Yes there are "bio-hacker spaces" and yes, you can outsource a lot of the more delicate methods, but we won't see software-level start-ups for biotech for several decades for three reasons.<p>1. Biology usually doesn't work. Even the simplest wet-lab reactions take very exacting conditions to work. This requires precise, expensive, equipment and endless optimization of protocols. The result is a tremendous drain on resources to get what usually amounts to a negative result<p>2. Bio is inherently perishable. You can't let a start-up project linger as you chip away at it for 3 years. Reagents expire, lab-cultures will mutate, equipment rusts/breakdowns/gets contaminated for stupid unforeseeable reasons.<p>3. There is a stupidly large legal burden if you ever want to commercialize. At every step of the process the USDA, EPA, FDA, and patent office have rules and regulations to slow you down. It might take decades to take a product from the lab to the store self, if it gets there at all.<p>Bio isn't computing. As a geneticist, I've seen it a hundred times where some start-up know-it-all walks into the biotech field and thinks its "just like software". It isn't, and never will be.