Carl Weissman Biotech, VC, people today Accelerator Slowed Down in 2009, Expects to Rev Again Up in 2010 Luke Timmerman 12710 Any honest evaluation of Seattle biotech over the previous 5 decades would have to count Accelerator as among the vivid spots. But the previous yr or so may be unusually quiet on the biotech startup incubator. Accelerator lately endured a six-month dry spell when it didn’t see any exciting new investment ideas enter its pipeline, according to CEO Carl Weissman.
“We can survive these kind of times easily, because what the board essentially expects is that the quality [of investments] never goes down,
Microsoft Office Familiale And étudiants 2010,” Weissman said when I stopped by his office on Seattle’s Eastlake Avenue last week. “We don’t should lower our standards on quality in order to satisfy a quota.”
For those who aren’t familiar, Accelerator is one of several central players inside the local life sciences innovation scene. Biotech pioneer Leroy Hood, along with a number of prominent venture firms, founded Accelerator in 2003 to provide some lab space and operational support for scientific entrepreneurs with potentially groundbreaking ideas that have to have a little much more proof before they can secure serious venture dollars. Accelerator has raised a total of $43.8 million, some of which it has put to work in 10 startups so far. The roster includes four Seattle companies that have emerged and raised a combined $144 million since graduating—VLST, Theraclone Sciences, Allozyne, and Integrated Diagnostics.
That last company, known as InDi for brief, is the most modern startup with roots at Accelerator to score venture bucks. It was known as Homestead Clinical in a earlier incarnation,
office 2007 Pro Plus key, and it didn’t win follow-on financing from Accelerator’s primary VC backers, but it emerged in October anyway with a $30 million commitment from outside VCs largely because of Hood’s “force of will,” Weissman says. OK, so InDi can be another notch while in the Accelerator belt. But I wondered about the other three startups that were founded at Accelerator inside the past two years—PharmSelex (formerly known as GPC-Rx) in June 2008, Mirina in August 2008, and Xori in Can of 2009. All three are still operating, and Weissman wouldn’t say much about their future prospects other than, “We’re actually pleased together with the progress from two out for the three.”
So we’ll really need to sit tight a whilst longer to see whether any of those three emerge, or fade away. What was extra surprising to me is what he said about the slowdown in the flow of new ideas for companies. From about June by means of December, “there wasn’t much,
Kaufen Office 2007,” within the way of exciting new scientific ideas coming in to Accelerator, Weissman says, even though it has historically been inundated with pitches. That improved a bit last month, when Accelerator found three new ideas that it considered “very exciting,” Weissman says.
The feast-and-famine cycle at Accelerator “is to get expected,” he says,
microsoft office 2007 Ultimate serial, and that is why the organization doesn’t have a hard quota …Next Page » Luke Timmerman is the National Biotech Editor of Xconomy, and the Editor of Xconomy Seattle. You can e-mail him at ltimmerman@xconomy.com,
office 2007 Professional Plus keygen, or follow him at twitter.comldtimmerman.