IndieBio (part of SOSV) is a biotech investor and accelerator that has started shifting more and more toward climate tech in recent years. The current cohort is batch 13, for fall 2022, and we’ve taken a closer look at the five that stood out the most.
IndieBio tells us that this batch is going big on diversity, both in terms of gender and geography. The cohort attracted companies from four countries — Brazil, Israel, Turkey and the U.S. are all represented — and 62% of the CEOs in this batch are women. Perhaps predictably, there’s less diversity in the education levels of the IndieBio founders, with 17 Ph.D.s, and all founders hold advanced academic degrees.
The companies are extraordinarily health-forward, with nine focusing on the health of the planet and four tackling challenges in human health. They’re approaching the problems from a bunch of different angles, including materials, foods, industrial biotech, therapeutics and diagnostics.
In a post-pandemic world, the accelerator has seen some changes to its program, too. Before 2020, all companies were expected to travel to San Francisco for four months, but those days are gone. Today, the 13 cohort companies are part of a hybrid program.
“It’s more than just the money,” managing director Po Bronson said in an email to TechCrunch, highlighting the accelerator’s “smart money” chops, “although the fact that we doubled our investment offering to $525,000 doesn’t hurt.”
Let’s take a look at the five most interesting companies in this IndieBio cohort — and what we love about ’em.