Top 10 Best Online Platforms to Find an Investor for Your Startup 2020 Part 2: Biotech
By: Chris Boucher
Tags: Biotechnology, Startup, Equity, Investors, Funding

Top 10 Best Online Platforms to Find an Investor for Your Startup 2020 Part 2: Biotech

Sourcing money for a biotech startup company can be a challenge

There are plenty of options out there, but it can be hard to make the best assessment for your business. From family offices to business angels to crowdfunding to grants, it can be difficult working out what type of investment to go for.

After all, every company has unique requirements when it comes to funding. If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed when it comes to finding the best investor for your biotech company, then you might want to read below.

As a private request from one of my readers, I decided to do my best to put down 10 best online platforms to help you find an investor for your startup in biotech. You can check the first part more dedicated to hardware startups.

10. Hyde Park Angel Network

Hyde Park Angel Network consists of a group of investors that assist with young startup companies that need funding for development. Impressively, they’re the busiest angel investor team in the Midwest, boasting over 130 angel investors.

The main sectors that they invest in include industrial technology, information technology, healthcare services, and financial services.

Their blog is also pretty useful for budding entrepreneurs. It features two new posts a month that highlight fundraising tips and growth advice.

9. AngelList

AngelList prides itself on being the world’s largest startup community. The website was designed to assist tech startups to gain funding, recruit staff members, and launch their startup all with the help of angel investors.

AngelList is very popular among fresh startups that are hoping to grow and it’s super easy for investors to find brands to help out using the website.

The blog offers some interesting insight for entrepreneurs too. It focuses on investing and angel investors. Some of the articles and advice includes how to recruit a remote team and how to welcome diversity into your hiring strategy, for example.

8. Tech Coast Angels

Tech Coast Angels is an investment firm located out of Los Angeles. The group involves 263 investors. It helps startup brands with funding, mentoring, connections, and assistance with growing their business.

These services are provided to startups in a variety of industries. These include biotech, life sciences, software, and information technology.

Navigate to their website and you’ll discover exhaustive entrepreneur resources to help you build your brand. This includes a blog that’s regularly updated twice a month.

These posts focus on topics such as thinking to the future when investing and what many angel investors expect from helping with funding.

Tech Coast Angels also offer helpful social media posts on Facebook and Twitter, offering regular advice and updates.

7. Golden Seeds LLC

Golden Seeds LLC is unique on this list as the brand focuses on offering investments to startup companies that have been established by or are currently run by women.

The main industries that their angel investors assist with include technology, software, life sciences, and consumer goods.

Learn more about the company and the angel investors behind it by heading to the blog page on the website. New posts are published every month to help entrepreneurs on their business journey.

Boasting around 190 investors, Golden Seeds LLC is a popular investment company with more than 2,000 followers spanning on Facebook and Twitter. Follow these accounts regularly to discover more about the types of businesses Golden Seeds LLC’s angel investors typically help.

6. SeedInvest

SeedInvest is a popular angel investment platform that works with health tech startups. Another unique option, SeedInvest is a crowdfunding website that raises investments from people who would like to help fund young startups.

Every startup put forward is thoroughly vetted before investments are made through crowdfunding.

Head to SeedInvest’s blog page to learn more about the world of startups, with around one new blog post published each week. Topics range from the advantages of a diverse portfolio to how to execute a successful startup exit.

5. Life Science Angels

Life Science Angels is another popular angel investor platform. The group focuses on helping startups in sectors like biotech, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and diagnostics.

What’s great is that lots of angel investors on this platform are successful founders or senior executives of brands in the healthcare industry. So, if you receive funding from one of these angel investors, you know it’s a good sign.

When you browse their website you’ll soon discover how to apply for funding. There are also valuable tips available to help you apply so you can submit a more successful application.

There’s also plenty of information on the successful investments the angels have worked with in the past, so you can gain a feel of the types of startups the group usually help with.

The blog also contains some insight to help you grow your startup.

4. Wefunder

Wefunder is an investing website assisting entrepreneurs in a variety of different fields. One of the focuses is biotechnology, with a whole website dedicated to those seeking appropriate funding.

Wefunder recognizes that hacking biology is becoming more useful and accessible. They believe that the future of life sciences will be led by innovative scientists that use technology to ensure that biology moves faster.

Wefunder’s investors help fund scientist founders in budding startup companies, hoping to help the entrepreneurs and scientists that will lead the way in how we develop with biology.

Wefunder has a process in how they select projects to invest in. First, the founders are interviewed. Then the specific market outlined is researched.

Next, Wefunder delves into the disclosure and finances and creates a deal memo. If Wefunder believes they should invest, there’s a negotiation and they decide whether to personally invest or not.

3. Y Combinator

Y Combinator is a platform that offers seed funding for startup companies. Seed funding refers to the earliest point of venture funding. It pays a brand’s expenses while they’re getting started in the world of business.

In 2014, Y Combinator first funded a biotech company called Ginkgo Bioworks. Since then, Y Combinator has expanded into all fields of biotech and life sciences. Today, Y Combinator proudly assists seed-stage biotech brands more than any other investor.

Y Combinator believes that there’s a revolution happening in biotech which is similar to what happened to software in the 90s. That’s why they aim to make investments in so many budding businesses.

Costs and cycles have been reduced for biotech, which means that there are great opportunities for startups to create innovative work.

While Y Combinator also funds brands that are more established, the company feels most comfortable helping startups at their earliest stage. Ideally, that’s when they’re ready to progress with university research.

Y Combinator covers types of businesses across the whole life sciences realm. This includes investing in businesses in synthetic biology, digital health, food technology, therapeutics, and more.

2. Angels in Medcity

As we know, biotech and life sciences can be more difficult than other industries for angel investing. One of the main reasons is because a return on investment usually takes longer. For example, it may take between eight to ten years compared to five to seven years for other industries like artificial intelligence.

Yet as we’ve established, many angel investors are drawn to startups working in biotech and life sciences because of the positive social impact these brands can have. That’s as well as the potential big returns, of course.

Angels in Medcity is a program designed specifically to link business angels with life science startups for this very reason. Every investor in the group is interested in funding companies in biotech.

Based in London, Angels in Medcity focuses on funding startups in diagnostics, digital health, and medical device technologies. Potential investors are brought together with experts in the field of life sciences to help advise both new and more experienced investors in choosing a project to fund.

The main aim of the company is to build an understanding for potential investors in the life sciences realm and to support startup brands in biotech to help grow their business.

1. Aescuvest

Recently, crowdfunding has become a popular option for many new brands and projects to have a kickstart with funding. In a relatively short amount of time, the biotech and life sciences industry has found great opportunity in equity crowdfunding.

Equity crowdfunding allows biotech brands to raise up to around one million dollars by drawing a large pool of small-ticket investors.

With the popularity of the model, the German crowd investment platform Aescuvest recently designed the first pan-European crowdfunding website focusing on businesses in life sciences and biotech.

The platform works to group various investors. The startup brand only has to work with one entity, rather than many of them which can result in big savings in terms of time and legal fees.

Excitingly, a biotech startup could be funded over 10 million dollars using this method.

Conclusion

The biotech industry is still not as equal as other industries in terms of funding opportunities but it has and still is changing step by step. With our society becoming more and more aware of how important the biotech startups are for our future, surely investors will turn their investments into the same direction.

If you think a platform is missing in here and/or you have a platform and wants to be listed on it, feel free to reach out to me!