Alex Kopelyan_E33: The Inevitable Future [8/1/2021]

posi2ive

Published in

posi2ive

3 min readAug 1, 2021

EPISODE33: The Inevitable Future

Alex Kopelyan, Partner at IndieBio w/SOSV in San Francisco [8/1/2021]

https://anchor.fm/posi2ive/episodes/Alex-Kopelyan_E33-The-Inevitable-Future-08012021-e15ado6

Note: References with links are listed at the end of the show notes.

SECTION1: From the Farm

1:00 Shares more about his origin story, starting in Clinical Pharmacy and growing up in Iowa. And shares his family’s story immigrating with a couple suitcases and two kids. Provides a perspective about freedom and opportunity many immigrant families pursue. Talks about his father’s background as a Petroleum Engineer and his mother’s career in Nursing. Found his interest in medicine through people in the field while studying in his undergrad in Health Sciences.

8:00 Shares the mission and focus of IndieBio — a program based acceleraot within SOSV. Discusses their focus on human and planetary health, and funding Scientific Entrepreneurs. On the human health side: Genomics, Therapeutics, Diagnostics, Telemedicine. On the planetary health side: Industrial Biology, Chemistry, Biomaterials. They focus on funding startups coming out of universities primarily. He sees Scientific Founders as an overlooked group, and they aim to empower these Founders.

12:00 We discuss the safety of the startups they fund, and how they tie back into the mission of the fund. They don’t see themselves as impact investors, per se, but they see their opportunities aligned with the inevitable future. Talks about the origins of SOSV and Sean O’Sullivan as the Founder. They are on their 4th fund, a $277M fund.

SECTION2: Bridge to Science

16:00 We talk about basic science and transitional science. Talks about some PhDs are getting grants within the lab, and small businesses. Shares about the growth of non-profit accelerators with labs or corporate partners with mentorship. Talks about the 4.5 month long accelerator program. And highlights how they support Founders post accelerator.

22:00 Shares story about The Not Co — and how they are making a versatile plant based alternative to milk. Shares his passion for Food and Agriculture in Sustainable Agriculture, and talks about the company Bee Flow. Talks about the first and second order consequences of the technologies they back, and how IndieBio looks at health risk. Shares the multistage process of building trust with Founders, and the risks they mitigate together.

SECTION3: SOSV

36:00 We discuss the market sizes of Scientific Tech TAMs, and how they affect decision making with more R&D heavy tech. Alex shares his idea about pro-partnership approach to scaling, and how this can create a strategic advantage. He highlights the differences among industries. We break out into climate opportunities, and their early thesis and see future opportunities in cement, industrial chemicals, and construction materials.

SOURCES:

-Alex Kopelyan [LinkedIn]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-kopelyan-66b16726/

-SOSV: https://sosv.com/

-IndieBio: https://indiebio.co/

-China Accelerator: https://chinaccelerator.com/

-Hax Hardware Accelerator: https://hax.co/

-Clara Foods: https://www.clarafoods.com/

-Upside Foods: https://www.upsidefoods.com/

-Perfect Day: https://perfectdayfoods.com/

-Finless Foods: https://finlessfoods.com/

-The Not Co: https://notco.com/us/

-Bee Flow: https://www.beeflow.com/