Fifty Years, a deep-tech investor, has raised $90 million from tens of “unicorn” founders – TechCrunch
Fifty Years, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based outfit with a portfolio that’s already rife with largely deep tech firms — many with an excellent story to inform about how they’ll have an effect on the surroundings — simply closed its third and latest fund with $90 million in capital commitments.
The cash isn’t coming from simply wherever. Agency cofounder Seth Bannon tells us the agency aimed to recruit founders of 20 so-called unicorn firms in order that they might have a vested curiosity in — and will often advise — its portfolio firms. He says that Fifty Years wound up as an alternative with 44 “unicorn” founders, together with from Spotify, Github, Skype, Supercell, Minecraft, Dropbox, Unity, Klarna, Zendesk, Kahoot, and Upstart.
A few of these founders have been backed by Fifty Years, in actual fact, together with the cofounders of the artificial biology firm Solugen, which is now valued by traders at $1.8 billion and which acquired its first examine from Fifty Years; Astranis, a geostationary communications satellite tv for pc operator that’s at the moment valued at $1.4 billion and which additionally acquired its first examine from Fifty Years; and Opentrons, a maker of inexpensive lab robots that’s now valued at $1.8 billion (which Fifty Years backed as a part of a broader seed spherical).
Certainly, Fifty Years — which is run by Bannon; agency cofounder Ela Madej; and 6 different full-time individuals, together with an artificial biologist — has a reasonably good story to inform about itself for such a younger agency.
First, it has an undeniably attention-grabbing portfolio. Along with area satellites and sustainable chemical compounds, the agency’s bets embrace Upside Meals, the meals tech firm that was previously often known as Memphis Meats (and whose valuation can also be estimated to now be within the billion-dollar vary). It’s additionally an investor in Varda, an area manufacturing firm that has raised $51 million and plans to make issues in area to ship again to earth. Explains Bannon: “There are issues like protein therapeutics, telecommunications fibers, and semiconductors that, as a result of gravity interferes [with their production], you’d fairly make with out gravity.”
Additionally distinctive, seemingly, is Fifty Years’s potential to attach with scientists and to assist them begin firms. It isn’t a matter of Bannon and Madej hanging out in school parking heaps or tech switch places of work however as an alternative creating initiatives that, whereas maybe gimmicky, are additionally useful for everybody concerned.
One among these is a PhD-to-VC program whereby Fifty Years, with the assistance of its broader networks, helps to coach PhDs (in addition to doctoral program drop-outs) concerning the ins and outs of enterprise capital over 10 weeks in order that they could discover their approach into the trade. The teachers get to study the lingo and processes which are half and parcel of the enterprise world, whereas Fifty Years will get to know the teachers.
Fifty Years additionally has a “tremendous nerdy” podcast known as the “Translation Podcast,” whereby the lead creator of a breakthrough paper in biology is requested to undergo his or her background and what they intention to perform with their analysis. And it has a platform, a Slack channel, and organizes in-person regional occasions for a group that it has dubbed the “Fifty 50,” which encompasses 50 prime biologists from labs throughout North America who’re offered content material on entrepreneurship — in addition to companionship.
“We do that as a result of we heard from prime biology PhDs that academia will be very isolating and that it’s onerous to satisfy individuals who even share your pursuits,” says Bannon. (It additionally heightens the “innovation stream” of the agency, he provides.)
A connection relationship again to Y Combinator, which each Bannon and Madej handed by way of, additionally helps. For instance, it was by way of YC that they met Cover, a fast-growing maker of modular properties an ADUs.
As for the place that new capital may stream, Bannon says that artificial biology stays a significant space of curiosity, thanks largely to Solugen. “We’ve grown extra lively over time as a result of the extra an organization begins to breakout, the extra learnings you develop over time primarily based on supporting that firm, and the larger your community in that area grows,” he explains.
Madej can also be “taking a deep dive into Web3 at the moment,” says Bannon. “We predict sufficient core infrastructure has been constructed to permit individuals to construct purposes that create huge optimistic social impression.”
Fifty Years will doubtless discover keen co-investors alongside the way in which. Not solely does Fifty Years have a portfolio it may brag about now, however not like in 2015, when “we felt very lonely,” says Bannon, it’s “not fringe to say you may make nice returns and make an impression. A ton of allies have come into this area.”
That’s excellent information, so far as he’d involved. “We don’t view anybody as aggressive. We love working with Lowercarbon Capital. Chris [Sacca] has been an LP since our second fund and we love what they’ve been doing in local weather. We like one other agency, Boom Capital, in addition to Cantos, which roughly completely companions with deep-tech impression firms.”
There are additionally a rising variety of better-known enterprise outfits that “like actually onerous, actually formidable startups,” resembling Founders Fund, he notes. Even nonetheless, says Bannon, there’s far more for the taking. With regards to deep-tech funding corporations, he says, in his view, “We most likely want 10 occasions extra of them.”
Fifty Years now has $200 million in belongings beneath administration altogether.
Above, Fifty Years cofounders Ela Madej and Seth Bannon.
