sosv
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about sosv sosv, the accelerator vc, has $ 300 million in assets under management. founded in 1995, sosv’s investments focus on early - stage startups selected from 4, 000 companies applying every year through http: / / sosv. com. a large network of follow - on vcs invest another $ 200m into sosv startups annually .
sosv, the accelerator - based venture capital firm, closed $ 150 million in its first fund open to external investors, sosv iii on december 16th .
for more information: audrey chen, sosv investor relations audrey. chen @ urltoken
the fund sosv iii was the fund to which investors were provided exposure. sosv iii was a targeted $ 200 million fund closing for subscription in december 2016 .
sosv raises $ 150 million fund for accelerators in china, u. s .
the accelerator note tracks sosv’s successful $ 200m usd fund iii where the sosv general partners have personally provided $ 100m of the fund which other private investors are matching .
investor relations sosv audrey chen, 609 - 933 - 2652 audrey. chen @ urltoken
sosv raises $ 150 million fund for accelerators in china, u. s. - wsj
asia represents 20% of sosv’s global investments, the bulk of which comes from china .
those interested in applying to one of sosv’s accelerators should heed the venture capital firm’s advice .
it should — it’s the same approach that sosv brings to our accelerator programmes and startup investments .
) - - sosv, the accelerator - based venture capital firm, closed $ 150 million in its first fund open to external investors, sosv iii on december 16th. sosv runs the world’s # 1 accelerators in hardware, life sciences, disruptive food, and china cross - border startups .
sosv, the accelerator vc, has $ 300 million in assets under management. founded in 1995, sosv’s investments focus on early - stage startups selected from 4, 000 companies applying every year through urltoken. a large network of follow - on vcs invest another $ 200m into sosv startups annually .
looking for investment? sosv invests almost exclusively through our accelerator programs. check out our programs & apply !
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you should have 2 to 4 founders on your... - sosv - the accelerator vc | facebook
accelerator note 1 the fund manager sosv is a us - based venture capital fund which provides funding to early - stage start - up companies. sosv primarily deploys funding via accelerators programs which it operates in europe, asia and the unites states. to date, sosv has deployed over $ 250 million across 500 companies .
to see the full interview between steve brotman of alpha ventures and sean o’sullivan of sosv, click here .
stay up to date on investment opportunities, learn about sosv managed funds & portfolio companies, attend startup showcases .
generally, sosv the lead or sole seed investor in the very early stage startups it attracts to its programs .
jan 3, 2017 — (princeton, nj) — sosv, the accelerator - based venture capital firm, closed $ 150 million in its first fund open to external investors, sosv iii on december 16th. sosv runs the world’s # 1 accelerators in hardware, life sciences, disruptive food, and china cross - border startups .
now sosv, which calls itself the “accelerator vc, ” is beginning to have the same brand recognition its founder enjoys .
as part of our speaker series, sean o' sullivan, founder of sosv, will be speaking to the inba on wednesday may 24th at sosv revolution sf in downtown san francisco. the event will start at 6pm and run approximately 2 hours .
bill liao (managing partner), sosv and sean o’sullivan (founder and managing partner). sosv has stepped back from plans to establish a european version of food - x, its international business accelerator programme for start - ups, in cork .
up until 2015, sosv’s accelerator model was powered completely on internal capital, from investments by our founding partner (me) and our team of gps. as of december 16th, 2016, we’ve now closed on sosv’s third fund, a $ 150m fund dedicated to our accelerators and the companies that come out of them. this brings sosv to $ 300m in assets under management. it’s a big step for us, and a big recognition of how far the “deep tech, vertical” accelerator movement that sosv pioneered has come .
harmonix was acquired by viacom in 2006. when the founders repurchased the company in 2011, sosv reinvested and currently holds a position .
sosv & indiebio provided a great entrepreneurial environment surrounded by fellow scientists, excellent lab facilities, and contacts to the bay area life sciences community. the breadth of sosv’s companies provides a unique perspective, and has exposed us to different global ecosystems through fellow portfolio companies .
once this global protein distribution business reached €50m in revenue, a sovereign wealth fund acquired sosv’s position in 2014. gps continues to operate .
bill is general partner at sosv, supporting, mentoring and investing in companies and startups at all stages of growth. bill founded sosv’s life sciences practice and currently runs rebelbio in europe, focusing on entrepreneurs building technologies in or around the field of synthetic biology. bill is also the lead investment partner on sosv ii (ireland fund) and is responsible for sourcing and managing investments for that fund with the irish government .
with more than 150 startups backed annually through its accelerators, sosv is also recognized as the world’s third largest seed investor by volume. sosv’s accelerator model takes a small stake in startups and provides a framework and community where startups get further and faster than they could on their own .
limited partners in sosv’s new fund are a of institutional backers, family offices and tech executives, even some alumni of sosv’s own accelerators. they included: the ifc of the world bank, the lemelson foundation, the russell family foundation, harmonix co - founder alex rigopolous and others .
below is the press release for sosv iii. but first, i have to thank all the gps at sosv that made this fundraise possible, by running the best accelerators in the world. cyril ebersweiler and duncan turner, of hax. arvind gupta and bill liao of indiebio and rebelbio. william bao bean of chinaccelerator and mox. shawn broderick of food - x and stephen mccann, who runs sosv’s back office and legal operations. and the 90 staff at sosv who run these programs and support the more than 500 companies in our portfolio since 2007. thank you team !
in 2017, o’ sullivan says, sosv will be looking to start yet another accelerator that gets some of its alumni to an initial public offering .
sosv’s “mobile - only accelerator” is a leading mobile app accelerator, which allows best in breed mobile solutions from mature markets to rapidly penetrate emerging mobile markets .
most of sosv’s accelerators focus on what o’sullivan calls “real world products, ” made of atoms not just bits. when sosv does invest in software, it’s usually an app or service that corresponds with “real world products, ” consumer electronics or medical devices, robotics, food, or life sciences especially genomics .
o’sullivan noted that ten sosv - backed companies ran kickstarter fundraising campaigns for their products that broke the $ 1 million mark as of the end of 2016 .
“the lack of irish lp (limited partner) support in ireland for sosv is as disappointing as the lack of irish state support for coderdojo has been .
in the meantime, sosv will be creating later stage accelerators, inspired in part by their growing number of hardware companies now shipping tens of millions of revenue .
speaking earlier this month in san francisco, mr o’sullivan said sosv remains committed to ireland, where it employs around 15 people, mainly in back office roles .
sosv gave us the opportunity to play in a leveled playing field and operate globally. with the funding and support from chinaccelerator and sosv, we managed to relocate the company to europe and start growing it into what it is today, with 20 staff and 100 + customers. when it comes to early stage investment into startups, sosv are second to none in supporting entrepreneurs from any region and any background, as long as they have a solid idea and the ambition to make it happen .
today that firm, sosv, has closed its third fund at $ 150 million to back startups that are admitted to and have graduated from one of its many programs .
sosv is led by founder and managing partner sean o’sullivan alongside six investment partners, all of whom come from operating backgrounds building multi - million dollar startups, including three ipos .
sosv’s mission — enabling startups to go further, faster — has proven out in over 500 early - stage investments since 2007, with a net irr of over 30% since the formation of sosv in 1995. example portfolio companies include makeblock, clara foods, nextthingco, formlabs, breather, getaround, greenblender, memphis meats, harmonix and bitmex .
sosv’s mission – enabling startups to go further, faster – has proven out in over 500 early - stage investments since 2007, with a net irr of over 30% since the formation of sosv in 1995. example portfolio companies include makeblock, clara foods, nextthingco, formlabs, breather, getaround, greenblender, memphis meats, harmonix and bitmex .
in its global innovation investment report - 2016 year in review, crunchbase recently named sosv as the most active global early stage investor and the second most active global seed investor .
the coderdojo movement has proven to be one of ireland’s greatest digital success stories since it was founded in 2011 by a young and eager james whelton and sosv partner bill liao .
3 - 6 month intensive co - located program working alongside other elite startup founder peers. sosv accelerators are some of the most selective in the world with < 5% acceptance rate .
blackbee investments is launching the accelerator note 1 fund that tracks sosv fund iii which is investing in up to 700 tech startup companies worldwide through its accelerators programs such as hax and indiebio .
sosv provides intellectual and financial capital to accelerate founders’ big ideas for positive change. sosv has funded over 700 startups to date. we currently fund over 150 startups per year through our programs: hax (hardware and connected devices), indiebio & rebelbio (life sciences), chinaccelerator (cross - border internet & mobile in asia) and food - x (food innovation) .
sosv iii has expertise in building tech companies with a presence in europe, north america and asia across domains such as internet of things, life - saving medicines and new sources of nutrition .
the accelerator note 1 fund will be backed by the growth in value of several hundred high potential start - ups and entrepreneurs from around the world that sosv iii has invested and is investing in .
“we are committed to providing the best and most innovative investment ideas to investors and we are delighted to be working with one of the world’s leading venture capital firms, sosv, in this regard. ”
william bao bean is a general partner at sosv, a us $ 300m venture capital fund that invests in startups in its accelerators across the world. william is also the managing director of sosv’s chinaccelerator, china first startup accelerator based in shanghai and mox, sosv’s mobile only accelerator platform se asia. prior to joining sosv, william was the managing director at singtel innov8, where he led investments in yodo1 and gmobi, among many others. previously, william was a partner at softbank china & india holdings. william began his career as an equity research analyst, most recently with deutsche bank, where he was responsible for internet and telecom equipment across asia and china technology, media and telecom. in 2005, he was ranked # 1 stock picker in technology, media and telecom, and # 3 overall for hong kong / china .
hackster is the largest online community for hardware hackers. a key player in the maker open source community, sosv invested in hackster in 2013 as part of our commitment to strengthening the global hardware ecosystem for startups .
“since 2010, we’ve provided follow - on funding to those companies who develop significant traction and financing support, ” said sean o’sullivan, sosv managing partner. “it’s a proven model…giving us both extraordinary quality and incredible deal flow. ”
with offices in the usa, europe and asia, sosv has access to startups all over the world, and bring their unique mentoring approach to startups in which they invest. the partners at sosv committed $ 100m of their own capital in the fund. targeting world - changing companies, the fund was to back entrepreneurs who are revolutionising everything from the internet of things (iot) to life - saving medicine and new sources of nutrition for the world .
sosv, a $ 300 million venture capital fund founded by entrepreneur sean o’sullivan, has stepped back from plans to establish a european version of food - x, its international business accelerator programme for start - ups, in cork .
of eight total, sosv’s better - known accelerators include: hardware - focused hax, food - x for food and agriculture companies, indiebio for life sciences startups, and chinaccelerator for cross - border internet and mobile companies in asia .
the sosv portfolio includes: formlabs, breather, and harmonix. its accelerator alumni include: clara foods, memphis meats, makeblock, prynt, qidni labs, and scores of other companies with brands well - known in tech circles already .
sosv is unique as well, amongst venture funds, for being more than 50% funded by the gps themselves. that’s right, we are putting our money where our mouths are. many venture funds only put 1 or 2% of the capital in by the investment partners (gps), while exemplary funds put between 10–20% of the capital into the pot from the gps. at sosv, we’re fully committed, and we believe in the exceptional value our startups are creating .
search for sosv programs, industries, or companies. we have listed all our companies with their programs and industries so you can enter in whatever you would like to search by, (e. g
sustainable food
or
china education
)
food - x helped us build and launch a market validated product, raise venture capital, and ultimately exit to one of the leading technology companies in the space. we couldn' t have achieved what we did without food - x and sosv .
looking for an investment pipeline of some of the best performing startups on the planet? interested in opportunities hardware, life sciences, disruptive food, or the asia / china cross - border market? learn more about investing in sosv funds and across our portfolio .
bill liao, founder of rebelbio (formerly known as indiebio) and the european venture partner for sosv, who lives in cork, expressed disappointment at the decision, which he said came as a result of the lack of support for the accelerators from institutional investors .
are you a potential market champion that is pioneering new ground, or an investor looking to help scale the companies that will shape our future? join one of our accelerators or learn about investing in sosv, and let' s work together to make the impossible inevitable .
given that china has dominated their investments in the asian region, sosv has a geographic wish list. “we love to see companies from all throughout the region, particularly korea, japan, taiwan, indonesia, malaysia, vietnam and india, ” says managing partner sean o’sullivan .
in the last 6 years, sosv has grown to become the third most active seed investor in the world. as well as the # 1 investor in life sciences, # 1 in hardware, # 1 in disruptive food, and # 1 in china cross - border internet & mobile .
sosv, which is headed by sean o’sullivan, has boasted returns averaging 27pc over the past 15 years. o’sullivan’s first company, mapinfo, grew into a us $ 200m public company. among his successful investments to date are netflix and harmonix, creator of guitar hero and irish success storyful .
in recent years, sosv has fired up another accelerator program, called hax boost, for hardware startups that already have a product on the market and real revenue coming in the door. it’s more about helping startups attract corporate partners, get retail distribution and grow their customer base, than it is about scoring more venture capital .
sosv is a multi - stage venture capital investor. we run multiple world - class vertical accelerator programs, and provide seed, venture and growth stage follow - on investment into superstar companies. our unique full - stack model has delivered a net irr over the last 20 years that puts us in the top 10% of all venture funds worldwide .
“southeast asia’s software scene is growing fast - which is great for our chinaccelerator and mox programs focused on web / social / mobile. on the ‘hard science’ part like robotics and biotech - which are most relevant to sosv via hax and indiebio - south east asia is still very young, ” says ben joffe, a partner at hax (shenzhen) .
be purposeful. purpose - driven companies are all the rage, and for very good reason. aligning on a clear purpose is tremendously productive. at sosv our purpose is “making impossible inevitable”, and it drives us to seek out cutting edge technologies that are just ready enough to go mainstream. having a clear purpose is simply the key to team productivity .
“traditionally venture capital is provided by large institutional funds. however, the accelerator note 1 enables individuals and irish investors to get involved in this exciting and dynamic sector. we are committed to providing the best and most innovative investment ideas to investors and we are delighted to be working with one of the world’s leading venture capital firms, sosv in this regard. ”
bill comes to sosv with a wealth of experiences, both in the public and private sectors. a co - founder of coderdojo, a free global network formed to assist young people with learning computer programming, bill also co - founded xing, a pioneering enterprise social networking platform. prior to these endeavors, bill served as coo of davnet, a telecommunications carrier .
the accelerator breathed life into what was previously just an idea... the team at sosv truly understands that successful early stage investment is more than just throwing money at an idea - it takes support, advice, and a strong community. we' re lucky to be part of it, and it' s why we are where we are today .
the people who invest money for the vc into the startups (portfolio companies) are called “gps” (general partners), although terminology varies widely from one investment firm to another. at sosv, we used to call our gps “investment partners” until recently. due to the nature of accelerators, there are a wide range of other staff involved in supporting and selecting our investments .
building a better future means empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs and scientists to solve the biggest challenges that our world is facing today: addressing global health, sustainable food systems, advanced manufacturing, connectivity in the developing world & beyond. nearly half of our portfolio companies directly align to the un’s sustainable development goals and sosv is proud to be a top investor for female founded companies .
its volume may be due to its structure: sosv runs an accelerator for each vertical, such as indiebio (san francisco) and rebelbio (cork, ireland) for life sciences, hax (shenzhen, san francisco) for hardware, robotics, internet of things, and medical devices, and chinaccelerator (shanghai) and mox (taipei) for china cross - border internet and mobile .
sosv, which was previously known as sos ventures, was established by former dragon’s den star and mapinfo co - founder sean o’sullivan in 1993. it has funded over 500 starts - up since it was set up and is currently funding over 150 firms a year through its accelerators, which cover areas such as hardware, software biology, food, robotics, medical devices, transportation and green energy .
joffe continued that another often - overlooked factor is personality. as start - ups accepted to sosv will be welcomed within their family of entrepreneurs in each ecosystem (hardware, biotech, food - tech, and so on), it’s important to get along with colleagues. “they can benefit tremendously from the support of peers, which is a competitive advantage you can’t really find elsewhere, ” he points out .
we at sosv are passionate about giving back (“should giving back be a key marker of a company’s success? ”). whether engineering and mapping for war - torn iraq with jumpstart, teaching over 40, 000 kids coding at one of 1350 coderdojos worldwide, or engaging teachers and students in mathematics with khan academy, our charitable projects are constantly seeking out innovative and ‘disruptive’ initiatives that can be scaled globally .
the 65 investors in sosv iii range from formerly - backed founders and tech executives to major family offices, private foundations and multinational corporations. lps include the ifc of the world bank, the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets; the lemelson foundation, focused on improving lives through invention; the russell family foundation, a philanthropic enterprise advancing sustainability and leadership in the pacific northwest; and austin hearst .
sosv stepped into the big gap left behind by vcs in the last 10 years as fund sizes got larger and larger, while the typical vc model hasn’t scaled. with larger numbers of “early stage” investors putting $ 10m or more into series a rounds, there became a huge need, and hole, in the market, for investors who would fund the earlier - stage startups that need to get to the multi - million dollar run - rate that series a investors now expect .
sean o' sullivan is an entrepreneur, inventor and investor, born in new york city and currently living in county cork, ireland. he is best known for co - founding mapinfo corporation, which popularized street maps on computers, and for coining the term
cloud computing
. he is managing director at carma, a global software company, and at sosv, a $ 250m venture capital operation. o' sullivan has had an unusually diverse career, being described as a
renaissance man
.
sean o’sullivan is founder and managing director of sosv. sean got his entrepreneurial start as a founder of mapinfo, bringing street mapping technology to personal computers. mapinfo went on to become a $ 200 million public company with over 1, 000 employees. in another startup, he and george favaloro from compaq invented the term “cloud computing. ” sean has continued as a visionary entrepreneur and investor, creating and supporting a range of businesses, humanitarian and educational endeavors, including jumpstart international, coderdojo, mathletes and khan academy .
the 65 investors in sosv iii range from formerly - backed founders and tech executives to major family offices, private foundations and multinational corporations. lps include the ifc of the world bank, the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets; the lemelson foundation, focused on improving lives through invention; the russell family foundation, a philanthropic enterprise advancing sustainability and leadership in the pacific northwest; alex rigopulos, chairman and co - founder of harmonix music systems; bobby voicu, co - founder of social gaming site mavenhut; and austin hearst .
as an investor, at sosv we will occasionally see companies that see the whole founding team change out. this is an unfortunate, rare circumstance, and usually happens because of situations beyond a founder’s control, such as a death in the family. it can happen due to incompetence, or it can happen due to the unpredictable nature of startups and / or a change in market opportunity. the new core team of leaders, who are possibly recruited by the previous founder (s), are generally compensated with the shares of the original founders who didn’t see the company through to profitability .
sean o’sullivan is founder and managing director of sosv. sean got his entrepreneurial start as a founder of mapinfo, bringing street mapping technology to personal computers. mapinfo went on to become a $ 200 million public company with over 1, 000 employees. in another startup, he and george favaloro from compaq invented the term “cloud computing. ” sean has continued as a visionary entrepreneur and investor, creating and supporting a range of businesses, humanitarian and educational endeavors, including jumpstart international, coderdojo, mathletes and khan academy. sean graduated from rensselaer polytechnic institute in 1985 with a degree in electrical engineering .
limerick aims to be ‘lighthouse’ for smart cities as part of €6. 5m eu project
two - year - old irish - born coding phenomenon coderdojo is currently in the top 5 of a global public vote competition organised by microsoft’s azure developer community to grant us $ 100, 000 to the top education non - profits in the world .
coderdojo is (at the time of writing) in second place behind black girls code in first position .
as part of the azuredevs competition microsoft will donate us $ 50, 000 to the organisation with the most votes, us $ 20, 000 to the second highest, and us $ 10, 000 to each of the three runners up .
beyond helping technology education non - profits, as an azuredev the organisations will gain access to exclusive content and technology leaders from microsoft and the community throughout the year .
non - profit coderdojo was formed two years ago almost to the day by james whelton, just weeks after he completed his leaving cert, with the help of entrepreneur bill liao. whelton started up non - profit organisation coderdojo on a saturday morning with the simple idea that kids would show up and with the help of mentors learn how to code. within weeks, coderdojos began happening in community halls and office canteens from arranmore off the coast of donegal to major cities like london and new york .
today, more than 16, 000 children worldwide are taught to code every saturday in more than 120 dojos in 22 countries, including places such as la, silicon valley, tokyo, africa and the caribbean – all on a voluntary basis .
in the past two years it has grown to see over 16, 000 kids from the ages of six upwards gather every saturday in more than 26 countries worldwide to learn basic web and computer skills, html, css, advanced css, beginners’ javascript, advanced javascript / j - query, advanced java and various flavours c .
at build 2013, microsoft’s annual developer conference in san francisco, the software giant released a preview of its windows 8. 1 as well as availability of its new development platform visual studio 2013 as well as windows azure mobile service s enabling organisations to publish apps to azure and other cloud platforms for use across windows, windows mobile, ios, android and many more app platforms .
microsoft revealed that 1, 000 businesses a day are signing up to the azure cloud platform .
microsoft buys github for $ 7. 5bn: the 5 things you need to know
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may captivate consumers and investors at the moment, but the future of technology will be much more dizzyingly weird. chances are, the most radical innovations in the 21st century won' t be built on silicon but on dna. over the past few years, the ease of crafting genes from scratch has gone way up, while the cost has gone way down .
but while the curve of biology' s version of moore' s law bends upward, major obstacles remain to the kind of startup explosion ignited in personal computing by better, cheaper digital technology. and the difference comes down to this: everything in steve jobs' garage was basically dry. unlike other kinds of engineering, the essential materials of biotech are both wet and alive. and this makes working with them much more complicated than pulling out a laptop or a soldering iron .
an effort is under way, however, to make working with wet stuff easier in the hope of putting biology on more equal footing with less viscous technologies. and one of the tools that has biohackers buzzing at the moment is the opentrons, an open - source liquid - handling robot designed to make biotech not just drier and faster but also a lot more accessible to anyone with an idea .
the opentrons project originated at genspace, a community biolab in brooklyn founded in the diy spirit of the maker movement. though genetic engineering technology has existed for decades, the practice of gene - splicing itself has mostly remained walled off within the confines of academic research institutions and corporate biotech. but enthusiast communities like genspace have started to emerge around the world, inspired by the notion that putting biotechnology into the hands of more people could lead to a flourishing of creativity and discovery .
once this platform gets going, people will be able to collaborate on biotech projects the way they can collaborate on code today ,
says opentrons co - founder will canine .
anyone who has ever worked in a biology lab or hung out in one knows the work can be tedious and repetitive. while the science itself is complex, the labor involved in experimenting and engineering largely consists of sucking liquid out of one vial with a handheld instrument called a pipette and squirting it back into another one .
our life science experts spend most of their time doing manual labor ,
canine says .
it' s a huge bottleneck for research .
as opentrons' creators point out, the process isn' t just boring but also error - prone. human eyes, hands, and brains just can' t ensure the kind of precise consistency that a robot can. lab robots are nothing new in biotech. but they tend to be incredibly expensive machines based on proprietary tech and intended for a narrow market of professional users .
>' people will be able to collaborate on biotech projects the way they can collaborate on code today.'
the opentrons, by contrast, is open source, meaning anyone can copy, build, and modify the tech as they see fit. its brain is a raspberry pi microcomputer, which costs all of $ 35, and many of its other components built with off - the - shelf technology .
the rapid rise of 3 - d printing, canine says, has led to a dramatic decrease in the price of the precision mechanical components needed to accurately transfer liquids. these components help keep the opentrons' price down to $ 2, 000 for the basic model—not trivial, but also less than the cost of a new imac .
the project, canine says, also aims to the device' s software as accessible as possible. instead of a proprietary programming language, the opentrons uses a javascript - based, drag - and - drop web interface for designing and running experiments .
we' re at the beginning of the digitization and automation of biotech ,
says ryan bethencourt, who helps run indie bio, an arm of sos ventures, which backed opentrons through its haxlr8tr hardware accelerator. bethencourt is also a backer of opentrons' kickstarter .
the beauty of opentrons is that it' s built for researchers who don' t want to program, who are used to modern and simple user interfaces .
canine' s early hopes for opentrons may not sound glamorous. he' s very excited about its potential to create standard, consistent lab protocols that yield regular, reproducible data .
the very first thing for us is giving people the ability to email a protocol ,
he says .
but he' s also hopeful about the most ambitious applications for biotech. he says opentrons is working with modern meadow, which is working to
print
meat and leather without killing animals. he also sees great potential in synthetic biology, the branch of biotech working to stitch together novel organisms using one letter of the genetic alphabet at a time to brew everything from fertilizers to anti - malarial drugs .
whatever the application, canine believes a better biotech future will be hastened the more hands and minds can be freed up from doing the grunt work of biology .
today people—ph. ds—spend most of their time moving tiny amounts of liquid by hand ,
he says .
our robot makes it so they don' t have to do that .
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breather, the on - demand private room service has raised $ 20m led by peter thiel’s valar ventures. the series b brings breather’s full raise to $ 27m. this round also had participation from real ventures, rre ventures, slow ventures and sos ventures. valar will join the board .
rooms were set up as “secret places” within cities like new york that allow you to get work done, have meetings or whatever you’d rather not do at a starbucks. the best usecase is when you’re traveling, because sometimes you just need to sit down with some wifi at a place that’s not a coffee shop or a hotel. its app lets you find a room, pay and unlock the door .
i chatted with breather’s co - founder and ceo julien smith about how far the business has come and what’s on deck next for the company that got through the initial giggles about what would be going on its rooms. the immediate plan, smith says is: “new cities, marketing, growing existing cities. we really believe there can be a unit like this in every commercial building in america. completely serious. ”
right now the average breather is booked for 2 + hours, but can go from 30 minutes to an entire day. smith also says “thousands” of bookings roll in weekly .
js: wow, so much. i had a lot of ideas about what the company would be before we began, but they were basically just guesses. we just had a thesis that private space would be useful to people (if it were affordable and nice) and we didn’t think with too much intent about what the audience would be .
the service basically took off immediately after we launched, so we clarified who we are speaking to really quickly. we know the audience better, we know how to talk about the product, we know what kind of spaces people want and for what reason, we know how the operations work, etc. etc. we started with a huge emptiness in terms of our understanding and just an optimistic idea. lucky for us, we turned out to be pretty right .
js: multiple people have proposed in breathers – that was a huge surprise. people use them for meetups all the time, and although that’s pretty commonplace, we were surprised to see it. women use it to breast - feed, which makes sense, and there are church groups as well. music videos and documentaries for netflix have been shot in them. famous actors have used them to rehearse for big movies. press previews and little fashion shows. all kinds of things. people even use them for training sessions for new employees .
js: the network effects in this business are very, very strong, perhaps even stronger than uber, because location, quality, and trust are so important to us getting a booking. a car can move, but rooms don’t, so the same way you always go to the closest, most convenient coffee shop, and won’t go if it’s too far away, we have to be very, very close to the user for the service to be effective for them .
js: yeah, for example i was strongly against technology inside breather locations for a super long time. i barely even wanted wifi in the spaces at all. but now it became clear that traditional things like whiteboards, flatscreen tvs, and other business type amenities are pretty helpful. there’s a line we won’t cross – you won’t see any fax machines in breather locations anytime soon for example – but we really started to accommodate the user on things like this even though we started with a pretty strong stance against it .
every city in america? sounds like a grand plan. right now, breather is available in new york, boston, san francisco, montreal and ottawa .
y combinator, which set off a whirlwind of skeptical commentary when it opened its highly ranked tech accelerator program to biotechnology startups last spring, now has some company .
sos ventures, the international vc firm that already holds accelerator programs for software and hardware company founders, is launching a separate accelerator called indiebio in san francisco and the city of cork, ireland, for entrepreneurial teams in fields that include synthetic biology .
like mountain view, ca - based y combinator, sos ventures is betting that innovators in certain biotech sectors—bioinformatics, automated lab technology, and the intensive form of genetic engineering known as synthetic biology—can profit from the jumpstart delivered by accelerator programs. indiebio co - founder arvind gupta, a partner at sos ventures, says the firm is trying to create a financial and technology ecosystem that allows biotech entrepreneurs the same freedom as app developers to succeed outside of big companies or universities .
“these accelerators are a third way for people to build their own dreams and secure their own futures, ” gupta says .
gupta joined sos ventures in september 2013 with a primary goal of setting up an accelerator for synthetic biology. “my first love was genetic engineering, ’’ at uc santa barbara in the mid - 1990s, he says. synthetic biologists re - design metabolic pathways in organisms—often microbes such as yeast—and harness them to make products such as fuels and useful chemicals. technology advances in recent years have made synthetic biology easier and faster. the task of assembling novel dna strands is now similar to writing code at a computer, he says .
sos ventures partner bill liao ran a pilot synthetic biology accelerator for six startups in cork, ireland, early this year, with outcomes that encouraged him to team with gupta to found indiebio. one of the cork graduates was muufri (moo - free, get it ?), a startup founded to use bioengineered microbes to make an “animal - free” milk substitute containing similar proteins and fats, but no lactose or cholesterol .
sos ventures now plans to run two indiebio sessions in san francisco (starting in january and september), and one in cork (beginning in may). in november, indiebio is moving into a 15, 000 - square - foot space on two floors in downtown san francisco. in the building at 485 jessie street, startups will occupy both office space and lab space at no charge. sos ventures will also kick in $ 35, 000 in seed money in exchange for 8 percent equity. applications for about 10 spots in the first 100 - day san francisco program are due by november 1 .
gupta says the benefits for startups are comparable to those at y combinator, which offers $ 120, 000 in seed funding but doesn’t provide office or lab space. both accelerators supply mentors and contacts with potential follow - on investors .
in y combinator’s recent summer session, the five teams of biotech founders made up a small fraction of the 80 participants, who were primarily involved in software development and other hi - tech projects. two were synthetic biology companies—boston, ma - based ginkgo bioworks, whose automated foundry produces bioengineered microbes to clients’ specifications; and san francisco - based glowing plant, which makes a small, luminous plant that contains genes from fireflies and marine bacteria. the members of yc’s first “biotech class” gave high marks to the program .
gupta says he thinks indiebio startups will benefit from its concentrated focus on synthetic biology. but gupta doesn’t see indiebio as a rival to y combinator, or incubators such as qb3 at uc san francisco’s mission bay campus .
“none of us are competing, ” he says. instead, they’re creating an overall environment that supports biotechnology companies in their early stages, he says .
“if we can’t help build that ecosystem, whatever businesses we help build will fail, ” gupta says .
bernadette tansey is xconomy' s san francisco editor. you can reach her at btansey @ xconomy. com. follow @ tansey _ xconomy
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this week’s article is by alan clayton, business coach @ sosventures. follow alan on twitter @ thealanclayton .
in 3 weeks, across 3 continents, and at 4 accelerator programmes i met 40 start up companies this month, all in pursuit of the lean, mean, capitalist dream. or are they ?
in case you didn’t know, accelerator programs or (axlr8rs) are the new mba. ever since paul graham gave birth to ycombinator in silicon valley in 2005, the idea of getting a group of start up companies in a room together, fueling them for 100 days with the best mentorship money can’t buy (the mentorship is free !), and then presenting them on stage in front of a herd of greedy investors to plead for funding, has become a global phenomenon. it’s now at the point where too many start up teams see winning the investment funding as the main purpose of the exercise. (it isn’t) .
accelerators like techstars, and startupbootcamp in ireland, work like mini - investment funds. the accelerator provides small amounts of funding, usually between $ 10k – $ 30k per company, a cool work space, a roster of impressive mentors, decent coffee and a fridge stocked with beer, in exchange for a 5 - 10% stake in each company. accelerators are generally funded by a consortium of venture capitalists and angel investors .
more recently, public bodies and multinationals such as nike, ge and ireland’s own pch, have spawned their own accelerators, having woken up to the idea that accelerators are a great way to identify the next facebook at the earliest signs of life, with less cost than traditional approaches to r & d and innovation .
at this point a distinction should be made between incubators and accelerators. and the clue is in the language. an accelerator is something used to dramatically increase speed and may result in crashing into a wall. an incubator is something used to nurture very delicate and immature objects for an open ended period of time. it can often have a sad outcome. incubators are more - or - less a real - estate play, and are often run by government authorities or real - estate companies. in the start - up world, incubators are now completely out of fashion, as successful entrepreneurs don’t like to be mollycoddled by people who aren’t even entrepreneurs themselves .
for newbie tech investors an accelerator provides a chance to buy a meaningful stake in a company for a relatively small amount of cash ($ 15k - $ 25k). for more seasoned investors, the main benefit is the chance it gives to see the best new startups at the earliest possible stage, and to work with these start - ups over a several month period to determine if the entrepreneur is capable of delivering their promises. many investors also become mentors, as they tend to be exactly the individuals who have already proven themselves as successful entrepreneurs, and really do care about those who come after .
one definition of a startup says a startup is not just an early stage version of a regular business, but rather a venture focussed on massive and sustained growth from the outset. startups ‘pivot’ when data provides evidence that growth will come faster by changing some aspect of the business model. in an accelerator, exposure to self - imposed pressure and awareness of competitive and co - operative teams stuck with the same tight deadlines, plus the prodding and challenging advice by a stream of mentors, allows the startup team to grow and pivot multiple times in a shockingly short period of time .
above all, an accelerator program provides a set of relationships. relationships with technical and business development experts, relationships with peers in the accelerator class, and relationships to potential investors .
accelerators have also evolved from the general – software (launchpad) or hardware (haxlr8r) to more industry specific. health (health xl – dublin, rock health – usa), education (socratic labs – usa, mindcet – israel) to name a few.
sosv is a venture capital and investment management firm that provides seed , venture and growth stage funding to startup companies in the technology sector . the company 's focus is on accelerating startups via their market specific seed accelerator programs located in europe , asia and the usa . the firm is made up of 7 investment partners , 45 + full-time support staff and hundreds of mentors . sosv is headquartered in princeton , new jersey , with back office operations based in cork , ireland , and flagship offices in san francisco , shenzhen , shanghai and new york . 
sosv is a venture capital and investment management firm that provides seed, venture and growth stage funding to startup companies in the technology sector. the company's focus is on accelerating startups via their market specific seed accelerator programs located in europe, asia and the usa. the firm is made up of 7 investment partners, 45 + full-time support staff and hundreds of mentors. sosv is headquartered in princeton, new jersey, with back office operations based in cork, ireland, and flagship offices in san francisco, shenzhen, shanghai and new york.
sosv is a venture capital and investment management firm that provides seed, venture and growth stage funding to startup companies in the technology sector. the company's focus is on accelerating startups via their market specific seed accelerator programs located in europe, asia and the usa. the firm is made up of 7 investment partners, 45 + full-time support staff and hundreds of mentors. sosv is headquartered in princeton, new jersey, with back office operations based in cork, ireland, and flagship offices in san francisco, shenzhen, shanghai and new york.