This is the peculiar true story of how Vulpine Labs came about, from a human perspective. Some events and many people are omitted for brevity and relevance. Otherkin stories may vary.
June 2008. Daniel Davies, as a teenager living in West Yorkshire, UK, was pursuing a career in computer recycling (including a possible startup business idea called Comcycle) when (at the time he) encountered the furry fandom online. The furry fandom is a very broad group of people who are fans of anthropomorphic animal characters for any of many different reasons, and who may express that in many ways from art to music, stories or dressing up in rather hot and cumbersome fursuits. Having neither the funds nor the skills for most of those options, but wanting to contribute to the delightful furry community which felt like home, Daniel (now known as Danfox to friends) wrote a book about an enterprising young furry who figures out a way to transform a fully grown human body to have any combination of traits that they desired, from medical, to adaptations, to personalisation - even as interesting and extensive as turning oneself into one's fursona, for example an anthropomorphic red fox. Since the ideas and technologies of surgery felt too brutal and messy to Danfox, and drugs seemed inaccurate given the frequency of side effects and too likely to continue succumbing to Eroom's Law, Danfox focused on the notion of gene editing. Not gene therapy, which is a limited technology in which only certain cell types are temporarily bestowed with the intended genetic information, but rather a more advanced idea of a type of gene editing that can be applied to all cell types at once and with a permanent effect that is carried to all subsequent cell divisions.
Such an endeavour would be quite scientifically challenging, and so Danfox did some research. The more scientific papers and articles were perused and the more of the story written, the more doable the concept of a gene editing system for the whole body seemed. After moving to Dorset, UK for relationship reasons, Danfox decided to start a business that would initially be geared toward training for the unusual design-based, first-principles approach that would be needed to develop such a system, and ideally also make some funds to kickstart the scientific work. At first, this was a sole trader business called Vulpine Designs Unlimited. This took the assets of Comcycle and made them into an IT department of sorts, called Vulpine Computing, and Danfox's younger interests in LEGO toy bricks and architecture, and created a business in designing LEGO models. This work yielded a world first properly portable and battery powered LEGO laptop, and several other commissions for paying customers, as well as a plethora of example designs. Alas, this proved not to be a profit-making venture in the slightest. Nonetheless, valuable 3D model skills were gained that would contribute to the thinking required for the next stages. Indeed, the ideas for the gene editing system and how it would be built and function were flooding into Danfox's mind thick and fast in this time. They were written down in small notes in the shower, in bed, on the bus or train, and wherever else they could be.
In 2012, Danfox went back to community college to get the necessary bridging qualifications to enter university for a degree in Biochemistry (2013-16, Uni. Southampton, UK). In parallel, Danfox turned Vulpine Designs Unlimited into a scientifically focused online research group, using chat rooms and forums. Every lecture, notes were taken both for what was needed for the exams, and what was relevant and interesting for the development of the gene editing systems and the documentation of them. When Danfox spoke to the professors about plans for the gene editing system, they advised that it would be better to go into industry than continue in academia, since in academia, Danfox would not be happy due to having to do some higher ranking academic's work for them, which would most likely be a very niche project not very related to the ambitious goals Danfox was chasing.
In 2016, Danfox heard about Cathal Garvey and his amazing Dremelfuge and the Forma DIYBio lab, and visited Ireland to meet him. Cathal introduced Danfox to the Indie Bio startup accelerator, formerly SynBioXlr8r, which was run by Bill Liao et al from SOS Ventures, in Cork. Danfox was impressed by the fresh attitudes and impactful startups being supported there, and so decided after completing university to move to Cork, Ireland. No stranger to hackerspaces and makerspaces, Danfox made the DIYBio lab a home away from home, while working on the assembly of the research and ideas so far collected into something more cohesive. From this, the ideas of the GUESS Universal Editing Suite and SDK (initially with 25 modules and 427 submodules to make it easier to develop), and the Geneticiser hardware device, were now looking more explainable. Danfox tried to convince the investors and others at Indie Bio to fund his newly incorporated company, Vulpine Designs Ltd, in its work. They all faced it with doubts and lack of understanding, and said they could only invest if a much smaller 'minimum viable product' was developed. The problem with such a radical departure from the norms is there's really nothing smaller and more calmingly familiar to investors to make that makes sense as a standalone thing and doesn't cost more than the new ideas will. The nearest existing technology, CRISPR, is radically more expensive and less capable than the projected costs and capabilities of the proposed system.
Danfox tried again a year later to present the ideas to investors at the again-renamed accelerator scheme, now known as Rebel Bio, the 'moonshot accelerator' as they proudly called it. However, despite best efforts to make a more presentable business plan that singled out just one module of the GUESS for early development (INITIATOR SET), the investors still didn't get it, not least because due to the nature of the work, Danfox had decided to license it all as open source. The investors saw that the planned business model was based on support and training, and said it was still 'too much of a moonshot'. Danfox knew different, however, as the design of the system itself is very tractable, even if difficult to follow for some of the less technically inclined members of the older generations who are more accustomed to agriculture and older technologies. Ireland was clearly not the 'Carbon Valley' of biotech innovation that was promised, and by this stage even the great biohacker Cathal Garvey had given up and switched to coding tools for a company focused on data mining, for a living. With barely the funds to rent a man-and-van, Danfox returned to the UK in late 2017.
In the UK, Danfox reincorporated the company and tried to get the interest of the Scottish government, the NHS, and various local groups and hackerspaces. Unfortunately, the funding was simply not there and the prospects seemed even worse than Ireland. London was about the only place in the UK with any investment going on, but it was well out of travel reach and unaffordable to live in. Undeterred, Danfox pressed on with developing systems designs for the GUESS and Geneticiser into more readable and consistent formats of diagrams, wiki articles and papers, while gradually gathering funds to consider a move to the USA, where most of the people online who were interested in Vulpine Designs seemed to live.
In early 2018, Danfox (soon to start using they/them and shi/hir pronouns and the Otherkin name Athamanatha, or Atha for short), collaborated with four others to establish the morphological freedom advocacy and research 501(c )3 charity the Freedom of Form Foundation (FFF), and became its vice president of the board, and later Chief Compliance Officer and Chief Operating Officer, as well as being a researcher. Atha moved to the USA in early 2022, re-re-incorporating Vulpine Designs as Vulpine Labs Inc, at first in Illinois, and later in Delaware, and working with several excellent developers to make a start on actually coding software for the INITIATOR SET module of the GUESS. The roles at the FFF lasted until late 2022, when disputes over several matters (including a few specific interpersonal misunderstandings, technological priorities and Atha's technically legal but board-annoying refusal to cease making references to hir work on Vulpine Labs), led to an ultimatum to leave or be silent. Atha left the FFF and has since continued to work on Vulpine Labs as a priority.
Shortly after the ultimatum from the FFF, Atha met online with Aevum Alastor, who proceeded to provide an astounding level of assistance and overhaul significantly the designs of the GUESS and Geneticiser to be more future proof and functional for purpose. As a result, the GUESS software now comprised of 27 modules and 520 submodules. The documentation was updated, and the team explored possible hardware configurations in more detail. Aevum has done serious prior research that completely makes a fool of anyone who judges them by resume and apparent age alone, as well as founding the umbrella group Put Together, for constructive improvement of existence for all. Despite the concerted efforts of online trolls and people with discriminatory biases, Aevum is firmly a member of our team and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Vulpine Labs is now a public benefit (B corp), open source biotechnology project organisation and proudly part of Put Together, and stands to advance its efforts safely and securely for the benefit of all.
