the board is this guy, which is FPGA. So what I did is I built these boards, I’ve developed
Federico Ramallo (13:52) nice. Right.
Alex Treiner (14:05) FPGA code and you know I worked with a software guy who basically wrote the driver for my board and besides this board there was another five boards and bunch of cables as I said. So yeah.
Federico Ramallo (14:17) Right, amazing.
And and the I’m assuming I I I’m sure that the level of complexity that you that you you ha you have built on that on that board and the system makes it super hard to to debug, right, and find what are the core issues, right? The root of the problems.
Alex Treiner (14:36) Like first of all, you you try to develop things as simple as possible, right? The complexity is not a feature, Functionality is a feature. you have a PRD, product requirements document of specification, right? And all you need to do is you need to meet the spec. But yes, I mean, this board has a lot of different functions.
Federico Ramallo (14:41) Right.
Alex Treiner (14:59) But, you know, I’ve built it in a modular way, right? So which allows you to debug one module at a time. And so that significantly reduces the complexity. Maybe each piece on its own is complex.
But if you throw them together, if they would interfere with each other, that would increase the complexity exponentially. But I didn’t, right? So there’s like very clear, you know, if you look at the Bohr’s block diagram, there’s very clear division here between different modules.
Federico Ramallo (15:20) Right.
Right, right. Very interesting.
Alex Treiner (15:31) But yeah, mean, look,
things start failing. You if it’s only one subsystem fails, then you know exactly what’s going on, right? You can focus on that. But unfortunately, failures were all over. And that was really confusing. was part of… So you’re absolutely right. The complexity, sure just number of components and everything, you know, makes it not easy to debug.
Federico Ramallo (15:44) Right, right.
Right. Right. And the the ones the the the fi the fi bugs that I f hate the most are the ones that are intermittent because you cannot head on try to fix them. it sometimes fails, sometimes it doesn’t, and it’s hard to figure out what’s going on.
Alex Treiner (16:13) Exactly. So the failure here in this case was very intermittent. You are absolutely right. For intermittent things, are you familiar with ABA method of troubleshooting? So let’s say you have a state A where there is a problem.
Federico Ramallo (16:24) I I am not.
Right.
Alex Treiner (16:29) And
you think that you figured out what the problem was and you fixed it. So you move this from state A to state B. Now you’re in a state B and you’re running this and it’s not failing. But how do you know that you fixed the problem if the problem is intermittent? Maybe it’s just like it’s just not happening, but the problem is still there. So what you do then, you purposely remove the fix that you put in and move it back into the state A and make sure that it still fails.
Federico Ramallo (16:59) Right. You validate that it fails, you validate that it doesn’t.
Alex Treiner (16:59) That’s why it’s called…
Exactly. That’s why it’s called ABA. So to go from a state A to state B is not sufficient. Then you know, like you run it in a state B for a while, right? There are no failures. Now you have to prove to yourself that although the problem is intermittent, it’s still happening. So you have to go back into state A and prove to yourself, oh, the problem is still there. So yeah, so my fix really works. That’s how you do it. So that’s an ABA approach.
Federico Ramallo (17:31) And the the the other added complexity to finding this bugs is when you have delays to from the change to to the r to the change of behavior, right? you know, in a complex system, those delays are are natural, right? And it it it it it gets harder and harder to to be able to test this. Interesting. So going back to the to the story, Sammy’s the protagonist, right? how much of him
Alex Treiner (17:47) Yeah.
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (17:57) Was inspired by you.
Alex Treiner (17:59) Right, so first of all, why Sam and not Alex? Because my name is on the book, right? You can go into my LinkedIn profile, you can see it’s me and all that. I just wanted to pay my respects to my late father, who unfortunately didn’t live to see the book. So it’s his name. His name is Semyon, so I called myself Sam, that’s why. Now…
Federico Ramallo (18:09) Mm-hmm.
Interesting.
Alex Treiner (18:23) Sam is 100 % based on me. Why? I just like imagination. I couldn’t make stuff up. But there’s a story behind this. So first, once I started writing, subconsciously I depicted Sam as a superman. He was tough.
Federico Ramallo (18:43) Right.
Alex Treiner (18:43) good looking, know, got his shit together, never back down, always a fighter, you know, like my wife read it and said like, what the heck is this? You gotta show your vulnerability, your real self, with all your shortcomings and everything, right? And so I’ve written and I actually then, you know, I feel that the guy that I put there, you know, it’s much closer to me than the first version of Superman.
Federico Ramallo (19:10) Right. Right and the the the writers of Superman had the same issue when they they wrote Superman. It was so, you know, perfect that then there is no story because you know it’s super, it can do anything, right? There’s nothing there is no tension, there is no you know, no problem for him to solve, right? So that’s why they invented Kryptonite. You know, they needed something to make it weak so he could overcome challenges, right? So yeah.
Alex Treiner (19:34) Exactly, yeah, yeah, it’s a great one. Yeah, good for you, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (19:38) Yeah, and and I think that the the idea of building it as a as a fictional story allows you to p it gives you so many elements to play with and make the story much more interesting to read. Because if if you follow exactly everything that happened, there’s there’s sometimes that you know, debugging is fun for us that we kind of know w what it is, right? The intelli the challenges. But if you look at from outside, it’s just one guy
Or a group of guys or or or w whoever, a team just playing with the thing, right? There’s no much to see, right? So you you you lose that you know on the storytelling you lose that resource, right?
Alex Treiner (20:15) Well, so actually I’ve employed a method to, I wanted to give people a glimpse into electrical engineering. What is this? I am very, proud to be an electrical engineer. Now I’m not an engineer anymore. I’m a startup founder and all that, right? I’ve moved on. But once an engineer, always an engineer. Nobody can take it away from you.
And electrical engineers are very quirky people with their own things. And I really wanted, as I said, wanted to give people kind of an insight how we operate and look at that problem.
So when I finished my first round of writing, I put too many technical details, it was too boring and all that, and also too technical. I went through this like you go in a garden with a rake, to pull all the weeds out, to minimize all the technical jargon and everything. And then I used different analogies.
like to explain complex technical concepts in a simple way. Like for example, for an instrument I use a pizza and pizza oven analogy, right? I said the Sherlock as an instrument is like a pizza oven. And an assay that you put in is like a pizza that, you know, a raw pizza that you put in and then bake it and like whatever. So, you know, it’s stuff like that. It’s everywhere and it’s kind of easy to read. you know, feedback from my readers, I have…
Federico Ramallo (21:15) Right.
Alex Treiner (21:31) Out of my leaders very very small percentage are electrical engineers majority of them are You know just regular people some of them are scientists You know some of them just like regular people you know accountants and the I don’t know lawyers and stuff like that right and everybody told me that It was pleasure for them to It was an eye-opener, and it was an easy read for them. You know I’ve made it engaging and cultivating
by employing some other techniques. Some of them I’ve learned from others, of course, and some I’ve developed on my own. I actually have, I’ve created to myself a little document, it’s a single page PDF with like nine or 10 bullet points on how to create an engaging writing.
Federico Ramallo (22:13) Right.
Alex Treiner (22:14) you know, short chapters, short sentences, very dynamically, know, each, every chapter ends with an emotional… So the whole book is an emotional rollercoaster, right? Ups and downs all the time. And so, but if you only create drama, it’s depressing, right? It’s every chapter you end with a of a dramatic ending. So some of them are, you know, really dramatic. It’s the end of the world, you know, it’s the cliffhanger, whatever’s gonna happen. But some of them…
actually end with a hope, with an optimism. As you go to the next chapter, you think, now this solution is closed. And so that’s one of the ways I’ve made the book engaging.
Federico Ramallo (22:57) Right. I mean like a roller coaster, you have ups and downs. You know, in order to have the downs you need the ups, you know, you you up slowly and then whee, you know.
Alex Treiner (23:00) Exactly, Yeah, yeah.
Exactly. If everything is flat or everything is just downhill, it’s not what you want, right?
Federico Ramallo (23:13) Yeah, it become it it become you know very s very sad to read that read it, right? And and when you add hope, right. Right. Yeah. And when you add hope, that’s anchors that create tensions for you to read the next chapter. You know, it it i invites you to write. Interesting. so what what kind of disciplines do you think it needs to build a a novel, right?
Alex Treiner (23:19) Yeah, it becomes a present. mean, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
You know, I’ve heard people say, I have to every day to write something, I have to do… It wasn’t like that for me. know, discipline only actually came after I’ve conquered writing. Like to begin with, I’m not a writer, I never took any writing or creative writing classes or anything like that. You know, I just, when I conceived the book, I was looking for a ghost writer.
And I actually interviewed several ghost writers. I picked one and I thought, okay, I just need to prepare kind of a roadmap for him, kind of a bullet point list of things. just, I’ve been walking around and thinking about this for a few days. And then one day I woke up in the morning and I had first two sentences in my head. And I just came down and I started typing and I didn’t stop before I had two full chapters written.
And it’s just, you the story was so interesting that it just took me on a ride. So I felt like, you know, the story was a horse and I was sitting in the carriage and this horse was just pulling me. So like I was just pulled into this, to be honest, right? So I didn’t have to employ any discipline.
Federico Ramallo (24:32) Wow.
Yeah.
Alex Treiner (24:51) Moreover, I will tell you this, you know, because, yeah, of course, obviously, I decided not to work with a ghostwriter. I’ve written the whole thing myself.
Federico Ramallo (24:59) Right.
Alex Treiner (24:59) And as I continued writing, I realized, you know, I make so many mistakes. I don’t know how to do punctuation, especially in English. I don’t know how to write dialogue and all these things, right? Of course, you know, I am an avid reader and I’ve read a lot of books and I use some of them, the best ones, to my taste as an inspiration. But I thought that, you know, if I pause now and I start researching how to do this and how to do that, I will never finish this.
this
book. So I basically put my entrepreneurial hat on and I said you know it’s like in the startup it’s scary you know some half of time you don’t know what you’re doing but you just gotta push it and so I basically didn’t stop until I’ve written the whole thing.
And so this is kind of the most important piece of advice that they can give, right? Is don’t stop. It doesn’t matter if you’re, you know, it’s like in a startup, you know, it’s important to put the product on the market. I don’t remember if one of really well-respected entrepreneurs said that if you put your products out there, you if you launch your product and it doesn’t have bugs,
You’ve you’ve you dwelled on it for too long. It needs to be Imperfect. So my book when I finished it, it was very imperfect. I actually saw it it was too long. It has hundred and sixty five thousand words When I went to charge GPT and I asked like what’s supposed to be the you know, I said between 80 to 100 thousand words
So I had to work really hard to shrink and to remove stuff and then I ended up doing seven rounds of edits. So editing actually took three times as long as writing for me.
Federico Ramallo (26:51) wow. Right. The go ahead.
Alex Treiner (26:52) Yeah, so the only
discipline that I get to answer your question, the only discipline is don’t stop. But I didn’t force myself to write because you have to have this pull to feel this kind of inspiration, right? Sometimes I just trick myself. even when I do stuff like when I go to the gym, right? I don’t force myself.
I trick myself, I say to myself, I just imagine myself, I’m in gym now and I’m so enjoying how my blood is flowing through my veins and my muscles and how I feel strong and all that. And that’s how I pull myself in. With the writing it’s the same thing. I imagine if I have zero in my head, no imagination, no inspiration, I start imagining how I enjoyed yesterday when I was writing and when the words came out right and when the sentences came together and the…
there
was a great flow and I just imagined it said, okay, I gotta go, I gotta go to my laptop. So that’s how I tricked myself into working hard, not by willpower, but by treating myself into understanding that I’m gonna enjoy it, right?
Federico Ramallo (28:01) Right, right. Because if it’s a drug then, you know i i even if you can have f some willpower but eventually y you’re going to drop, right? It’s what’s the point, right? Yeah. But if you if you come excited then it’s you know, easy going, right? Yeah. I I I I I I told you we just just published my my my first first book, which is the Spanish thank you. Thank you, thank you. I I mean I’m still
Alex Treiner (28:10) Exactly, you run out of it.
Yeah.
And again, congratulations on the record. I’m putting my congratulations on the record for you.
Federico Ramallo (28:29) excited and I d I don’t believe it because I don’t have the physical book, right? Like you you’re showing your your book. I I still don’t cannot you know believe it myself, right? So I’m I’m super excited about that. and the and and one of the things that I had to work with is you know, don’t try to be perfect. You know, I’m a perfectionist, so I want to be everything perfect. And that
that that can become overwhelming, right? And you have to accept it’s going to be imperfect. Go work on it. And then you can improve it. Right. Yeah. and so that that that that first book w today I talk I talked with my co author and he asked me for for small changes. Even though we really like review it multiple times everything, all the details, there’s always something, you know, a little touch to add. So yeah, it’s it’s hard. and
Alex Treiner (29:03) Yeah, exactly.
Federico Ramallo (29:23) When I was learning at school about technical drawing, they taught us about how to connect two lines. Probably you know already this, but you know, if you if you try to connect two lines and you try to connect them exactly at the point, it’s not going to look good. So you have to finish right a little bit before getting to the point, right? now if you want to touch it, you’re going to mess it up, right? So, you know.
It’s a delicate balance of going right to the point and just right before it, lift up the pen. And that’s going to be the best result ever, right? if you want to, you know, draw it over it and i you’re going to mess it up. So don’t do that, right?
Alex Treiner (29:54) Yeah, just… Yeah.
Yeah, there’s
an expression, I think like perfect is an enemy of good or something. I don’t remember what the expression is exactly, but I mean there’s plenty of… yeah, yeah. Perfractionism is not a good quality.
Federico Ramallo (30:11) Right.
so so so that that’s the the the one thing that happened to me. The other one is, as you said, is getting started. Once you get started, you know, the flow flow happens, right? And and and then you you add more, right? I I for so this book it’s open the valve, it’s about creativity. I did the Spanish version, abre la válvula and and it’s thirty five thousand words, right? Then my book about engineering manag management, it’s
fifty three thousand words, something like that, is little bit more. because it has more stories and things like that. and then because I was so excited, I I kind of put together another book that is 127,000 words, right? which is about the story of Argentina, you know, I’m I’m trying to teach my son about about Argentina story, you know, and and and what happened there and
what’s country about and the culture, right? So I put together such a big and long book, right? And I realize and as you said, you know, i i it’s eventually you have to like decide what to leave out of the book and that becomes much more difficult than the actual you know, once you figure out how to start writing, getting things out becomes it’s so so hard. Yeah.
Alex Treiner (31:24) Yeah, you know how I dealt with it?
I basically, exactly, you know, so I had to go from 165,000 words to 95, right? So like 40 % I’ve removed. Some of them was just fluff, of course, but some of it, like really, I took the several entire chapters and I removed them. And I was hardworking, of course, but then I realized, you know what, I’m gonna write my next book and this will become a, so I created a parking lot for my next book and I said, I’m not throwing it away, I’m just moving it
my next book. And that’s how I coped with it.
Federico Ramallo (32:01) Right. Right. I mean at least that that’s a trick for our mind to to say, okay, it’s going to go somewhere, right? and then that also gives you an excuse to start working on the next book, right? So it’s you know it it’s tricking ourselves towards towards the goal, right? Amazing, amazing. And you know, the the book describes ethics, loyalty, endurance.
Alex Treiner (32:12) Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (32:24) insanity being tested, right? Without spoiling the story, right? what kind of pressure does an engineer actually felt inside a billion dollar raise like that?
Alex Treiner (32:34) So there’s several layers of pressures, right? But the biggest one is basically it’s about not letting down, not disappointing your teammates at work and your family at home. And why family is because, you know, my specific situation was that I was on H1B visa, which is employee sponsored visa. So the story is back in early 2000s, back then there was no grace period, right? So today, like I think since 2015,
US if you lose your job, if you are on H1B business and you lose your job, you have three months to find another job and transfer the sponsorship. And if you don’t, you have to go home. But back then there was no grace period.
So basically you have like just a couple of weeks to pack your stuff and leave the country. And losing my job was the biggest fear. Not because, you know, not because like money thing, whatever, you know, like it’s not like I’m, you we’re not poor people, right? know.
My wife is a high school math teacher, was back in Israel. In US she didn’t work. But you know, if we went back to Israel, it’s not like coming back to North Korea or Syria where they will kill you, right, or torture you. It’s okay, but it’s just a huge disappointment. You you disappoint yourself, you disappoint your family, right? It’s an American dream. So these are the biggest, biggest kind of pressures overall, right?
Then also there is a pressure of time, you know, have your boss, your boss always asks you, like, how long is it gonna take? And I, even in the book I explain that, you know, like, troubleshooting is like when you, you know, when you’re on a small boat and you row, right? And you’re in an open ocean. Like, you…
All you can see around you is the horizon. So you’re trying to get to a land, to a dry land, but you don’t know where it is. And you don’t even know if you’re moving in the right direction. So you just keep rowing, right? You think that you’re in the right direction. You try to look at the birds, at the stars, at the sun, you know, whatever you can, right? At the compass, if you have one. And you think that you’re moving in the right direction, but you might not even be moving in right… You may be going in the wrong direction. Who knows? You may be going in…
Federico Ramallo (34:47) Yeah.
Alex Treiner (34:49) That’s what troubleshooting is all about. And then your boss is asking you like, okay, so you have to get to dry land, which you know where it is, how far it is, and even if you’re getting closer to it or getting farther away. Now you have to tell me when you land on the dry land, when you make your landing. So that’s another stressor. So there’s plenty of those, unfortunately.
Federico Ramallo (35:11) Right. It’s it’s I I like the analogy and y you’re completely right. But I mean in retrospect it’s it’s easy to to see the mistakes you made through through through the journey. But you know, when you are right there you don’t know you know how far or how close you are. I I I don’t know if you’re familiar with the the rugby players that were on a plane and crash landed on on a mountain.
between Argentina and Chile, right? And you know, they they they they were very close to one of the cities, you know, but you don’t know because you know you have no sense of direction there, right? and they could have walked to the city but they didn’t know they were so close. They didn’t know which direction they should go, right? So and there’s there’s a lot of stories like that in that story and many other survivors stories.
Alex Treiner (35:35) Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, of course.
Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (36:02) that are the same, you know, so close but but so far, right? And I think that when you’re when we’re troubleshooting, all we can do is trust the process, right? And then you know eat the pressure for for solving it because if you try to skip the process, then you’re going to make mistakes, right?
Alex Treiner (36:06) Yeah.
One of the characters in my book, he is a Vietnamese guy. He says this phrase, sometimes very close and very far is the same thing.
Federico Ramallo (36:32) Right.
Alex Treiner (36:33) It’s really deep, know,
in Asia, like Asia is kind of younger than, know, genetically we know that they’re younger population, right? But they have so much wisdom, know, like civilization-wise, their civilizations are older, right? Chinese civilization is 5,000 years old. And so when this Vietnamese guy speaks to me, I feel like his ancestors are speaking through him to me, you know, and I listen to this wisdom.
Federico Ramallo (36:59) Right, right. It’s it it sounds ominous when when he speaks, right? Interesting. a and you’re also developing the story on the book as a T V drama series, right? why is it why do you think is a screen the right home for this story?
Alex Treiner (37:04) Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So it’s really simple, there’s just one phrase, right? I mean, this is a story that, this is such an amazing story, I want as many people as possible to know this story.
And the way to do it, we know people don’t read books anymore as much, don’t even listen to audiobooks as much, so putting the story on the screen is the best way to go about it. So that’s the number one reason, because I want the story to be known. This story actually is such an extraordinary, it deserves to be told to many people. The second reason is, I’ve realized, so the book actually ends, the events in the book, end
in mid 2003. But Illumina since then, you know, went through many amazing things. This actually book stopped before Illumina got into sequencing. So I wanted to become a biographer of Illumina and I wanted to tell Illumina’s story in an engaging way on the screen as a fiction.
Right? And I spoke with some people already at Illumina. They like this idea, you know, former Illumina people. They love this idea and that’s why we’re going to do it. So not only I want to tell the story that is in the book, but I want to tell the story which is way beyond the book. So I stayed at Illumina for another seven years, you know, until 2010. But even since then, there was so much drama, know, Illumina got into sequencing, you know, Illumina had
very fierce competitors. She overcame every single one of them. Had lawsuits against it, know, acquired companies. was a CEO change, you know, there was a, like, you know, not the current CEO, but the CEO, one before the current one, made an eight billion dollar mistake, billion with a B.
Federico Ramallo (39:15) wow.
Alex Treiner (39:16) Yeah, that’s the story of Grail. So all these stories would be amazing, amazing on the screen in a TV drama series. That’s why.
Federico Ramallo (39:26) Right.
Right. That’s amazing because you have so much potential to to talk about all this and I I think that I I think I I I I shared this already with you, but I I think that the world is so demoralized, right? And you know, you read the news and the you know it’s so so you know so everything is so negative that I think it’s important to share this type of stories of you know, because when when you see people
how p successful people are portrayed, you know, it’s it’s like they got there, they they they’re so super and amazing and, you know, in indestructible or whatnot, right? Which, you know, there th there could be a lot of positive you know, things about about a lot of the s the successful tech entrepreneurs and founders and you know which are great, but I think it’s important to share the stories of challenges, right? Is how many challenges they everybody has overcome to become
where they are today, right? and being able to show that so we can portray, we can transmit that hope to the next generations of you know, so when they are in those particular difficult challenges that it feels that there’s no hope, we can at least give them a glimpse of hope that, you know, things are going to be alright.
Alex Treiner (40:38) Yeah.
Yeah, so many people were in those situations before you and so many people succeeded that you should believe in your own success. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (40:46) Right, right. Yeah. I I I think that that’s become important and the impact that Illumina has i it ha ha has had on on the world I think it’s important to share that story. So I’m super excited that that you’re going to become the the you know the storyteller for Illumina.
Alex Treiner (40:56) Yeah.
Fingers crossed, I still work in progress. It’s my current entrepreneurial adventure. I’m raising money right now and all that. But I already have the most important piece is I found a Hollywood producer who is super excited. He produced both movies and TV series and his work is on HBO, on Apple TV +, CBS, NBC.
ABC and other platforms. So this guy is amazing. He loves the story. And he said that, you know, like there’s not enough story about technology sector, right, relatively to lawyers and then police detectives and doctors and all that. And specifically within the tech stories. Yeah, I mean, there’s story of Facebook, know, there’s story of this and that. And like we work, for example, Uber, you know,
fictional stories, but also within this smaller segment of stories about technology, there are almost no stories about biotech. Right? So biotech is kind of a stepchild of storytelling. And he said, you know, he’s excited about bringing this story to the screen.
Federico Ramallo (42:14) Right.
that’s amazing. Yeah. and I’m sure there are going to be a lot of interesting challenges on you know on how to portray it, right, on on the screen versus portraying it on the book, right? So that’s going to be very interesting to see how how you develop that, right?
Alex Treiner (42:36) I think screen is, to
be honest, screen is easier than a book. Yeah, mean, like, you know, sometimes you have to describe something vividly enough for people to imagine, but when you put it on screen, it’s like it’s there, right? It’s like you don’t even have to kill yourself to imagine that. So to me…
Federico Ramallo (42:40) really?
Alex Treiner (42:56) me, writing non-fiction is easier than writing fiction. And writing fiction and depicting things on the screen is easier than writing them. And speaking is easier. For example, now we’re talking to each other, right? It’s easy for us, right? But if you would want to put such a dialogue in writing, that’s more challenging. So when you go to a form that is freer than the previous, right?
Of course, in movie making or in filming there are different challenges, right? Obviously, very unique challenges. But I’m saying that just depicting some scenes is much easier on the screen, right?
Federico Ramallo (43:33) Right, right. I see what you’re what it’s what we’re talking about. Yeah. I I I I’m trying to imagine how how to convert it, that’s why I was thinking about that. Yeah. But I I understand what you’re saying. Yeah. w what are what are your next next plans with the book? You you mentioned about probably writing another book, the T V show. what what other plans are do you th you see in the future?
Alex Treiner (43:57) You for this book or beyond? For this book.
Federico Ramallo (43:59) It could be for the
book or it could be beyond, right?
Alex Treiner (44:03) Like for the book I have, you I am working now on second edition. You know, because so many people read it and they got some feedback. I already did massage. It’s very, very minor, but still. So I’m going to roll out second edition and then I’m going to make an audiobook. But not before we finish FIFA World Cup.
Federico Ramallo (44:25) Right. It’s coming.
Alex Treiner (44:24) The Mondial! We have to watch
the Mondial. Of course it’s coming, of course. I am super excited.
Federico Ramallo (44:32) Right. It’s it’s actually coming to my town as well.
Alex Treiner (44:35) Wow, are you serious?
Federico Ramallo (44:37) Yeah, yeah, I mean part of it is going to be in the US, but it if it is going to be in Mexico and in my city in Guadalajara. yeah. Actually, funny enough they they are cancelling classes for the Mundial, for the you know, for the World Cup. yeah, because you know, traffic gets gets harder, so it’s like, yeah, we’re going to cancel classes, right? Yeah.
Alex Treiner (44:41) Canada.
Smart, smart.
There will be bunch of drunk
people walking around. your kids stay at home.
Federico Ramallo (45:01) Yes.
It it’s going to yeah, it’s going to get crazy. Yeah. So what advice would you give founders or engineers, you know, that are are working on their first startups, right? or they’re they’re thinking about writing a book, right? What what advice would you give them?
Alex Treiner (45:18) So I’m going to give you a quick story how this book came to life. So I always like, like it took me 20 years to start writing. Right.
Federico Ramallo (45:21) Yes.
Alex Treiner (45:27) And the reason for that, I always knew this story is extraordinary, but I always thought of this as my own story. Because how Navy SEALs in the USA wear the tip of the spear, right? I wasn’t the tip of the spear. I was the only electrical engineer who designed everything, and the problems were only with electronics, nothing else. And, you know, I always, again, as said, my story. And, you know…
I didn’t see it as a book. I thought it’s an interesting story, but not as a book. And then one day, you know, I had coffee with a friend, a very good friend.
And he is also an electrical engineer and he also worked at Illumina at the time of this problem. And eventually he also became involved. He was working on a different project. And I, know, when we kind of parted, I’m driving home and I’m thinking, my God, wait a second, wasn’t he also involved? And it helped me to gain perspective. I pulled myself, I kind of zoomed out and I looked at this and I said, wait a second, it’s not my story, it’s Illumina’s story.
It did my family suffer. My wife, my poor wife, you know, she was listening to my, you know, electrical engineering gibberish for nine and a half months. Like she deserves her story to be told too. And so that’s how I saw it clicked, right? So with my book, you know, it has four parts, you know, first part, part one is called the American dream, which tells us it starts with a hook, of course, it was a cliffhanger, you know, how events started. And then I tell the story of my family, you know,
quickly but in an engaging way, kind of with brushstrokes, how we immigrated, know, quickly stories about our two migrations and how we ended up in the US and how I found this job at Illumina. So the second part is called the beginnings and it’s where I tell the story of Illumina, how Illumina was founded. It actually starts, you know, almost a year before Illumina was formed as a legal entity.
And it also tells a little bit, of a brushstrokes, my first year at Illumina. Only the parts relevant to the story. The third part, part three is called the investigation, which is self-obvious, right? I mean, like about those nine and a half months. But not only about the investigation, of course, there are some things about the Illumina business and how we went on vacation and stuff like that. And the last part, part four is called the aftermath, which is kind of self-explanatory, right? Which basically taking in hindsight,
looking at all this process from knowing what actually causes all these problems.
So that’s how kind of a book is built. So my advice now to kind of the punchline of what I just told, I just gave you the story behind the story, right? How this book came to life. Again, how I just gained a different perspective. I zoomed out and I looked at the big picture and I realized that there was missing pieces. And once these pieces came together, that was a book. Same thing often happens with startups, right?
you normally, you basically start gaining tunnel vision.
And typically tunnel vision is a negative expression, right? Because it means that you don’t see your surroundings. Well, tunnel vision is a feature, it’s not a bug. It’s a feature of human brain to focus on what’s important. Without tunnel vision, we would be distracted at all times. However, once in a while, especially if you’re a startup founder, you have to pull yourself out of this tunnel, look at the big picture, and even ask yourself, am I still going in the right direction?
Federico Ramallo (48:42) Right.
Alex Treiner (48:59) I was sitting in this tunnel, in a proverbial tunnel, right? What happened with the world? Maybe within those two weeks, I had a sprint, two-week sprint, right? Maybe there’s new companies came out, maybe there was an announcement that we see invested into somebody and all that, right? So it’s really, really important to keep once in a while, kind of get up for air and look at a big picture and make sure that the world is, you’re moving in the right direction.
in the world that is changing. So that’s kind of my biggest advice. If you want to write a book,
My biggest advice, you know, don’t be afraid and never stop. know, don’t do… Don’t… During the writing, don’t do things that you can do later during editing, right? Make all the possible mistakes. Who cares? The first draft, nobody cares, right? It’s all… It’s just for your own eyes. So, gain momentum, start writing and don’t stop until you finish your first draft. And then you can relax, you can go back and reread it, know, edit it.
You edit it yourself, edit it with AI and so on and so forth. And lastly, about writing, to me, writing style is incredibly important. I would say, when you watch a movie, for example, if the movie is on maybe even a boring topic, a boring subject, but it’s well made,
it’s still very engaging and it’s fun to watch. And sometimes it could be a movie about extraordinary stuff, like Navy special forces operation, battle, guns. But if it’s not done well, you can’t even watch it. Same thing goes about books. It must be written well, in an engaging way. And so my advice for this, again, I’m a first-time author, I’m not authority at all, right? But my advice is this, this is how I see it.
The thing in this is the rhythm, is the flow. And the rhythm is typically defined by the first sentence or first two sentences of your chapter.
So you have to start it right. And if you start it wrong, if it doesn’t feel right to you, just stop there, know, scrub them and start anew. Right? Because it’s like, you know, it’s like when you cross country skiing in the deep snow and you don’t have trucks, you’re just the first one, right? If you go in the wrong direction, it’s very hard to push back because of the deep snow. Same thing with if you start it off wrong, or just slightly off, it’s gonna…
Federico Ramallo (51:16) Right.
Alex Treiner (51:33) take you further and further away from the right rhythm. So what you want to do is you want to scrap it, take a deep breath.
you know, maybe few ones and basically kind of form this first sentence that will take, will have the kind of right to written and will take you in the right direction. That’s what I discovered for myself. Again, I am humbly, I’m a first time author. You know, I’m not a celebrity, you know, I’m not a New York Times bestseller. So take it with a grain of salt.
Federico Ramallo (52:03) Right, right. Yeah, I think it’s important your your experience becomes important because we are you know once you do your first book it’s easier to do the second and the third and you know, you you keep going from there. So I think that, you know, your important becomes your your experience bec is much more relevant and important. Yeah.
Alex Treiner (52:20) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (52:22) Alex, thank you very much for joining us today. Truly appreciate it. And I’m looking forward to see Sherlock on on the T V soon.
Alex Treiner (52:30) Thank you so much, Federico. I really am grateful to you for your great questions, for your engaging conversation, and I hope everybody will enjoy the book. And if somebody wants me to sign the book for them, I hope you can post my email address, people can email to me, and I will email them a book plate. Signed with my hand.
Federico Ramallo (52:47) Great. Yeah, and we’ll we’ll put the
the link, the description in the description of this episode we’re going to put the the link of the book so people can can go and get it. Okay. Great. Alex, thank you very much.
Alex Treiner (52:56) Thank so much. Bye.