The Blossoming of our Bioscience Focus
Throughout time, science has responded to medical challenges with blunt instruments. Does this treatment work for some? Give it to everyone! This drug may help, or it may hurt. Let’s play the odds! The side effects are horrible, but death is worse. Let’s embrace the lesser evil!
We, of course, feel differently. Considering that our thesis centers around individual, personal experience, rather than today’s one-size-fits-all medical industrial complex, Bioscience startups are a major area of interest for us.
When defining bioscience as a primary focus area in 2018, we said that we would focus on bio-based technologies that “empower an individual’s capacity to impact his or her own health, as well products that directly increase joy, fulfillment, and independence for the individual customer.”
At this time, based on the performance of our prior investments (and the state of the world), we proposed we would focus on:
- Consumer Oriented Diagnostics, e.g., tech that shows the state of personal biology and what to do to optimize it or ameliorate any problems (like our portfolio companies SingularityAI and AOA).
- Genetics and Genomics services, e.g., gene testing and response provided by employers, insurers, and others who recognize that keeping people from getting sick is better economics than trying to beat back illness (like our portfolio company Bloom Science).
- AI in Healthcare; e.g., machine learning and neural network solutions that reveal deep insights (like our portfolio companies Feebris and Lark).
- Regenerative Medicine, e.g., technology that can heal or replace essential functionality for human bodies (like our portfolio company Bioaesthetics).
- Bio-printing. Ears are being printed already. Organs may be next! (See our portfolio company Volumetric Bio)
- VR/AR Applications in Rehabilitation and Therapy, e.g., reducing pain without opiates, generating a positive mood, or moderating a negative mood.
By the time we revisited our Bioscience focus in 2019, we had invested in over 30 bioscience companies that fit into one (or more) of these categories, all with bright and promising futures. Based on their performance, we decided to double down on investments in Neuroscience, AR/VR for the treatment of disease, Longevity, and Femtech. The emergence of the pandemic in 2020 demonstrated that people will always need drugs, diagnostics, and medical devices, and greatly accelerated the market for digital health. At the time we declared “Our investment approach to Digital Health will be all-encompassing.” We opened our arms to all forms of health technology, including:
- Chronic disease prevention primarily and treatment secondarily
- Platforms that bring care more into the hands of consumers
- Neurotech that impacts, and is controllable by, the consumer
- Mental health and mindfulness-based on science
- Novel modes for improving nutrition and fitness
- Femtech products
- Longevity/senior care outside of traditional institutional approaches
- Telehealth and at-home treatment and care
Today, healthcare innovation is more robust than ever. The word revolution gets tossed around a lot in tech, to the point where its meaning has been blunted. But this area, we feel, is the real revolutionary deal. Medicine, health care, epidemiology, and most importantly, the way we experience the interplay between our inner systems and the outside world are all being remade, with the power in that shift continuing to move forcefully to the individual.
By Managing Partner Mike Edelhart and Marketing Director Nicole Staudinger
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Related posts:
Can Delight Tech Startups Achieve Greater Success? 5 Years of Science-Based Health and Happiness Investment Strategy
Pandemic’s Labyrinth — Is Biotech the Way Out?
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Behold: the Emerging Era of Consumable Mood
