Sci-Founder Fellowship: Helping scientists to start companies
sci-founder.com
sci-founder.com
Q: How much equity does Sci-Founder take in my company?
A: There are two funding options we offer:
$250,000 for 10% equity
$400,000 for 15% equityThere are other for-profit fellowship programs that have popped up too recently -- for example, the South Park Commons Founder Fellowship.
No need for a PhD.
If you want to be upfront, don't call it a fellowship. That word has a specific meaning, especially for scientists. It comes with a stipend and is attached to a research institution, neither of which is the case here.
But $400,000 is a lot of money so the confidence has to be there for all, that they will actually make enough progress before the money runs out so that it's comparable to what a more mature operation would have who is worth over $2 Million at least.
Even if the new venture is still ramping up and not yet expected to have marketable products, services, or IP yet, that kind of progress needs to be there or how could further investment be justified.
Basically it can be just one or two top performers actually capable of accomplishing a couple million worth of work, or building something that would otherwise cost almost $3 Million if given this type of opportunity.
OTOH you could get 10 to 20 contributors who each work with lesser resources but could still build equal momentum over a respectable runway.
If either of these or anything in between is built for $400,000 that's a good start for all.
In my field I could dispatch a calibration crew from a single reference instrument, or arrange with a preferred client to maintain theirs as a reference instrument and go labless.
Too bad Theranos ended up taking massive funding instead of you less-well-connected biotech entrepreneurs, so much real progresss could have been deployed instead.
Aren't these businesses generally extremely capitol intensive - expensive equipment, PhD's, etc.
That said if you need more money than what we are offering at the start, our first thing to do will be to help you figure out a greater fundraising process.
Edit: Perhaps it wasn't intentional, but it will have a bait-and-switch feel for scientists in academia.
Words can have multiple meanings; sometimes troublesome ones (i.e. 'tabling' an item on the agenda).
If you take a fellowship to start a company and then spin that company off from a university, you've gotta be careful to choose the right uni and structure the work appropriately. Some universities will take pretty big stakes when they can.
Calling this a fellowship is a bit confusing, but I'm not sure it's anything more nefarious than perhaps simply misleading/confusing. At least they're up front with the fact that they'll take a 10% stake. Many universities that will try to take a pretty similar stake aren't so up-front.
We're optimizing how we run things to build a community of scientists over maximizing our financial returns. We care most about about inspiring scientists to pursue translational research with greater resources and team coordination than they may find in a more traditional pathway.
Learn about how scientists actually work and meet them--don't twist the jargon around to suit your marketing needs.
Also, in science there are federal grants, such as SBIR, which can be for even more (1M), are non-dilutive, and are very gettable.
So this would really be a fall back if you couldn't raise a better round nor get an SBIR...and if those are both the case, it might not be much of a company.
Yeah, this was my initial reaction: but tech transfer $$ is stupid easy to get, especially as a follow-up to a previously funded grant.... who's the market?
Not that I really care, since it's not my money and I'm far from an expert on such things, but "SBIRs and University innovation offices with preferential terms get all the good ideas and leave us with the bottom barrel shit" seems like a pretty big source of risk for this fellowship :/
I'm guessing the network provided by this program is way more effective than what you'd get from a typical university's innovation/tech transfer office, so maybe I'm wrong. But in some sense my evaluation of this program would be that I'm trading a decent sized chunk of the company for access to investors and advisors. Which, I guess, isn't necessarily a bad trade. But I figure this is how most people with access to grant money will think about it.
We like to think that our program isn't just about the funding on our end but also the mentorship, and there's value to that too (as we've been building our life science startups, we've found there aren't many traditional investors that have built their own life science companies and know the ins and outs of the experience).
Generally speaking, we don't want to be setting custom arrangements for everyone because we think it's super important that people think of each other as peers and that we aren't treating some people better than others.
Solo founders are fine with us.
My first job, was at an agency, that was created because a charity was stealing so much and doing so little, so they created their own agency cause most of the money was going advertising/stealing instead of doing actual work.
We need more Bill Gates who use their wealth and influence to do things eradicate Polio, reduce infant mortality in the third world, and get to basic sanitation to the half of the world's population that doesn't have it.
Happy to answer any questions that pop up!
For those downplaying it, remember, an SBIR application is quite onerous and the reporting requirements and non-negligible. It takes a while to get a response (though this is improving), the approval rate is low 15-20% when I applied), and the funding often is less than this (NSF SBIR is ~250K right now.
Yes, giving up equity is hard. Also personally, it seems like science translation occurs on SO much longer timescales that one year might be short to see significant progress.
I might have considered this when starting my company (www.zerok.com)
Also is there a requirement that you have to have a PHD or would you also consider BS holders?
No hard degree requirements.