The last time we ran a live Startup School course was three years ago, in the summer of 2019 before covid. In the years since, operating YC remotely through the pandemic taught us a ton about running great remote events and connecting a distributed community.</p>\n<p>We’re now applying everything we’ve learned to the next Startup School. It’s a reimagined experience designed for a global community of founders, combining the best of online and in-person. This is how it will work:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<p>We’ll have speakers covering everything founders need to know to go from idea to startup. Most of these will be taught by current YC group partners. We’ll also have talks from some of YC’s most successful founders, including Amjad and Haya Masad from <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/replit/">Replit and Blake Scholl from <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/boom/">Boom who will give us a live walk-through of his supersonic jet hangar.</p>\n<p>For the first time, these talks will be hosted live on Zoom, so participants can ask questions and interact with the speakers. <br /></p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>We’ve launched a new track for founders who don’t have an idea yet and are just exploring doing a startup. Our last course was designed for founders who already had an idea and were actively working on a startup. But this time, we’ve split the course into two tracks: an “active founders” track and an “aspiring founders” track. We expect most of the participants to be in the aspiring founders track. Startup School is the perfect fit for that stage. <br /></p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>We’ve tightly integrated our <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching/">co-founder matching site</a> into the course. YC runs the world’s largest co-founder matching site, with over 30,000 founders and 70,000 matches made. If you’re looking for a co-founder, it’s the best place to go.</p>\n<p>During the course, we’ll also host many meetups and speed-dating events for people looking to meet potential cofounders. <br /></p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>For the first time, we’ll facilitate hundreds of in-person meetups and talks in dozens of cities around the world.</p>\n<p>Some of our most successful YC alumni will host large-scale, 100+ person meetups at their offices. Each meetup will include a talk by the founders on how they built the company, followed by a networking session where you can meet the company founders and each other.</p>\n<p>We’ll also be facilitating smaller self-organized meetups in cities where we don’t have an official YC alum talk.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<p>Here are the confirmed talks at YC alumni offices in 30 cities; we’re still adding more. Please note that access to these meetups is subject to capacity limits and dependent on local covid conditions:</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: markdown--><p>Amsterdam - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/messagebird/">Messagebird
Atlanta - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety/">Flock Safety</a><br>Austin - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gecko-robotics/">Gecko Robotics</a><br>Austin - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/jasper-ai-inc/">Jasper AI</a><br>Bangalore - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/razorpay/">Razorpay
Bogota - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/frubana-inc/">Frubana
Boston - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/centaur-labs/">Centaur Labs</a><br>Cairo - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/instabug/">Instabug
Cambridge (UK) - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/stem-sugar/">The Supplant Company</a><br>Chicago - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/tovala/">Tovala
Washington D.C. - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/numero/">Numero
Dubai - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/baraka/">Baraka
Jakarta - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/xendit/">Xendit
Lagos - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/paystack/">Paystack
London - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/humanloop/">Humanloop
London - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://monzo.com/us//">Monzo / <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gocardless/">GoCardless
Los Angeles - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/upkeep/">UpKeep
Los Angeles - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/embrace/">Embrace
Los Angeles - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/inversion-space/">Inversion Space</a><br>Mexico City - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/beek/">Beek
Mexico City - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nuvocargo/">Nuvocargo
Miami - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/wayup/">WayUp
Mumbai - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/zepto/">Zepto
New York City - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/c16-biosciences/">C16 Biosciences</a><br>Paris - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/algolia/">Algolia
Pittsburgh - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gecko-robotics/">Gecko Robotics</a><br>San Francisco - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/embark-trucks/">Embark
São Paulo - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/chatpay/">Hubla
Singapore - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/spenmo/">Spenmo
Tel Aviv - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/guesty/">Guesty
Toronto - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/rose-rocket/">Rose Rocket</a><br><br>If you’re interested in joining these meetups, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://startupschool.org/">register for the course.\t</p><!--kg-card-begin: markdown--><iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ngv14GwaMSg/" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen></iframe><!--kg-card-end: markdown-->","comment_id":"6282cc8054a948000183a58e","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/05/V02_Thumbnail.jpg","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-05-16T15:13:20.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-05-17T11:56:59.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-05-17T09:01:22.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Today, we’re opening up registration for Startup School 2022, a live, online course where YC Group Partners and successful YC founders teach you how to build a billion dollar company.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117f","name":"Startup School","slug":"startup-school","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/startup-school/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71195","name":"Online Class","slug":"online-class","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/online-class/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71180","name":"#startup-school","slug":"hash-startup-school","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"internal","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/404/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117f","name":"Startup School","slug":"startup-school","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/startup-school/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/announcing-startup-school-2022/","excerpt":"Today, we’re opening up registration for Startup School 2022, a live, online course where YC Group Partners and successful YC founders teach you how to build a billion dollar company.","reading_time":3,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/05/V02_Thumbnail-1.jpg","twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71bfa","uuid":"54181af6-f62b-4175-9643-b6ca9aaf5250","title":"Ginkgo Bioworks (S14) is going public today","slug":"ginkgo-bioworks-s14-is-going-public-today","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ginkgo-bioworks/">Ginkgo Bioworks</a> is the first biotech company YC funded, and today they are going public. To celebrate their IPO, here&#8217;s the story of how Ginkgo Bioworks ended up in YC, and what their journey was like as YC&#8217;s first biotech startup.</p>\n<p>In 2014, YC had been funding startups for 9 years, but we&#8217;d mostly funded software companies. While we hadn&#8217;t funded many, we thought that the YC model might work well for hard-tech companies. We were especially interested in synthetic biology and the intersection between biology and computer science.</p>\n<p>At the time, the first SynBioBeta conference had yet to be held and the first synthetic biology startups had just been started. But we thought that the potential was interesting enough to put out a &#8220;Request for Startups&#8221; on our blog, a call for people working in this area to apply to YC. Here&#8217;s what we wrote:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:25px;\"><em>&#8220;Biotech. It’s still early, but it seems like we’re finally making real progress hacking biology. There are so many directions this can go—fighting disease, slowing aging, merging humans and computers, downloading memories, genetic programming, etc. We are certain that this is going to be a surprising, powerful and controversial field over the next several decades—it feels a little bit like microcomputers in the 1970s.&#8221;</em></p>\n<p>The Ginkgo Bioworks founders read this and got interested in applying to YC. A couple of months later, they became the first biotech company funded by Y Combinator.</p>\n<p>When Jason, Barry, Reshma, Austin, and Tom joined YC, they&#8217;d already been working on the technology behind Ginkgo Bioworks for a number of years, funded by several million dollars in scientific grants from the US Government. But they were just on the cusp of figuring out a sustainable business model for their organism engineering platform and getting their first customers.</p>\n<p>Ginkgo planned a unique business model where instead of producing chemicals themselves, they’d engineer organisms and license them to other companies. This would allow them to avoid the challenges faced by other synthetic biology companies that had to do capital intensive build-outs of massive fermentation facilities. In the end, this proved to be a fundamentally sound business model that would be gross margin positive from the beginning.</p>\n<p>During YC, they still needed to prove that customers would pay for it. So during the three months of the program, they worked tirelessly to finalize deals with customers, closing $1.2M in milestone contracts. They also figured out the right way to explain Ginkgo to investors, which was not easy because their vision was so far ahead of their time.</p>\n<p>In their Demo Day presentation, Jason Kelly crisply articulated the bold vision that has been behind Ginkgo from their origins at MIT to the present day.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:25px;\"><em>&#8220;We&#8217;ve used robotic engineering and software to reduce the cost of genetic engineering by a factor of 5x in the last two years. This is the beginning of a Moore&#8217;s law for genetic engineering&#8230;. The last 20 years of biotechnology have been the punch card era of biotech: slow, manual, tedious programming of organisms&#8230;. Imagine what can be done with a modern programming stack on top of biology. That&#8217;s what we&#8217;re building at Ginkgo. If that sounds cool to you, you can find us in the Jurassic Park t-shirts&#8221;</em></p>\n<p>Here’s their Demo Day presentation:</p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.youtube.com/embed/FmD4c7hqtqQ/" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>\n<p>Yes, they really did wear Jurassic Park t-shirts to Demo Day.</p>\n<p><div id=\"attachment_1104933\" style=\"width: 235px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1104933\" loading=\"lazy\" src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/wordpress/2021/09/unnamed-1-225x300.jpeg/" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1104933\" srcset=\"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/wordpress/2021/09/unnamed-1-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/wordpress/2021/09/unnamed-1.jpeg 384w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" /><p id=\"caption-attachment-1104933\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Founder Reshma Shetty on YC S14 Demo Day</p></div></p>\n<p>With this expansive vision and their solid commercial traction, Ginkgo successfully raised their first financing round at the end of the batch.</p>\n<p>Since then, they&#8217;ve executed brilliantly. They delivered on their early deals with customers, creating breakthrough organisms that produce flavors and fragrances for some of the world&#8217;s biggest corporations. They built a massive organism engineering foundry in Boston that looks like a scene out of a science fiction movie. They hired many of the brightest scientific minds in the field. As they expanded into new areas, they spun off multiple companies as joint-ventures.</p>\n<p>The Ginkgo Bioworks founders have also become some of the best evangelists for the field of synthetic biology as a whole. Through their regular appearances at YC events and conferences like the annual iGEM competition, they&#8217;ve inspired many young scientists to enter the field. In 2019 YC launched a <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-and-ginkgo-bioworks-announce-new-partnership-for-synthetic-biology-startups//">partnership with Ginkgo to let new synthetic biology startups use Ginkgo&#8217;s foundry to launch.</p>\n<p>When the pandemic started in March 2020, Ginkgo sprang into action. They converted some of their massive foundry into a covid testing lab, quickly becoming one of the largest and most automated covid testing labs in the country. That they were able to build a completely different business so rapidly, outcompeting long standing incumbents, is a testament to the brilliance and agility of the Ginkgo team.</p>\n<p>While today is a huge milestone, it is still day one for synthetic biology and for the potential of Ginkgo to transform the way the world makes things. There is still much work to do to achieve Ginkgo&#8217;s Demo Day vision of biology as easily programmable as a computer. But for now, we&#8217;re very proud to have been the first investor in the world&#8217;s most iconic synthetic biology company.</p>\n<p>Congratulations, Ginkgo!</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104930","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/BlogTwitter-Image-Template-1.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2021-09-17T02:13:43.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-03-08T14:53:35.000-08:00","published_at":"2021-09-17T02:13:43.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71152","name":"Founder Stories","slug":"founder-stories","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/founder-stories/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7119b","name":"#729","slug":"hash-729","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"internal","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/404/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a711a5","name":"Application to IPO","slug":"application-to-ipo","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/application-to-ipo/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71152","name":"Founder Stories","slug":"founder-stories","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/founder-stories/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/ginkgo-bioworks-s14-is-going-public-today/","excerpt":"Ginkgo Bioworks is thefirst biotech company YC funded, and today they are going public. To celebratetheir IPO, here’s the story of how Ginkgo Bioworks ended up in YC, and whattheir journey was like as YC’s first biotech startup.In 2014, YC had been funding startups for 9 years, but we’d mostly fundedsoftware companies. While we hadn’t funded many, we thought that the YC modelmight work well for hard-tech companies.","reading_time":4,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71bc5","uuid":"199eb55a-6d36-45c2-ad70-246174629349","title":"How to spin your scientific research out of a university and into a startup","slug":"how-to-spin-your-scientific-research-out-of-a-university-and-into-a-startup","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p>This is advice for people who have done scientific research at a university and are considering starting a company to commercialize it.</p>\n<p>At YC, we&#8217;ve funded more than 75 companies in this situation. We also recently went on a <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-bio-tour-2020//">Bio Tour</a> where we went around to research universities and talked with hundreds of students and professors in the life sciences about commercializing their research. These are the most common topics founders have asked us about.</p>\n<h2>Deciding who should spin out</h2>\n<p>In a typical spin-out situation, there are several people who worked on the research, including a mix of students, post docs and faculty. The first thing you need to decide is who is going to work on the company and who is going to stay at the university.</p>\n<p>A lot of scientific founders have misconceptions about how to structure their founding team. Here are the most common ones.</p>\n<p><em>Misconception 1. You can start a company while continuing your academic career</em></p>\n<p>Here is a blunt fact that often makes founders uncomfortable: your company has little chance of success unless someone who worked on the original research is willing to leave their university role to start this company.</p>\n<p>If you are a student graduating soon, you can just wait until you graduate; that’s a perfect time to start a company. But otherwise, at some point you will have to make an intentional decision to leave so you can run the company.</p>\n<p><em>Misconception 2. You should find a CEO to run the company</em></p>\n<p>Too many scientists believe that they should remain in academia and find a CEO to start a company around their invention. This is almost always a bad idea. For one, it’s hard to find a great CEO to run a company at this early stage. Truly great CEOs are scarce, and they usually have much better opportunities available to them than running an idea-stage startup with no funding. As a result, most scientists that try this approach either never find a CEO or end up settling for a mediocre one. It’s even worse if your university tries to find a CEO for you.</p>\n<p>But even if you could draft any person in the world to run your company, it still probably wouldn’t be a good idea. The best CEO for this stage is one of the people who did the original research. The people who did the original research will be far more invested in the success of the venture than any outsider. They are also far more qualified to build a company around it because their domain knowledge of the field is much more valuable than whatever general business skills an outside CEO would bring.</p>\n<p>A related misconception is believing that the research is done and that all that’s left is to commercialize it. If this were true, perhaps an outside CEO would make sense. However, it rarely works out that way. Usually you find that the thing the market wants is not quite the thing that you’ve invented, and that more research needs to be done. The original inventors can take this feedback and make adjustments; an outside CEO will just be stuck.</p>\n<p><em>Misconception 3. You need someone with business experience on the founding team</em></p>\n<p>Many scientists think that to start a company you need someone with prior business and financial experience. This is just not the case. In the first couple of years, there is typically very little &#8220;business&#8221; to be done, and whatever business skills you need you will pick up along the way. Most of the scientists we fund at Y Combinator have no prior experience in business.</p>\n<p>People who work in business like to make it sound hard, as if business were like quantum physics, a field that needed to be studied for years to master. The fact is, it&#8217;s not even close.</p>\n<p><em>Misconception 4: You should raise money first, then leave the university</em></p>\n<p>Often, people are unsure of whether they want to risk leaving a stable academic role to pursue a startup. So they take their idea and pitch it to some local VC firms. They figure if it&#8217;s a good idea, the VC firms will fund them, validating the idea and giving them a smooth transition out of their university job and into a well-funded company.</p>\n<p>While VC firms will occasionally fund spin-outs this way, usually they don&#8217;t. Unfortunately, too many founders get turned down by VCs and conclude that their idea must be bad and give up. Actually, the issue is that it&#8217;s just too early at this point to raise money from VCs.</p>\n<p>Typically, founders will need to work full-time on their company for 1+ years before it is ready to raise a multi-million dollar round from VCs. In the meantime, they sustain themselves by self-funding from their savings, getting government research grants, raising a small amount from friends and family, or raising a small &#8220;pre-seed&#8221; round from angel investors, accelerators, or seed funds.</p>\n<p>Founders who won&#8217;t quit their job before they raise money often get stuck in a catch-22. They are waiting for an investor to take a bet on them before they quit their job. But the investors are waiting for the founders to believe enough in their own company to quit their job!</p>\n<p><em>What I recommend</em></p>\n<p>The ideal situation is that two or more people from the lab who did the work leave together to start the company as cofounders. One full-time founder is also ok. One of the people who leave to start the company should be the CEO.</p>\n<p>In many cases, other people who were involved in the research want to remain behind at the university but still contribute in some way. That’s fine. Those are often called “academic cofounders” or “scientific cofounders” and they can still be very helpful. But the founders who are going to be full-time are the most important.</p>\n<h2>Deciding when to spin out</h2>\n<p>In the early stages of developing a new technology, you’ll make faster progress still at the university, taking advantage of university resources. It’s the ideal place to do the initial experiments to prove that your idea could work. You can even do some testing of market demand for a new product, through programs like NSF I-Corps or just by calling up potential customers/stakeholders. At some point, though, that will flip, and being at a university will start to slow you down, because universities are not set up to commercialize technologies.</p>\n<p>It’s possible to leave too early and possible to wait too long before leaving. Unquestionably, though, the far more common mistake is to wait too long.</p>\n<p>Most founders wait too long because leaving is scary. Academia is a comforting environment. No one is pressuring you to leave and leaving seems risky so the natural thing to do is to keep delaying it. There&#8217;s a temptation to make the technology perfect before spinning out, and there&#8217;s always &#8220;one more experiment&#8221; you could do. If you don&#8217;t stop this cycle, you&#8217;ll never leave.</p>\n<p>Often after people do leave, they realize that a lot of the work they did in the last year was wasted, because some of their assumptions about what the market wanted were wrong. They also realize that they are now moving so much faster as a company that they could have saved months of time by spinning out a year earlier.</p>\n<h2>Splitting up Equity</h2>\n<p>After you&#8217;ve decided who is going to be full-time on the startup and what everyone&#8217;s role will be, you&#8217;ll want to split up equity.</p>\n<p>As important as this decision is, founders often don&#8217;t have a good framework for making it. Here is the framework I recommend. It has just two rules<sup id=\"footnoteid1\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote1\">1</a></sup>.</p>\n<p>1) Founders who will be working on the company full-time should get equal or nearly equal amounts of equity.</p>\n<p>2) Founders who will be leaving their job to work on the company full-time should get much more equity than founders who are going to remain in academia. Academic cofounders should own no more than 10%. <sup id=\"footnoteid2\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote2\">2</a></sup>.</p>\n<p>My colleague Michael Seibel previously wrote a <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/library/5x-how-to-split-equity-among-co-founders/">great essay</a> about why rule #1 is so important. Rule #2 is important because it is the full-time founders who will invest many years of their life exclusively in making the company successful, and they need to have enough ownership that it makes sense for them to do that.</p>\n<p>The biggest conceptual mistake I see scientific founding teams make here is that they think the purpose of allocating equity is to reward past contributions, when actually it’s mainly to anticipate future ones.</p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a blunt fact about starting a company. If you are going to make a new company successful, you will probably have to work on it for 7-10 years post spin-out. That&#8217;s a long time!</p>\n<p>If you are just spinning out of a university now, you might feel like you&#8217;re halfway done, but actually you are on mile 2 of a 26 mile marathon. The academic founders may have been instrumental in the first mile, but it is the full-time founders who will be primarily taking you the other 25. The equity split between founders has to reflect the expected contributions over the whole marathon.</p>\n<p>One consequence of this is that your equity split in the new company will not necessarily have any relation to your seniority within the original academic team. It’s often the case that the people leaving are more junior, while the senior people / faculty remain. In that case, the founders who leave will end up with much more equity than their former boss. This can be an awkward conversation, but it’s entirely sensible.</p>\n<h2>Negotiating with tech transfer offices</h2>\n<p>If you are going to commercialize research started at a university, you will probably need to negotiate the rights to the intellectual property. The group at a university that does that is the technology transfer office.<sup id=\"footnoteid3\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote3\">3</a></sup></p>\n<p>In the past, tech transfer offices had a well-deserved bad reputation. They were known for being slow and bureaucratic, and for forcing onerous terms onto fragile young startups. Many times the terms they insisted on strangled the very companies they were trying to create. There was so little transparency in the industry, it was hard for founders to know what terms were fair.</p>\n<p>Fortunately, things have gotten better. There is now much more information available for founders. Tech transfer groups at the universities in major startup hubs like Harvard, MIT and Stanford now give startups reasonable terms (though they still take too long to do it). At universities that have not seen many successful spin-outs, it&#8217;s hit-or-miss. A few universities are now using “<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ctl.cornell.edu/entrepreneurs/fasttrack//">express <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://techtransfercentral.com/2013/10/28/how-five-ttos-are-using-express-licenses-successfully//">license agreements</a>”, preset agreements that require little to no negotiation; hopefully this will become more common.</p>\n<p>There are typically four key terms<sup id=\"footnoteid4\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote4\">4</a></sup> in these agreements.</p>\n<p>1) Equity. Typically the university will get equity in the company. This is ok as long as it is not too much. 3-5% is typical. Above 10% will cause problems.<sup id=\"footnoteid5\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote5\">5</a></sup>, <sup id=\"footnoteid6\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote6\">6</a></sup></p>\n<p>2) Royalty. This means that you pay a percentage of revenue or profits to the university. If this is too high, it can affect the viability of the company to raise money and operate. Ideally you would make this zero. If you can&#8217;t do that, try to keep it &lt; 5%, and to have it terminate after a certain number of years and/or a certain level of payments.</p>\n<p>3) Milestone payments. I.e., &#8220;You owe us $250K when the company raises its first $10M&#8221;, or “You owe us $500K when you reach Phase II clinical trials”. Because cash is scarce in the early days of a startup, you want to keep these as low as possible. You should never need to spend more than a few percent of the money you raise.</p>\n<p>4) Exclusivity. If a license is not exclusive, the university could theoretically turn around and license the same IP to a big company to go compete with you. This sounds like a real problem, but often it’s not. For many inventions, in practice other companies won’t know how to use the IP and won’t value it until you&#8217;ve done years of work further developing it (at which point the university-owned IP isn’t sufficient).<sup id=\"footnoteid7\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote7\">7</a></sup> It may be optimal to have a non-exclusive license initially with an option to make it exclusive later, or a right of first refusal clause.<br /><br />\nHere is some advice for negotiating these agreements.</p>\n<p>You should get in touch with founders of other companies that have recently negotiated agreements with the same office. Find out what terms they got and ask for advice on negotiating strategy. You can also ask investors, lawyers, and advisors. You should get as many data points as possible.</p>\n<p>If you’re a student or post doc, it’s valuable to have the buy-in of the professor running your lab. Professors have sway at universities and will give you leverage over a stubborn tech transfer office. You also want to make sure that they don’t have any competing plans to do their own spin-out with the technology. Often by getting them onboard as an advisor early, they will be helpful in securing a good deal, and they’ll also give you credibility with investors.</p>\n<p>If the agreement feels too onerous, ask yourself if you need it at all. It might be cheaper to recreate something similar on the company’s time.<sup id=\"footnoteid8\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote8\">8</a></sup></p>\n<p>More dramatically, you might end up not even using what you’re planning to license, because startups pivot all the time. I’ve worked with many companies that fought tooth and nail over their tech transfer agreement, only to find that a year later they&#8217;d totally changed their approach and abandoned the IP they fought so hard to license! One way to protect against this is to ensure that any royalties are directly tied to the use of the technology.</p>\n<p>Consider taking an option to license the IP in the future, rather than negotiating a full license agreement now. An option is often much cheaper and simpler to get, and allows you to defer the final negotiation for six to twelve months. That also gives you time to see how much you are using the original IP before committing to licensing it.</p>\n<p>Beware of well-meaning but bad advice from university entrepreneurship offices. Some entrepreneurship offices at universities are great, but unfortunately some are not. Worse, some have their own agendas, like helping local investors. Consider whether the people you’re talking to have a track record of many truly successful companies when listening to their advice.</p>\n<p>Start the conversation with this office as early as possible. This will give you more time to work out an agreement and also let you find out the lay of the land.</p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t wait for the agreement to start the company. Getting an agreement can take 6 months or longer. Many investors (including YC) will fund companies before they have an agreement in place. The more progress you make on the company, the more leverage you have in the negotiation.</p>\n<h2>After the spinout</h2>\n<p>You’ll need to incorporate your company. If you are based in the US (and possibly even if you aren’t), you’ll want to incorporate as a Delaware C Corporation, no matter which state you are physically in.<sup id=\"footnoteid9\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote9\">9</a></sup></p>\n<p>It may well make sense to continue collaborating with your lab. They may produce new work which you want to license.</p>\n<p>In some cases, you may want to continue doing experimental work using university labs. University core facilities are commonly available to companies, albeit for higher fees. It’s possible to save a lot of money using university resources instead of buying equivalents commercially. That’s fine, as long as it isn’t slowing you down significantly and doesn’t create IP issues. Unfortunately there is often a tradeoff between speed and cost.</p>\n<p>A big adjustment for founders from academia is internalizing a different incentive structure. In academia, you’re rewarded for new discoveries and for publications. In startups, there is zero reward for new discoveries and hardly any for publications. In startups, the only thing that you are rewarded for is making tangible progress towards a commercially valuable product.</p>\n<p>A side effect is that in startups, there is no intrinsic reward for doing something new or difficult. Any time there is a shortcut where you can copy or buy something that already exists, you should take it. In startups, you want the “new part” of what you are doing to be as small as possible, and everything else to be as boring and low risk as possible.</p>\n<p>Another big adjustment is the pace. In startups, you are racing against the clock. If you don’t hit milestones before your current funding runs out, your company will run out of money and die. That kind of hard constraint forces focus like nothing else. As a result, founders who leave academia to do YC often tell us they got more done in the three month YC batch than the prior year.</p>\n<p>If that’s made startups sound stressful, they are, if only because so much is at stake. When you’re starting your own company, the highs are higher and the lows are lower than any regular job. If you want to learn more about what it feels like, there’s a great essay called “<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://paulgraham.com/really.html/">What Startups Are Really Like</a>”.</p>\n<p>There has <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.samaltman.com/hard-startups/">never been a better time</a> to start a biotech or hard-tech company. There is <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid9\">far more funding available</a> now than ever before, and a well developed ecosystem to support founders at every stage. Today most grad students and postdocs choose between staying in academia and getting a job in industry. We think there will increasingly be a third option: to start their own company.</p>\n<p><strong>Thanks</strong><br />\nI couldn’t have written this without the help of many YC founders who did spin-outs themselves. Special thanks to Uri Lopatin, Birgitt Boschitsch, Aaron Lazarus, Alexis Rovner, Juan Medina, Glenn Markov, John Ramunas, Wesley Wiersen, Lindsay Amos, Ravi Pamnani, and Andrew Jajack for reading drafts of this.</p>\n<h2>Notes</h2>\n<p><b id=\"footnote1\">1.</b> Separately, it’s also very important for all founders to have a <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/equity/">vesting schedule</a> for their shares. It should vest over at least four years.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid1\">↩</a><br />\n<b id=\"footnote2\">2.</b> When academic founders own too much of the company, they will find themselves unable to raise money from VCs. VCs call this \"dead equity\" or \"dead weight on the cap table\" - the phrase pretty much tells you how they think about it. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid2\">↩</a><br />\n<b id=\"footnote3\">3.</b> The names vary a little &#8211; sometimes it’s called the “office of technology licensing”, or the “innovation office”, but I’ll use this term.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid3\">↩</a><br />\n<b id=\"footnote4\">4.</b> Here are some less critical but still common terms and quick advice for them: (5) patent prosecution &#8211; you should have control of the patent filing and patent strategy, (6) sublicensing &#8211; likely important for you to be able to sublicense, (7) funding requirements &#8211; try to avoid, (8) upfront and annual fees &#8211; ok if relatively small, (9) rights to future IP coming out of the same lab &#8211; may or may not be worth it, (10) pro rata rights so the university can invest to maintain their ownership &#8211; acceptable if the university can decide quickly and if it only applies to priced rounds, not convertible securities.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid4\">↩</a><br />\n<b id=\"footnote5\">5.</b> Sometimes the terms call for a “percentage of proceeds from any liquidity event” instead. This is worse than equity because it can’t be diluted. So if your university insists on this because they can’t accept equity, it should be a very small percentage, about ⅓ of the equivalent equity percentage.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid5\">↩</a><br />\n<b id=\"footnote6\">6. </b> Another wrinkle is anti-dilution clauses where these equity percentages don’t dilute until you’ve raised $xM.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid6\">↩</a><br />\n<b id=\"footnote7\">7.</b> Related to this, some universities require a “marketing period” where they shop the invention around to other potential buyers but usually this is a formality because they rarely get interest.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid7\">↩</a><br />\n<b id=\"footnote8\">8.</b> Also, if you have a reasonable path to recreating it, that can give you leverage over a tech transfer office. If they know you are busily working on recreating it, the value of the license deal goes down every day.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid8\">↩</a><br />\n<b id=\"footnote9\">9.</b> Two easy options for doing this are http://clerky.com/ and https://stripe.com/atlas.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid9\">↩</a></p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104574","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2020-10-28T00:00:04.000-07:00","updated_at":"2023-05-25T08:51:19.000-07:00","published_at":"2020-10-28T00:00:04.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117e","name":"Biotech","slug":"biotech","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/biotech/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117e","name":"Biotech","slug":"biotech","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/biotech/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/how-to-spin-your-scientific-research-out-of-a-university-and-into-a-startup/","excerpt":"This is advice for people who have done scientific research at a university andare considering starting a company to commercialize it.At YC, we’ve funded more than 75 companies in this situation. We also recentlywent on a Bio Tour where wewent around to research universities and talked with hundreds of students andprofessors in the life sciences about commercializing their research.","reading_time":13,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71bc2","uuid":"36604070-df02-4f2d-9fcc-06aa6bb29290","title":"First YC Bio company to start clinical trials","slug":"shasqi-first-in-human-clinical-trials","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://shasqi.com/">Shasqi is the first YC Bio company to start first-in-human clinical trials for a drug.</p>\n<p>We’re very excited to share <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.shasqi.com/news/2020/10/14/shasqi-announces-click-chemistry-breakthrough-with-first-ever-human-application-in-launch-of-clinical-program/">the news</a> that Shasqi is the first YC Bio company to have a drug enter first-in-human clinical trials<sup id=\"footnoteid1\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote1\">1</a></sup>. Shasqi is developing a novel therapy for cancer that allows a chemotherapy drug to be delivered much more precisely to the tumor. They dosed two cancer patients over the last couple of weeks and their Phase 1 trial’s enrollment is progressing well.</p>\n<p>Shasqi is the first therapeutics company YC funded, back in 2015 when we launched <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/library/4L-how-biotech-startup-funding-will-change-in-the-next-10-years/">YC Bio</a>.</p>\n<p>We started YC Bio because we believed that there were brilliant scientists who wanted to start life science companies, but struggled to find investors who would fund them to get started. We didn’t know him yet, but José Mejia Oneto, the founder of Shasqi, is exactly the kind of scientist we had in mind.</p>\n<p>José has an unusual background: he is both a PhD in organic chemistry and trained in orthopaedic surgery. The idea behind Shasqi draws on both fields, which is probably why Jose was uniquely positioned to see it.</p>\n<p>In 2014, José had just left his medical residency to pursue the idea for Shasqi. To learn the basics of starting a company, he watched YC’s Startup School talks. When he heard that YC had started funding biotech startups, he applied.</p>\n<p>During the YC program, José made incredibly rapid progress. In just three months, he was able to show in a breast cancer mouse model that his new treatment approach outperformed conventional chemo. Since then, we’ve watched Shasqi continue to operate at impressive speed, closing a seed round and then a Series A, and moving rapidly through preclinical studies.</p>\n<p>As exciting as it is for their first drug to enter clinical testing, Shasqi’s vision goes much further. Its core technology, Click Chemistry Activated Protodrug Against Cancer (CAPAC), is a true platform can be used beyond chemotherapies and small molecules, into peptides, antibodies, cytokines, and other types of cancer therapies &#8211; anytime you want a cancer drug at a specific area of the body. It is based on click chemistry, a powerful technique that is used widely in the lab but has not been used in humans before. In the future, Shasqi’s technology could underlie dozens of approved drugs.</p>\n<p>We couldn’t be more proud to have gotten to play a small role in helping Shasqi get started.</p>\n<p><strong>Notes</strong><br />\n<b id=\"footnote1\">1.</b> To be specific, other YC Bio companies have had drugs in human clinical trials through research IND’s and expanded access IND’s. Shasqi is the first to have a commercial IND, which is what is required to get a drug approved for general use.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid1\">↩</a></p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104510","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2020-10-13T23:00:38.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T10:52:26.000-07:00","published_at":"2020-10-13T23:00:38.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117e","name":"Biotech","slug":"biotech","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/biotech/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117e","name":"Biotech","slug":"biotech","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/biotech/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/shasqi-first-in-human-clinical-trials/","excerpt":"Shasqi is the first YC Bio company to start first-in-humanclinical trials for a drug.We’re very excited to share the news that Shasqi is the first YC Bio company to have a drug enter first-in-humanclinical trials1.","reading_time":2,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71b9d","uuid":"50594ce8-759d-49cd-81d7-b34b67610532","title":"Responding to COVID-19","slug":"responding-to-covid-19","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p>In order to confront the COVID-19 crisis, we need to immediately mobilize global scientific and technical talent. There are already <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/covid/">a number of YC companies</a> that are helping with the crisis, and we’re looking for more startups that, if successful, could alter the trajectory of COVID-19. We’re particularly interested in startups working on:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tests / diagnostics </li>\n<li>Treatments and vaccines</li>\n<li>Equipment for hospitals</li>\n<li>Monitoring and data infrastructure</li>\n</ul>\n<p>We updated our <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs//">Request for Startups</a> page to reflect the addition of this new RFS. More information at <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs#covid\">ycombinator.com/rfs#covid</a>.</p>\n<p>Please apply to our next batch at <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/apply//">ycombinator.com/apply/. We will fast-track a handful of promising COVID-19 startups through our application process and fund them immediately.</p>\n<p>Additionally, more than 30 YC bio and healthcare companies are helping with the COVID-19 crisis, whether to produce better tests, treatments and vaccines, or resources for hospitals and health systems. Many of these companies need additional talent, introductions to experts, and capital to rapidly scale up their efforts.</p>\n<p>Today, we launched a website — a central hub — to help them reach people who can help. At <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://ycombinator.com/covid/">ycombinator.com/covid, companies have outlined their work, as well as the help they need. Please get in touch with these companies if you can be a resource.</p>\n<p>Already, a dozen investment firms have collectively pledged to invest more than $30M in companies pursuing COVID-19 programs in the coming weeks. If you are an investor and interested in participating, please reach out to the companies directly or email jared@ycombinator.com. We are happy to make introductions.</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104245","feature_image":"https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1584036561566-baf8f5f1b144?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=MnwxMTc3M3wwfDF8c2VhcmNofDF8fGNvdmlkfGVufDB8fHx8MTY3MDI3MjczNA&ixlib=rb-4.0.3&q=80&w=2000","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2020-03-25T02:00:12.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-12-05T12:39:06.000-08:00","published_at":"2020-03-25T02:00:12.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117e","name":"Biotech","slug":"biotech","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/biotech/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},{"id":"638a7d499132af0001d1aee9","name":"rfs","slug":"rfs","description":"Request for Startups","feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/rfs/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117e","name":"Biotech","slug":"biotech","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/biotech/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/responding-to-covid-19/","excerpt":"In order to confront the COVID-19 crisis, we need to immediately mobilize globalscientific and technical talent. There are already a number of YC companies that are helping with the crisis, and we’relooking for more startups that, if successful, could alter the trajectory ofCOVID-19.","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":"Photo by <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://unsplash.com/@fusion_medical_animation?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit\%22>Fusion Medical Animation</a> / <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=ghost&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit\%22>Unsplash%22},{%22id%22:%2261fe29f1c7139e0001a71b68%22,%22uuid%22:%22ec09b678-f338-4c3c-8afc-ad0295e0befd%22,%22title%22:%22YC and Ginkgo Bioworks announce new partnership for synthetic biology startups","slug":"yc-and-ginkgo-bioworks-announce-new-partnership-for-synthetic-biology-startups","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ginkgobioworks.com//">Ginkgo Bioworks</a> was the first bio company YC funded, back in summer 2014, which makes us especially delighted to <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ginkgobioworks.com/2019/09/16/building-a-platform-for-startups//">announce a new partnership between YC and Ginkgo.</p>\n<p>Ginkgo Bioworks programs cells. They program them to produce flavors, fragrances, cannabinoids, food proteins, and more. To do that, they have built the world’s most advanced compiler and debugger of genetic code for the rapid engineering of new organisms.</p>\n<p>Today, Ginkgo’s core business is programming cells for large companies like Bayer and Roche. But these are multi-million dollar deals that are out of the reach of startups. Ginkgo’s new deal will make it possible for startups to access the same platform.</p>\n<p>Ginkgo Bioworks will offer to program cells for YC companies doing qualifying synthetic biology projects on a $0 down basis. Instead of charging, Ginkgo will get equity. Their equity ownership will be based on achieving technical milestones, so it’s essentially a risk free deal for the companies. Ginkgo will effectively be making a big in-kind R&amp;D investment in these companies. Before engaging with YC companies, Ginkgo will need to vet the projects for technical feasibility and IP conflicts. But a broad range of projects will qualify, and I expect that the right companies can save years and millions of dollars by taking advantage of this deal.</p>\n<p>YC has funded many synthetic biology companies, working on products from industrial chemicals to food ingredients to cosmetics to therapeutics. In the past, companies like this had to make major investments upfront in organism engineering before they could manufacture anything. With this deal from Ginkgo, the next generation of synthetic biology companies will have the option to start by leveraging Ginkgo rather than building lab infrastructure in-house.</p>\n<p>Ginkgo providing startups access to their platform is a big step in the shift that we see towards the AWSification of biology. Ginkgo now joins YC companies like <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.culturebiosciences.com//">Culture Biosciences</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.atomwise.com//">Atomwise, and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://excepgen.com//">Excepgen that are making it possible for bio companies to use existing building blocks rather than doing everything from scratch. As this trend accelerates, it will become faster and cheaper for new bio companies to get started.</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1103931","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2019-09-15T23:00:00.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T10:53:35.000-07:00","published_at":"2019-09-15T23:00:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117e","name":"Biotech","slug":"biotech","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/biotech/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117e","name":"Biotech","slug":"biotech","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/biotech/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/yc-and-ginkgo-bioworks-announce-new-partnership-for-synthetic-biology-startups/","excerpt":"Ginkgo Bioworks was the first bio company YCfunded, back in summer 2014, which makes us especially delighted to announce anew partnership between YC and Ginkgo.Ginkgo Bioworks programs cells. They program them to produce flavors,fragrances, cannabinoids, food proteins, and more.","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71b57","uuid":"ac166956-8162-4f68-acc3-1d5705630a5c","title":"How Biotech Startup Funding Will Change in the Next 10 Years","slug":"how-biotech-startup-funding-will-change-in-the-next-10-years","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p>Back when YC was getting started about 10 years ago, Paul Graham wrote <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.paulgraham.com/webstartups.html/">some <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.paulgraham.com/future.html/">essays that predicted the way startup fundraising would change in the next decade &#8211; accurately, it turns out. Paul Graham predicted that there would be way more startups, that they’d be cheaper to start, that new kinds of investors would fund them, that founders would be more technical, and that founders would keep control of their companies. All of those seem to have come true.</p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve noticed that raising money for a biotech or other life science<sup id=\"footnoteid1\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote1\">1</a></sup> company in 2019 looks a lot like raising money for a tech company 10 years ago. Since then, fundamental forces caused fundraising for tech companies to change dramatically. I see those same forces that Paul Graham wrote about happening with biotech companies now. And I believe that they are going to change biotech fundraising very much the way they changed tech company fundraising.</p>\n<h3>How tech startup fundraising changed from 2005 to now</h3>\n<p>In 2005, when Y Combinator started, there was already a well developed ecosystem of venture capital firms in Silicon Valley and Boston. But access to those venture capital firms was limited.</p>\n<p>VCs preferred to fund companies that already seemed like a sure bet &#8211; in other words, were far along. They also preferred to fund MBAs with previous executive experience and shied away from unproven teams with technical founders. Because they had a lock on the funding market, they asked for onerous financial terms and often replaced founders with favored executives. The only model of institutional seed funding was the “business incubator” model, where VC firms would fund well-connected founders they knew and incubate them in their office.</p>\n<p>Then, the cost to start a tech company plummeted. It plummeted because new infrastructure was created: a combination of open source software, modern web frameworks, SaaS developer tools, cloud hosting, and better distribution channels. This meant that a lot of technical founders, who couldn&#8217;t raise money from VCs off a PowerPoint, were able to launch a product and get users with minimal funding. Once they had proven that their idea had merit, they could use their traction to raise funding.</p>\n<p>Companies like this now only needed a small amount of money to get started, but there wasn’t any place to get it, because institutional investors didn’t make small investments. This was the key insight that led to the creation of YC, and also to the hundreds of institutional seed funds that sprung up to take advantage of the new opportunity. Easy access to flexible, institutional seed funding led to an explosion of tech startups, and today this is the default path for tech startups to get started.</p>\n<p>Because these companies wouldn’t raise VC until they were much further along and had leverage, the balance of power shifted. Founders increasingly retained control of their company. Investors lost the power to fire founders and bring in favored executives. And when they did, they realized something surprising: despite their inexperience, the founders were often the right people to run the company.<sup id=\"footnoteid2\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote2\">2</a></sup></p>\n<h3>What’s happening now with biotech companies</h3>\n<p>Today, early stage biotech funding is dominated by the “venture creation model”. In the venture creation model, the VC firm creates the company. They have an initial idea and put together a team of favored executives, often from their pool of entrepreneurs-in-residence, to run it. The startup is typically incubated out of the VC’s offices. The VC invests a large amount of money upfront and takes a controlling ownership stake.</p>\n<p>Just as VC-incubated tech companies made sense when tech companies were expensive to start, this model made sense when the cost to start a biotech company was high. Until recently, no one could get anything done before a VC wrote a $10M check, so this was the only way to get started.</p>\n<p>But that’s no longer the case. Just like new infrastructure brought down the cost to start a tech company, new infrastructure has brought down the cost of doing biology dramatically. Today, founders can make real progress proving a concept for a biotech company for much less, often as little as $100K. There are <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://wuxibiologics.com/">low <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://evotec.com/">cost <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://chempartner.com/">CROs that will do scientific work for a fee. Companies like <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.scienceexchange.com//">Science Exchange</a> make access to CROs and scientific supplies instantaneous and cost effective to small companies. It’s easy to rent <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://mbcbiolabs.com//">fully equipped</a> <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.berkeleybiolabs.com//">lab space</a> by the bench, and there are <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.quartzy.com//">companies to help you <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.happilabs.org//">stock it</a>. Affordable lab robots from companies like <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://opentrons.com//">OpenTrons make it possible to automate batch experiments, and computational drug discovery from companies like <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.atomwise.com//">Atomwise allows some experiments to be done completely in silico. Companies like <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.cognitionip.com//">Cognition IP</a> are bringing down the cost of filing patents, and companies like <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.enzyme.com//">Enzyme are streamlining FDA submission.</p>\n<p>Because of this infrastructure, bio companies routinely clear major scientific hurdles during YC’s short program. Often therapeutics companies are able to show that their concept is effective in animal models. Diagnostic companies can show success with human samples. Synthetic biology companies successfully engineer cell lines.</p>\n<p>I’ll give a couple of examples from recent YC companies.</p>\n<p>In 2015, Jose Mejia Oneto was an MD/PhD who left orthopaedic surgery residency to pursue an idea for a way to localize the delivery of chemotherapy. When Jose applied to YC, he had developed the technique in academia but hadn&#8217;t yet tried applying it to therapeutics in animals. When he was admitted to YC, he founded <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.shasqi.com//">Shasqi. Using just the funding from YC, he was able to show in less than three months in a breast cancer mouse model that his localized delivery outperformed conventional chemo.</p>\n<p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://athelas.com//">Athelas makes a device that does at-home blood tests for oncology patients, using a new computer vision based technique. The founders Tanay and Deepika started the company while still in college and were able to make a working prototype with just $40K in investment. During YC they were able to run a 350 patient initial study that showed very good results. Their device is now FDA cleared, and they’re serving thousands of patients.<sup id=\"footnoteid3\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote3\">3</a></sup></p>\n<p>Of course, running clinical trials for drugs remains very expensive<sup id=\"footnoteid4\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote4\">4</a></sup>, and biotech companies will ultimately need to raise tons of money to deliver on their initial promise. But this is not too different from tech companies. The biggest YC (software) companies have each raised over $1B. The important part is that these companies were able to <em>get started</em> with less than $100K and to de-risk their idea enough to raise more money later.</p>\n<h3>Predictions for the future</h3>\n<p>Because you can start cheaply, it’s now possible to start a biotech company the way people start a tech company. By raising money incrementally, rather than a giant amount upfront, you can keep control of your company. And you can work on your own idea, not just ideas that VCs come up with.</p>\n<p>This new path has drawn a new kind of biotech founder. Many of the biotech founders we see at YC are grad students or postdocs<sup id=\"footnoteid5\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnote5\">5</a></sup>. Previously their career options were to stay in academia or to join a big pharma company. Starting their own company is now a viable third option.</p>\n<p>If this plays out the way it did in 2005, we&#8217;ll see an explosion in the funding options for biotech companies. Many traditional biotech investors are still looking for the controlling legal terms that went out of vogue in tech in the early 2000&#8217;s. But just like what happened with tech investing, a new crop of biotech and tech/biotech crossover funds have created a vibrant new bio seed investor ecosystem. As a result, YC bio companies now typically raise $1-5M seed rounds after each batch.</p>\n<p>Even more exciting, this would mean we&#8217;re still at the beginning of an explosion in the number of biotech companies. And more of these companies will look like tech companies: instead of being run by VCs and hired execs, they’ll be run by the founders who care about their ideas, and who will sustain that passion building companies they love and that change the world for the better.</p>\n<p><strong>Notes</strong><br />\n<b id=\"footnote1\">1.</b> It’s common to use the word “biotech” to describe specifically therapeutics companies. I use it this way as well, but most of this post applies to all life science companies &#8211; anything related to biology.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid1\">↩</a><br />\n<b id=\"footnote2\">2.</b> Actually, this trend started with top VCs earlier, basically for the reasons Ben Horowitz <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://a16z.com/2010/04/28/why-we-prefer-founding-ceos//">wrote about</a> in 2010. But I think the rise of institutional seed funding accelerated it.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid2\">↩</a><br />\n<b id=\"footnote3\">3.</b> The point here is not that these companies will ultimately succeed—we don&#8217;t know that yet. My point is that with just a seed investment and a few months, they managed to go as far along the curve as companies that had to raise millions of dollars before.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid3\">↩</a><br />\n<b id=\"footnote4\">4.</b> Though companies like YC’s <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.curebase.com//">Curebase and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://biocomcro.org/cro/nucleus-network//">Nucleus in Australia are chipping away at that.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid4\">↩</a><br />\n<b id=\"footnote5\">5.</b> Certainly not all of them. We’ve also backed many founders who came out of industry, along with MD’s and faculty.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"#footnoteid5\">↩</a></p>\n<p><em>Thanks to Dan Gackle, Abe Heifets, Elizabeth Iorns, Stephanie Simon, Geoff Ralston, Diego Rey, Uri Lopatin, Ethan Perlstein, Joe Betts-Lacroix, Jose Mejia Oneto, Tanay Tandon, and Thomas Folliard for reading drafts of this.</em></p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1103819","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2019-08-05T02:00:15.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T10:53:56.000-07:00","published_at":"2019-08-05T02:00:15.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117e","name":"Biotech","slug":"biotech","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/biotech/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7116d","name":"Essay","slug":"essay","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/essay/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117e","name":"Biotech","slug":"biotech","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/biotech/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/how-biotech-startup-funding-will-change-in-the-next-10-years/","excerpt":"Back when YC was getting started about 10 years ago, Paul Graham wrote some essays that predicted the way startupfundraising would change in the next decade – accurately, it turns out.","reading_time":6,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71b3a","uuid":"46e0345d-f1ea-4a18-ab1c-1da88b2205d2","title":"YC Partners With Atomwise to Fund More Bio Companies","slug":"yc-partners-with-atomwise-to-fund-more-bio-companies","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p>In the last 10 years, the tools for studying biology have become much less expensive and more widely available. This has made it possible for new startups to do serious research right from the start, and it is leading to an explosion of biotech startups.</p>\n<p>One of the key tools that has brought down the cost of developing drugs is computational drug discovery. Until recently, the primary way drug companies found new drugs was by trying millions of chemical compounds, hoping one would work, and laboriously iterating their way to a drug. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.atomwise.com//">Atomwise (which is a YC company) is able to do those experiments in simulation on a computer, testing billions of compounds dramatically cheaper, faster, and far beyond the capability of physical screening.</p>\n<p>About two years ago, Atomwise started the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.atomwise.com/aims-awards//">Artificial Intelligence Molecular Screen (AIMS) Awards program</a>, which I think is a game changer. AIMS gives away Atomwise&#8217;s drug discovery service for free to researchers in academia. Today, when researchers at a university discover a promising opportunity for a new drug (in scientific terms, a &#8220;target&#8221;), they&#8217;re stuck in a catch-22. They need to raise funding to pay for drug discovery to find the right drug, but it&#8217;s hard to raise investment until they&#8217;ve found a compelling lead molecule! AIMS solves the catch-22.</p>\n<p>AIMS has already helped over 200 researchers discover small molecule leads in diverse areas, including oncology, infectious diseases, metabolic disorders, and neurology. I believe this is the tip of the iceberg, and AIMS can unlock thousands of promising therapeutics ideas that would otherwise never have been developed.</p>\n<p>Once researchers work with AIMS to develop drug candidates, the next step is to turn the research into a company. That&#8217;s where YC comes in. We&#8217;re going to work with Atomwise to give interested AIMS teams an expedited path to joining YC. For AIMS teams that want YC funding, we’ll guide them through the YC application process and prioritize their applications. For AIMS teams that we accept, we&#8217;ll invest in them, help them incorporate, and help them with the initial stages of commercialization &#8211; everything from figuring out their regulatory strategy to getting lab space.</p>\n<p>In addition, Atomwise is going to make the free drug discovery service they pioneered in the AIMS program available as a benefit to all YC companies. This should help any YC company to develop a small molecule program faster than any other existing option.</p>\n<p>We believe this is the golden age of drug discovery, and we’re thrilled to partner with Atomwise. The <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://atomwise.wpengine.com//">application deadline for Atomwise’s AIMS Awards program is May 31— and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/apply//">YC applications</a> are always open.</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1103627","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2019-04-28T22:59:37.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T10:55:11.000-07:00","published_at":"2019-04-28T22:59:37.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117e","name":"Biotech","slug":"biotech","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/biotech/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71097","name":"Jared Friedman","slug":"jared-friedman","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Jared.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Jared is Managing Director, Software and Group Partner at YC. He was cofounder of Scribd, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and grew to be one of the top 100 sites on the web.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/jared-friedman/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7117e","name":"Biotech","slug":"biotech","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/biotech/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/yc-partners-with-atomwise-to-fund-more-bio-companies/","excerpt":"In the last 10 years, the tools for studying biology have become much lessexpensive and more widely available. This has made it possible for new startupsto do serious research right from the start, and it is leading to an explosionof biotech startups.One of the key tools that has brought down the cost of developing drugs iscomputational drug discovery.","reading_time":2,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71b1b","uuid":"59bcb984-6300-4194-8911-3f9802ceab9c","title":"Intern at a YC Company","slug":"intern-at-a-yc-company-2019","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p>If you&#8217;re an ambitious undergrad or graduate student with an engineering background, YC can help you get an internship at a YC-backed company. You apply once, and your profile will be sent to over 50 YC startups that are looking for summer interns.</p>\n<p>The 50 companies participating in our <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com//">Work at a Startup</a> internship program range from two people to 1,000+. They’re all well-funded, growing rapidly, and have competitive salaries for interns. They’re working on all kinds of cool new things — self-driving cars, drones, bioinformatics, fashion tech, and much more.</p>\n<p>Working at a startup will be an intense experience. It’s a unique opportunity to learn while doing real, important work. As an intern at a startup, you won’t get stuck on a harmless side project; you’ll jump into fast-paced, mission critical work from the start. At the end of the summer, you will look back and see your code running in production and be able to point to the features you built.</p>\n<p>If you think you might want to join a startup full-time (or start your own someday), working at an early stage company is the best way to find out what it’s like, and an internship is an especially good deal because you’re only committing for 3 months. We know that interns learn a lot of valuable skills at our startups, so we’ll give special consideration to anyone who interns at a YC company and goes on to apply to YC as a founder.</p>\n<p>When you work at a YC company, you become part of a larger, supportive community of companies, and we want interns at YC companies to have this experience, too. We will be hosting a number of events and programs over the summer to introduce interns to each other and to the broader YC community in Silicon Valley.</p>\n<p>Specifically, we’ll be organizing:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>An intern dinner at YC’s headquarters, where some of YC’s top founders will tell the stories of their companies</li>\n<li>A “startup crawl” in SF to see the offices of various YC companies</li>\n<li>A Work at a Startup Expo over the summer, where 25+ YC startups will present career opportunities at YC’s headquarters</li>\n<li>Tech talks exclusive for YC summer interns at various YC companies</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The companies hiring interns are predominantly in the SF Bay Area and NYC, but we also have open internships in Atlanta, Chicago, Toronto, India, London and Malaysia. The events YC organizes will be in the Bay Area.</p>\n<p>Finding summer housing in the Bay Area is usually a big chore, so we’re excited to be rolling out a program (more details soon) with some great YC companies to make it easy: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.padpiper.com//">PadPiper, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://starcity.com//">Starcity, and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://zeusliving.com//">Zeus. To reach more students, we’re working with <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.insidesherpa.com//">InsideSherpa, a YC company that creates online training programs for college students. If you want more practice the types of tasks you might take on at a startup, you can enroll in the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.insidesherpa.com/virtual-internships/prototype/oRMogWRHeewqHzA7u/College Students: Learn how to work at a YC startup/">YC &#8216;Learn to Work at a Start-Up&#8217; Training Course</a> on InsideSherpa <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.insidesherpa.com/virtual-internships/prototype/oRMogWRHeewqHzA7u/College Students: Learn how to work at a YC startup/">here.

If you’re interested, you can see the companies hiring interns and apply with a common application at <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://workatastartup.com/internships/">https://workatastartup.com/internships.

Surbhi Sarna's new book on entrepreneurship

YC Group Partner Surbhi Sarna has written a book called Without a Doubt, and today it goes on sale.Without a Doubt tells the incredible ...

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Jared Friedman

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Announcing Startup School 2022

Today, we’re opening up registration for Startup School 2022, a live, online course where YC Group Partners and successful YC founders teach you how to build a billion dollar company.

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Jared Friedman

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Ginkgo Bioworks (S14) is going public today

Ginkgo Bioworks is thefirst biotech company YC funded, and today they are going public. To celebratetheir IPO, here’s the story of how Ginkgo ...

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Jared Friedman

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