Sandwalk BioVentures, the strategy firm specialized on microbiome technologies, has announced its collaboration with General Inception, a US-based venture studio focused on co-founding and building science-based companies from concept on. Sandwalk will lead the Microbiome Practice Area within General Inception and will work on the identification of early-stage, high-potential microbiome technologies in different application areas. Both companies will financially and strategically support inventors in the translational work required to take them to the next level.
General Inception was founded by Paul Conley, a serial entrepreneur and experienced biotech investor, and Vikram Chaudhery, a seasoned biotech executive and investor, with the objective of providing promising emerging technologies with all the resources to turn them into successful companies.
“Throughout our career, Vikram and myself experienced first-hand why some companies are successful and why some others are not. We identified that access to resources (financial and otherwise) for early proof of concept, capital efficiency, product development capabilities and connectivity with crucial partners and venture capital firms were amongst the main ones. So, we decided to create an “institutional co-founder” (rather than a fund) to help ideas become successful companies. General Inception is about repeating this process over and over”, said Paul Conley.
Luis Gosálbez, Managing Director at Sandwalk and Microbiome Lead at General Inception commented:
“We will spend the next few months looking for exciting, early-stage microbiome technologies and IP in several application areas like therapeutics, diagnostics, agriculture and animal health from the main microbiome research groups around the world. However, we are not limited to these areas and we also welcome ideas from any group, especially young researchers willing to take the entrepreneurship step. Plus, Microbiome is only one of the four Practice Areas at General Inception. Our aim is to create synergies between the different Practice Areas which include Diagnostics, Life Science Research Tools and Cell Engineering. Our goal is to co-found between 3-4 microbiome companies in 2021 already, with more to come next year. General Inception started up 7 companies outside microbiome in 2020, which was their first year of activity”.
He continued:
“We make a great team with General Inception and our capabilities are highly synergistic. Sandwalk’s knowledge about the science, the regulatory affairs and the market of microbiome technologies is very well complemented with General Inception’s experience in company formation, product and market development capabilities (including over 120 engineers and scientists) and access to capital to build companies around promising technologies. Certainly an exciting journey together”.
Interested parties may contact Sandwalk on dealflow@sandwalkbio.com.
More info at: