The immediate quote below the email images is:
"(In fact, the vast majority of pitches I’ve seen probably fall under this category and these only take a few seconds to read and archive, so this is how you get to see 20k pitches!)"
So the majority of pitches you see are spam pitches? As a former grad student in chemistry/biophysics, I would see no reason to read that pitch as a spam. In fact, at first I thought it was quite liberating that 500startups would entertain non-traditional startups trying to tackle real-life hard problems in the physical science industries instead of another startup in the food delivery or cleaning services space, and then the response from your partner was, shall we say, discouraging. You might want to edit your post since it doesn't paint 500startups in a good light.
So the majority of pitches you see are spam pitches? As a former grad student in chemistry/biophysics, I would see no reason to read that pitch as a spam. In fact, at first I thought it was quite liberating that 500startups would entertain non-traditional startups trying to tackle real-life hard problems in the physical science industries instead of another startup in the food delivery or cleaning services space, and then the response from your partner was, shall we say, discouraging. You might want to edit your post since it doesn't paint 500startups in a good light.