Mac Cowell cofounded DIYbio and Cofactor Bio in 2011.  DIYbio is an open-ended community that promotes the democratization of biotechnology, comprised today of thousands of self-identified participants worldwide and about a dozen community labs.  Cofactor Bio is a small bay-area startup focused on building tools and services that simplify molecular biology and synthetic biology tool-chains, bringing the technologies to a wider and less-traditional community of users, including agile new businesses.  Cofactor’s first product, GENELASER, is an affordable kit that includes the entire reagent and equipment tool-chain needed to extract and amplify fragments of genomic DNA, with DNA sequencing included as a mail-order service.  GENELASER lets anyone read DNA for about the price of a t-shirt.