Craig Venter says that he has been "successful in is finding alternate ways to fund research," in the New York Times. A venture capitalist friend, Alan Walton, adds that "Craig is just a hopeless businessman." Venter began Synthetic Genomics as a way to fund his research in synthetic biology, and his work there has garnered attention — Venter notes he heard from the president and the pope on the same day after announcing the activation of a synthetic genome.