Ashley Taylor
Investment Analyst
After a decade of investing at the intersection of technology and biology, we've developed a clear perspective on what separates exceptional founders from good ones. It's not just technical brilliance—though that matters—it's a particular combination of traits that's remarkably rare.
Bilingual Fluency
The best TechBio founders speak two languages fluently: the language of biology and the language of technology. They can explain a protein folding problem to a software engineer and a machine learning architecture to a biochemist. This fluency isn't acquired through courses or credentials—it comes from deep engagement with both disciplines over years.
We've seen brilliant biologists struggle because they treat computation as a black box. We've seen talented engineers fail because they underestimate the complexity of biological systems. The founders who succeed have genuine respect for—and understanding of—both domains.
"The most dangerous phrase in TechBio is 'biology is just an optimization problem.' It's not. It's messier, noisier, and more beautiful than any algorithm."
Patient Ambition
Building a successful TechBio company requires a paradoxical combination of urgency and patience. The urgency comes from the knowledge that patients are waiting, that diseases are progressing, that every day of delay has human cost. The patience comes from understanding that biological systems cannot be rushed.
We look for founders who have internalized this tension. They move fast where they can—in building teams, raising capital, iterating on models—while respecting the time biology requires for validation and testing.
Scientific Integrity
In a field where hype is abundant and results are often ambiguous, we value founders who are ruthlessly honest about what they know and don't know. The best founders are the hardest critics of their own work. They design experiments to disprove their hypotheses, not confirm them.