Portfolio Growth 468% Sept 2019 - April 2021*
Follow on rate: 100%
Following Funds Raised $40M
Cumulative Market Cap
From ~$10M to ~$180M
*based on a $3M initial investment value.
In the 4 years as Chief Science Officer, the team made investments in 80 companies. That portfolio was 70% funded, with 50% of the companies filling their seed rounds within 6 months of the program end. As of Q1 2020, Market Cap of the portfolio is ~ $2.2B from ~$15M deployed investment.
The goal of the IndieBio accelerator was to expand the recognized role of Biotech and the technology that had emerged from it. The portfolio discovered seven verticals in my time there. Food, Biotech IT, Fashion and consumer goods were by far the most influential.
Our most Senior investment. Known as creating vegan egg whites that are bioidentical to eggs, their intellectual property more broadly rests on creating completely novel food products by using the individual components of egg whites in novel proportions. Last year Clara closed their B round with Food Ingredients company Ingredion leading.
While the first cellular meat was created 3 years prior, Memphis Meats was the first company incorporated to commercialize. The idea quickly invited investments from Tysons and Cargill Venture funds and Bill and Melinda Gates. MM’s B round of $161M more than doubled the investment into the global 60 startup companies in Cellular Meats.
Geltor found a product market fit in cosmetics as they learned that supply chain variances in product spec for gelatin were expensive and difficult for many manufacturers. While still retaining the sampe high pricing of competitors, Geltor maintains a substantial margin by delivering consistent product with superior properties. They are using these lessons to expand back into food this year. Other product lines to follow. They just closed their $91M B round.
Led by an established Artist, Phil Ross, Mycoworks is the originator of the concept of leather grown from fungal mycelium. The team has combined technical rigor and uncompromising sense of aesthetics to produce leathers of an astounding range of colors, textures which match animal products. In 2021 Mycoworks announced their partnership with Hermès to produce a line of their Victoria handbags.
Our IT vertical was highly innovative. Catalog was a proponent of DNA as a solution to the archival problem for long term data storage. They broke 6 orders of magnitude of data and demonstrated that their costs were viable compared to conventional solutions.
IndieBio invested in 7-8 verticals and Prellis is one of the most innovative organ printing companies in the space. Rather than placing cells mechanically, they use lasers to trap cells in a 3D gel matrix. I designed a technical plan that was able to fit into the cash the company had on hand. True Ventures funded their seed round and they closed their A round within 6 months later.
The Not Company is one of the most sought after startups in plant based food. Their vegan mayonnaise was selling well in some stores, but theNotCo came to San Francisco where they attracted investors and media attention that gave them the clout to extend from their home market of Chile into Brazil and they are contemplating expansion to the US. $85M C round in Summer 2020.
OneSkin is a skincare pioneer, looking for skin regeneration ingredients for skincare. The Marin startup released their first anti-aging
Since leaving SOSV, I have advised several VC funds for market and technical diligence of their biotech investments. This and my relationships with VC worldwide have helped me maintain a perfect raise record with my advisory just a few months out.
I am currently a part-time Investor at Alix VC, a
seed biotherapeutic VC fund. I am a lecturer at Santa Clara University Levey School of Business and am creating a SynBio Studio at Laney College’s Biomanufacturing Program in Oakland, CA.
I Mentor at several accelerator programs around the world: Berkeley SkyDeck, Food Tech Studio, 10X Innovation Lab, TrepCamp SV, and Plug. and Play. At Skydeck I am on the Biotech Investment Committee.
I advise and occasionally speak on the UC campus, Tufts Food and Nutrition Accelerator.
Lab-Grown Meat is Scaling Like the Internet Protein is the Killer App for Synthetic Biology Biotech Startups: A Third Way for Scientists Slaves to Nitrogen
#Diagnostics #Pharma #GeneTherapy #Therapeutics #Food #Instrumentation #Cosmetics #DesignerProteins #AnimalFeed #BioTech #PlantTech #AgTech
#BlockChain #Genomics #Microbiome #SynBio #Sequencing #Fashion
#Chile #Brasil #Taiwan #Singapore #Europe #Africa #Slovenia #SouthAfrica #Canada
#Tennesee #SiliconValley #Virginia #NewYork
