image

Healthtech startup Mesh Bio in Singapore raises $1.8 M in seed funding

by Portfolio Company News

Singapore-based healthtech startup Mesh Bio has raised $1.8 million (SGD2.4 million) in Seed funding, led by deep tech investors Elev8.vc and Enterprise Singapore’s investment arm Seeds Capital, along with Citrine Capital and Tael Partners.

The funds will be used to accelerate the rollout of Mesh Bio’s solution, DARA® – a predictive analytics and clinical workflow automation solution for healthcare providers – in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. The funding will also support clinical partnerships and collaborations.

read more.

image

Mesh Bio raises US$1.8M seed to help doctors predict diseases before they occur

by Portfolio Company News

Mesh Bio, a Singaporean health-tech startup, has raised US$1.8 million in a seed funding round, led by deep-tech investor Elev8.vc and SEEDS capital.

Wealth management firm Citrine Capital as well as Singaporean VC firm Tael Partners also joined the round. 

Mesh Bio intends to use the capital to accelerate the rollout of its solution, DARA, for healthcare providers in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. The funds will also support the startup’s clinical partnerships and collaborations.

Mesh Bio intends to expand its solution further across Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.

 

read more.

scaled_full_7e07221de65eada57742

Your Brain, With a USB Port in It: Elon Musk’s Neuralink Vision Divides Experts

by Portfolio Company News

Your brain, with a USB-C port in it. That’s Elon Musk’s vision for Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI). In a controversial July 2019 white paper he claimed that his company Neuralink had taken a huge step towards building a “scalable high-bandwidth BMI system” that would let the human brain “stream full broadband electrophysiology data” to a network, using a combination of ultra-fine polymer probes, a neurosurgical robot that sews them into the brain, and custom high-density electronics.

read more.

image

Entrepreneur First’s Latest European Cohort Revealed, With Plenty Of Biotech Startups On Show

by Portfolio Company News

Amidst the global lockdowns and coronavirus precautions, Entrepreneur Firstopted to reveal their latest European cohort virtually, through pre-recorded pitch videos.

 

Investor and media demand clearly was high for the 13th European cohort’s reveal, as the dedicated website for the online demo day initially crashed due to too much traffic at its 1 p.m. launch time. But after some wrangling behind-the-scenes, the teams from London, Berlin and Paris were on show for the first time.

EF was founded in 2011 by Alice Bentinck and Matt Clifford, and is well-known for their non-traditional approach to the entrepreneurial path. Instead of selecting companies with existing business ideas for their cohorts, individuals are chosen based on their technical and business talent, and EF works with them to create high-growth startups from scratch.

The focus has shifted over the last two years, with synthetic biology startups emerging amongst the AI and machine learning companies. As Clifford puts it: “We’re increasingly seeing that the world’s most talented and ambitious people are motivated to solve huge problems in the [life science] space, and we are hitting an inflection point where the barriers to entry to building a breakout biotech company are dramatically reducing.”

Some of the life science focuses include animal-free dairy, gene therapies for treating donor livers, genetic information capturing and digital twins of cells to accelerate drug discovery.

With the spotlight shifting somewhat towards life sciences at EF still being a relatively new approach, it will be intriguing to see how their talent-first method fares in this rapidly accelerating market; building successful biotech companies is, after all, no mean feat.

view the full list of teams.

image

All the companies from Y Combinator’s W20 Demo Day, Part IV: Healthcare, Biotech, Fintech and Nonprofits

by Portfolio Company News

Y Combinator’s Demo Day was a bit different this time around.

As concerns grew over the spread of COVID-19, Y Combinator shifted the event format away from the two-day gathering in San Francisco we’ve gotten used to, instead opting to have its entire class debut to invited investors and media via YC’s Demo Day website.

In a bit of a surprise twist, YC also moved Demo Day forward one week citing accelerated pacing from investors. Alas, this meant switching up its plan for each company to have a recorded pitch on the Demo Day website; instead, each company pitched via slides, a few paragraphs outlining what they’re doing and the traction they’re seeing, and team bios. It’s unclear so far how this new format — in combination with the rapidly evolving investment climate — will impact this class.

 

As we do with each class, we’ve collected our notes on each company based on information gathered from their pitches, websites and, in some cases, our earlier coverage of them.

To make things a bit easier to read, we’ve split things up by category rather than have it be one huge wall of text. These are the healthcare, biotech, fintech and nonprofit companies. You can find the other categories (such as B2B, consumer and robotics) here.

See which companies the TechCrunch staff liked the most over on Extra Crunch.

read more on each company.

image

The Europas Awards — Hottest HealthTech Startup

by Portfolio Company News

The Europas Awards for European Tech Startups came around again last week (Thursday 27th June), and once again proved that Europe’s enormous diversity in startups continues to shine through on the world stage.

Once again TechCrunch was the exclusive media sponsor of the awards, alongside new “tech, culture & society” event creator The Pathfounder. Attendees, nominees and winners were given discounts to TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin, later this year.

read more.

Brain-Memory-Concept

21 Neurotech Startups To Watch: Brain-Machine Interfaces, Implantables, And Neuroprosthetics

by Portfolio Company News

These startups have seen investment from NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, and DARPA, among many others.

As the digital health sector matures from basic tracking apps into highly regulated medical devices, we are seeing bleeding edge technologies being developed that blur the lines between computers and biology. And a growing share of these startups are beginning to target the brain.

The burgeoning field of neurotechnology involves brain-machine interfaces, neuroprosthetics, neurostimulation, neuromonitoring, and implantable devices intended to not only augment nervous system activity, but expand its capabilities. One such project is Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which is developing “high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers.” And even Facebook has announced plans to create brain-machine interfaces that allow users to type using their thoughts.

Below, we used CB Insights data to identify 21 early- and mid-stage neurotech companies working across brain-machine interfaces, neuroprosthetics, neuromonitoring, and neurostimulatory devices.

read more.

image

The top 7 startups from Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 1

by Portfolio Company News

A Fitbit for cows, USB ports for bionic limbs and microbatteries were amongst the most promising companies of the 52 that launched at Y Combinator’s winter 2017 Demo Day 1 yesterday. After asking investors their favorites and huddling with the TechCrunch team, here are our picks for the top 7 startups.

Click through/scroll to learn about each. You can read our full coverage of all the companies that demoed yesterday here, and plus here’s our write-ups for the 51 Day 2 companies and our top Day 2 picks.

read more.