A small venture capital firm that backs up-and-coming scientists plans to raise a $35 million second fund, three years after coming onto the scene.
SciFounders, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is seeking its second fund, according to an SEC document filed Thursday. The fund declined to comment on the filing and the proposed raise, which has yet to mark its first sale.
Lucas HarringtonSciFounders emerged in January 2021 with $6 million, according to TechCrunch, to help scientist founders lead their own startups. The fund is led by several entrepreneurs who have co-founded their own companies. This includes Mammoth Biosciences chief scientific officer Lucas Harrington and Conception CEO Matt Krisiloff. Former Genentech researcher Alexander Schubert is also a leader of SciFounders.
“We think it would be great longer-term for scientists to say, ‘We’re first-class citizens in charge of everything,’ as is often the case in the software world, where you have the Collison brothers in charge of Stripe, or the Airbnb founders in charge of their company,” Krisiloff told TechCrunch in 2021. “We want to make sure that happens more widely for scientist founders, as well.”
Matt KrisiloffOn its website, the fund says it typically backs early-stage companies and takes about a 10% stake for pre-seed and seed-stage investments.
Its portfolio includes Deliver Biosciences, which is working on delivery particles for cell and gene therapies; Symphony Biosciences, a Los Angeles upstart creating sponge-like devices for treating solid tumors; and Fletcher Biosciences, a Cambridge, MA-based startup developing protein therapies for T cells.
Other biotech VC firms like Curie.Bio, which operates under the motto “Free the Founders,” have also placed an emphasis on supporting scientific founders in recent years. Curie has said it invests about $5 million to $7 million in seed rounds, and its drug discovery counterpart gets about a 7% stake in exchange for its services.