Cambridge firm Flagship Ventures just announced a series of corporate partnerships to flesh out early stage funding for its portfolio companies and scale its in-house accelerator, VentureLabs.
It just teamed up with AstraZeneca, Nestlé Health Science and Bayer CropScience, using each of the companies’ market knowledge – and pipeline for product development and commercialization.
The trio also have invested in Flagships’s fifth fund, worth $537 million, that closed this past March. The deal will involve allowing access to direct investments, licensing, joint ventures and acquisitions. Fierce Biotech writes:
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
The broad plan for each collaboration is to marry the hard-won expertise corporate giants are so good at amassing with the nimble nature of the startup world, matching the leadership of what Flagship calls its “protocompanies” with experts from AstraZeneca, Bayer and Nestlé. The idea is to create a safe space where innovators can bounce around ideas, bringing out the best from each party.
“I would say that expertise does not necessarily engender creativity,” Afeyan said. “But creativity without any expertise can be pretty wasteful, because you really don’t know which way to apply it.” And VentureLabs, with the help of its new partners, will ideally combine the best of both worlds, he said.
