Breaking New Snow — Our Partnership with System1 Biosciences
As anyone who knows him can attest, Maynard draws upon a deep reservoir of expressions that sound simple but convey a lot of wisdom. He often says that it is important to always be “breaking new snow.” Personally, I have taken these words to heart and have tried to find new ways to expand my horizons.
For VCs, one of the most obvious ways to chart a new course is to invest in a new space. This path can be fraught with danger, as expertise and relationships do not always translate across markets. WIN has traditionally been very focused on spaces that we and our Affiliates know well, and as a result we have spent the last eight years investing heavily in cloud, infrastructure, enterprise software and marketplaces.
However, every once in while we come across a wormhole that enables us to tunnel into a new market. More often than not, this portal is created by a founder who we would follow anywhere. In the case of System1, this leader is Frederic Kerrest. Frederic will forever be in the WIN Hall of Fame for co-founding Okta. When he told us that he was helping a new company and joining its board, we jumped at the chance to work with him and his team. We also used the introduction from Frederic as an opportunity to dive into a market and immerse ourselves in primary research. It has been gratifying to learn how many first and second degree connections in our network have expertise in far-flung technologies and industries and are willing to roll up their sleeves and help.
System1 was co-founded by Sean Escola and Saul Kato, who became friends while working in Neuroscience at Columbia University. We could not be more excited to partner with them as they build a platform to radically redefine how researchers and scientists understand the brain using organoids and automation. WIN invested in System1’s seed round as well as its recently announced Series A led by CRV and Pfizer.
We may not be able to help System1 navigate their technology and market as we aspire to do for companies in our traditional focus areas. However, we believe that the kind of leadership and management coaching that we celebrate at WIN are equally applicable to new spaces (after all, companies are all about people in the end). And we’ve also learned that our Affiliates are interested in, and have insight into, new spaces and markets. Now comes the fun part of digging in, helping where we can, and learning as much about this new space as possible.
More about System1: Using stem cell lines derived from patients with brain disease, System1 produces cerebral organoids, which are three-dimensional in vitro systems that allow researchers to identify potential drug compounds that are more likely to be clinically efficacious compared to those found using standard methods. System1 uses robotic automation to develop its organoids, permitting the collection of a massively scaled, high-content dataset across multiple modes of biological measurement over many months and under many conditions. Advanced data analysis applied to the resulting data streams yield systems-level characterizations of disease never before achievable. These characterizations, or “deep phenotypes,” are exploited to identify novel therapeutic targets and drug treatments for complex neurological and psychiatric diseases.
