Fifty Years — The new VC that wants to save the world and make money
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I'm inclined to blame a confused journalist, but otherwise: What are these guys smoking?
This stuff is all "hard tech" by definition - by the time you have a working product in these fields, you are waaay past the seed stage. This is mostly because they are so hard - biology in particular is so difficult that entrepreneurs tend to target things that would be obviously great products if only someone could make them work. (Eg: jet fuel from algae at a competitive price: Build it and the world will batter down your door. Lab-grown meat is in the same category.)
Almost all the risk is product risk, and little-to-no market risk. An allegedly "seed stage" biotech fund that insists on a built, market-validated product just looks like they have no idea what they're talking about.
Because raising chickens (or really anything) if you only need 10% of it is insanely wasteful. Livestock is an incredibly huge waste of resources, one hamburger (1/3lb) takes 660 gallons of water.
If instead we can use synthetic meat (created in 'lab' then mass produced), we could completely cut out raising livestock, cut out livestock feed, cut out inhumane treatment of animals and at the exact same time, reduce the risk of eating animal products.
(And yes, there has been [semi-successful] research into synthetic meat. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/05/synthetic-me...)