Member-only story
Offbase
Colossal is getting paid $200 million to resurrect the Woolly Mammoth
Uncovering the science and business model behind the de-extinction of the Woolly Mammoth
Abstract
Colossal is resurrecting the Woolly Mammoth by editing Asian elephant DNA to look like a mammoth’s.
Colossal has two business models:
- Product — selling to conservation orgs & governments.
- Process — patenting innovations made in their research, licensing their tech to other companies.
Insight: To get paid to drop the ‘fi’ in ‘sci-fi’, you’ll probably need the following:
- A charismatic protagonist, usually the founder but sometimes the product.
- Something to pay the bills, like a spin-off business.
- Tangible outputs from your research, like licensable tech.
Most startup ideas probably shouldn’t exist.
They either:
- Don’t solve a problem
- Would do so unprofitably
You’d assume Colossal matches this profile. After all, most people I know are not lamenting the global shortage of woolly mammoths.
And yet the company’s raised over $200 million in funding.
I think Colossal’s story contains an insight (or two) that reveals how aspiring founders can turn high-risk, long-term biotechnology into a feasible, fundable business.
Business
Bessemer Venture Partners created a list of the top 100 deep tech companies in the world (next-gen biotech included).
- Statistic: The companies were 9.2 years old and had raised over $800 million in VC funding, on average.
- Signal: It takes a lot of time and money to build a successful deep-tech firm.
Most emerging biotechs fall into the deep tech category and face the same time and money issues:
- Time: Factors outside of a business’ control can delay and upend timelines. (FDA approval, finding out a hypothesis was wrong).
