SOSV's IndieBio and Mayfield to Partner on Genesis Consortium

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Jul 15, 2020, 11:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, July 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- SOSV and Mayfield today announced the creation of the Genesis Consortium, an alliance to promote human and planetary health, which will invest alongside SOSV into IndieBio startups at the pre-seed stage. Like-minded leading VC investors can consider joining Genesis to support pre-seed stage life science startups.

An alignment of vision has led the two firms to co-found the Genesis Consortium. Genesis will support scientific and technical founders with the resources to grow their startups from the pre-seed stage.

"IndieBio has consistently demonstrated that we transform very early stage startups, growing them into world-class technologies and industry-leading companies," said Po Bronson, IndieBio Managing Director. "At the pre-seed stage, small investments make a huge difference. Genesis will help startups have enough runway to reach clear milestones that merit seed funding from the rest of the venture industry."

Both SOSV and Mayfield are committed to the sustainability of our planet and the improvement of healthcare for all. To that effect, the firms, in the regular course of business over the next five years, expect to invest over $400M of their own funds into companies that are engineering biology, with the majority of those funds going into startups at Series A and beyond.

"Mayfield is one of Silicon Valley's most experienced and successful firms," said Sean O'Sullivan, SOSV's Managing General Partner. "We'd like to see more visionary venture funds join us in dedicating early-stage investment into human and planetary health, to create the change we all want to see in the world."

Just five years old, IndieBio is growing rapidly from its San Francisco roots. In January 2020, with support from the State of New York, SOSV launched IndieBio New York. The combined programs are expected to bring 50 new startups per year through IndieBio. In the past 12 months alone, the SOSV portfolio of alumni life science companies has doubled in value to $3.2 billion.

The cooperation has IndieBio founder Arvind Gupta joining Mayfield as a Partner, doing Series A investing, while maintaining a position at IndieBio as a Venture Advisor. Po Bronson has been elevated to an SOSV General Partner and Managing Director of IndieBio. For further alignment, Mayfield invested in IndieBio's parent fund, SOSV IV.

IndieBio now has six investment Partners. In San Francisco, Jun Axup has been named Chief Scientific Officer. Alex Kopelyan is Senior Director. Pae Wu recently joined the team as Chief Technical Officer. In New York, Stephen Chambers joined IndieBio as Managing Director, and Rodrigo Mallo Leiva moved over from SOSV's London operations.

"The Genesis Consortium will make sure the most exciting and impactful work that scientists are doing today will have support to translate ideas into venture-backable companies," said Arvind Gupta, Mayfield Partner and IndieBio founder. "We will create more startups, and better startups, for the entire industry to advance."

Currently, SOSV's IndieBio program is among the world's most richly-funded startup accelerator programs, funding $250k to each of 50 startups annually. The Genesis Consortium aims to increase that to up to $500k available for each startup at the pre-seed stage, starting in 2021.

Of course, most of the funding for IndieBio startups comes from the community of later-stage VCs who lead investments post-accelerator, investing more than $10 in every IndieBio startup for each $1 from SOSV's funds.

Consortium Activities
The Genesis Consortium will put together monthly, quarterly, and annual physical and virtual events in life sciences investing, with a dinner series focused on relevant and emerging topics of life science breakthroughs; with tech talks and seminars on a frequent basis both at the IndieBio event center in San Francisco and a new IndieBio center opening in New York; and with an annual corporate engagement conference for later stage investors and corporates.

SOSV welcomes the participation of other investors who are committed to the mission of the Genesis Consortium. The initiative is geared toward creating a healthy ecosystem rather than exclusive deal flow. To find out more about Genesis Consortium, sign up here: http://genesisconsortium.org

About SOSV:
SOSV is a global venture fund with $750M under management that runs deep-tech accelerator programs around the world, including HAX in Shenzhen, Chinaccelerator in Shanghai, MOX in Taipei, Food-X in New York, and IndieBio. SOSV is also the third-most active investor in early-stage startups in India.

SOSV has backed nearly 200 early-stage startups that use biology as their enabling technology. SOSV has helped launch new industries in life sciences, including notable cellular agriculture startups (Memphis Meats, Perfect Day, Geltor); breakthrough therapeutics and diagnostic companies involved in advances against cancer, autoimmune diseases and autism (Synthex, Serenity, BioRosa); and regenerative medicine companies (Prellis Biologics, OneSkin, Membio) helping improve the quality and longevity of life.

SOURCE SOSV