SOSV’s IndieBio and Mayfield to Partner on Genesis Consortium for Life Sciences
Firms to invest $400 million in seed and early-stage funding over the next four years to propel the next tech revolution
Original press release published at prnewswire.com
San Francisco — 15 July 2020 — In a move reflecting the shifting landscape of technology investing, SOSV and Mayfield are jointly doubling down on a commitment to early-stage life science startups. The effort, which they dub the “Genesis Consortium”, will provide a strong foundation for life science entrepreneurs, the early stage venture ecosystem, and society at large.
A key goal of the Genesis Consortium is to enable a greater range of VCs and corporates to be more active in investing in the future of human and planetary health. While the arrangement creates strong ties and shared relationships between the two founding firms, the initiative is geared to creating healthy ecosystems, and is not an exclusive arrangement. Others committed to life science investing are invited to join the Genesis Consortium.
“People accuse VCs of being heartless capitalists,” said Sean O’Sullivan, SOSV Managing General Partner. “In fact, to shepherd in a brighter future requires an immense network of educated and passionate financiers to fund and guide the next generation, the three hundred startups that will sustainably and abundantly provide a better quality of life for everyone on this planet.”
Both SOSV and Mayfield are committed to the sustainability of our planet and the improvement of healthcare for all. To that effect, the firms, in their regular course of business over the next five years, expect to invest over $400M of their own funds into companies that are engineering biology, with the majority of those funds going into startups at Series A and beyond.
“We are at an inflection point in human and planetary evolution which calls for a conscious capital approach to investing — one where we fulfill our moral obligation to partner with entrepreneurs who will help build business for better, not just business as usual,” said Navin Chaddha, Managing Director of Mayfield.
Life Sciences “the driving force for the 21st Century”
“We have a moral obligation to leave the world in a better place than we’ve found it, and for the last several decades, the human race has been neglecting this objective,” said Po Bronson, IndieBio Managing Director. “At SOSV, we always have been reliant on later stage investors to help bring these startups to a wider audience and to a broader market. We hope other later stage investors will join Mayfield in helping bring more of these spectacular startups progress further, and faster.”
The Genesis Consortium to focus on pre-seed startups
One aspect of the Genesis consortium commits to funding pools of IndieBio startups that go through the rigorous IndieBio program. Currently, SOSV’s IndieBio program is amongst the world’s most richly-funded startup accelerator programs, funding $250k to each of 50 startups annually.
Starting in 2021, SOSV and Genesis Consortium investors will look to provide up to $500k to each IndieBio startup, further lengthening the runway of deep-tech startups, and further de-risking the startups for later stage investment.
“IndieBio has consistently demonstrated that we transform very early stage startups, growing them into world-class technologies and industry-leading companies,” said Po Bronson, IndieBio Managing Director. “At the pre-seed stage, small investments make a huge difference. Genesis will help startups have enough runway to reach clear milestones that merit seed funding from the rest of the venture industry.”
The Genesis Consortium will also put together monthly, quarterly, and annual physical and virtual events in life sciences investing, with a dinner series focused on relevant and emerging topics of life science breakthroughs; with tech talks and seminars on a frequent basis both at the IndieBio event center in San Francisco and a new IndieBio center opening in New York; and with an annual corporate engagement conference for later-stage investors and corporates.
SOSV, the most active life sciences investor
Just five years old, IndieBio is growing rapidly. In January 2020, SOSV launched IndieBio New York, with support from the state of New York, which, combined with San Francisco, will bring 50 new startups per year through the IndieBio programs. In the past 12 months, the SOSV portfolio of alumni life science companies has doubled in value to $3.2 billion, while raising more than $500 million in post-seed financing.
New roles at Mayfield and SOSV
Arvind Gupta, GP of SOSV’s IndieBio, will be transitioning to a Venture Advisor role at SOSV, splitting his time between accelerator activities and the Genesis Consortium, and beginning a role at Mayfield as Partner effective immediately. Gupta will also continue to be involved in SOSV’s IndieBio New York program, where he will advise on the selection of new IndieBio startups and will mentor startups until December 2022.
IndieBio now has 6 Investment Partners. SOSV’s IndieBio SF team will be led by Po Bronson, who has been elevated to an SOSV General Partner and Managing Director of IndieBio. Partner Jun Axup has been named Chief Scientific Officer. Partner Alex Kopelyan is now Senior Director. And Pae Wu, previously with Alpha, USONR and DARPA, has recently been added to the SF team as Partner and CTO.
In New York, Stephen Chambers joined IndieBio as Managing Director, and Partner Rodrigo Mallo Leiva moved over from SOSV’s London operations.
About Mayfield
Mayfield is a venture capital firm with a people-first philosophy and $2.5 billion under management. Mayfield invests primarily in early-stage consumer, enterprise and engineering biology companies. Since its founding 50 years ago, the firm has invested in more than 500 companies, resulting in 117 IPOs and more than 200 acquisitions. Some notable investments in recent years include CloudSimple, Elastica, Grove Collaborative, HashiCorp, Lyft, Mammoth Biosciences, Marketo, Moat, Outreach, Poshmark, Rancher, ServiceMax and SolarCity. For more information, go to https://www.mayfield.com or follow @MayfieldFund.
About SOSV
SOSV is a global venture fund with $750M under management that runs deep tech accelerator programs around the world, including HAX in Shenzhen, Chinaccelerator in Shanghai, MOX in Taipei, Food-X in New York, and IndieBio in San Francisco and New York. SOSV is also the third-most active investor in early stage startups in India.
SOSV has backed nearly 200 early stage companies that use biology as the enabling technology to solve problems. By June 2020, the top 10 of those companies had raised a total of over $700m and had a combined valuation of over $3 billion. With its focus on deep-tech startups, SOSV has helped launch new industries in life sciences. These include notable cellular agriculture startups (Memphis Meats, Perfect Day, Geltor); breakthrough therapeutics and diagnostic companies involved in advances against cancer, auto-immune diseases and autism (Synthex, Serenity, BioRosa); and regenerative medicine companies (Prellis Biologics, OneSkin, Membio) helping improve the quality and longevity of life.
For more information, go to https://sosv.com or follow @SOSV.
