In this week’s episode of The Data Minute, Peter Walker (Head of Insights at Carta) sits down with Darren Cooke (Executive Director, Berkeley Life Sciences Entrepreneurship Center) for an enlightening discussion about some emerging trends with biotech companies: Namely, while pharma and biotech currently rank as the 5th most-funded type of pre-seed startups, they simultaneously enjoy favorable valuations to other SaaS-type businesses.

This leads Peter and Darren into a conversation about biotech, the challenges and differences for biotech founders when raising seed capital, and of course, Darren’s history and experience leading Berkeley’s accelerator program, SkyDeck — one of the most celebrated accelerators in the startup world.

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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:44 Darren Cooke, Berkeley Life Sciences Entrepreneurship Center
02:05 Berkeley SkyDeck
04:39 The pre-seed experience for biotech companies
08:22 Regulation, reimbursement, and outside funding
10:29 Round sizes in the biotech industry
12:27 Investor interest in biotech
16:42 The five stakeholders biotech companies need to know
21:15 Pre-seed fundraising and priced rounds
23:27 Demo day
25:52 Words of advice

This presentation contains general information only and eShares, Inc. dba Carta, Inc. (“Carta”) is not, by means of this publication, rendering accounting, business, financial, investment, legal, tax, or other professional advice or services, and is for informational purposes only.  This presentation is not a substitute for such professional advice or services nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business or interests. © 2024 eShares, Inc., dba Carta, Inc. All rights reserved.