[dannykwells]

As someone who leads a life science tech company and has participated in all fund raising rounds since our pre-seed, let me say: the market right now for life science/tech cos is so hot, a 2.5M pre-money valuation for your idea is likely low.

Also, in science there are federal grants, such as SBIR, which can be for even more (1M), are non-dilutive, and are very gettable.

So this would really be a fall back if you couldn't raise a better round nor get an SBIR...and if those are both the case, it might not be much of a company.

[throwawaygh]

> Also, in science there are federal grants, such as SBIR, which can be for even more (1M), are non-dilutive, and are very gettable.

Yeah, this was my initial reaction: but tech transfer $$ is stupid easy to get, especially as a follow-up to a previously funded grant.... who's the market?

Not that I really care, since it's not my money and I'm far from an expert on such things, but "SBIRs and University innovation offices with preferential terms get all the good ideas and leave us with the bottom barrel shit" seems like a pretty big source of risk for this fellowship :/

I'm guessing the network provided by this program is way more effective than what you'd get from a typical university's innovation/tech transfer office, so maybe I'm wrong. But in some sense my evaluation of this program would be that I'm trading a decent sized chunk of the company for access to investors and advisors. Which, I guess, isn't necessarily a bad trade. But I figure this is how most people with access to grant money will think about it.

[mattkrisiloff]

Definitely agree that on a team by team basis, there are opportunities to raise money out there that can be less dilutive -- very much might make more sense to do that than apply to work with us if you're in the right position for it too.

We like to think that our program isn't just about the funding on our end but also the mentorship, and there's value to that too (as we've been building our life science startups, we've found there aren't many traditional investors that have built their own life science companies and know the ins and outs of the experience).

Generally speaking, we don't want to be setting custom arrangements for everyone because we think it's super important that people think of each other as peers and that we aren't treating some people better than others.