Another incubator is ready to test Y Combinator’s theory that it is possible to get a biotech-related startup off the ground with smaller sums of money than ever before. VC shop SOS Ventures is offering startups working broadly in biology $35,000 in seed funding, mentors and lab space at incubators in San Francisco and Cork, Ireland.
Like Y Combinator, SOS Ventures is casting its net beyond traditional biotech startups to include any company developing products, processes or software that have a basis in biology. Synthetic biology is an area of particular interest for the team behind the incubator–called IndieBio–and was the focus of a 6-startup pilot accelerator SOS Ventures ran in Cork earlier this year. The VC firm is now scaling up its incubator ambitions.