'If you build it, they won't come': Bison Ventures founders on scaling frontier tech

Equity

TechCrunch

Founders, Silicon Valley, Finance, Ipo, Vc, Technology, Business News, Startups, Business, Venture Capital, News, Stock Market, Entrepreneurship, Techcrunch

4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How can founders scale frontier tech? Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan is finding out with Tom Biegala and Ben Hemani, the co-founders of early-stage venture firm, Bison. Bison invests in what they call 'frontier tech' companies building in the material science, robotics, biotech, climate, and sustainability verticals. Listen to the full episode to hear Rebecca and Bison's founding team discuss: Why AI isn't a 'silver bullet' for biotech companies, although it is central to modern drug discovery Which robotics startups are catching investors' eyes How - and how not - to find product-market-fit when building frontier technology When to seek out venture funding over grant funding Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes on TechCrunch. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is presented by Mercury, the fintech that simplifies how more than 200,000 businesses operate.
0:07.0	Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups.
0:23.7	I'm Rebecca Boulon, and this is our Wednesday episode where we home in on a trend in the tech world and dive deep.
0:29.3	Today, we're talking to Tom Begala and Ben Himani, the co-founders of early stage VC firm Bison.
0:36.1	Bison invests in a range of, quote, frontier tech companies.
0:39.4	And that can mean anything from fighting climate change to treating disease to meeting the world's
0:43.4	insatiable demand for compute.
0:45.1	So Ben and Tom, welcome to the show.
0:46.6	Thanks for having us.
0:47.6	I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you got around to starting Bison,
0:51.2	which I think wasn't even founded that long ago.
0:53.6	You both started
0:54.3	at Cascade. Tom, can you give me a little bit of a rundown? Absolutely. So Bison Ventures is
1:00.0	focused, as you mentioned, on investing in early stage frontier technology companies. And typically,
1:05.1	these are companies that have some technical risk and are going after very scientifically ambitious
1:09.8	products or services at the end of the day.
1:12.2	And what we saw at our time as investors and as folks operating in these particular sectors
1:17.7	is that there's not a lot of venture capital firms that focus on these types of businesses
1:22.5	at the early stage when there still is some technical risk left to tackle. And that created an amazing
1:28.8	opportunity for us to come in and start a dedicated early stage venture capital fund to
1:33.2	invest in some of these businesses because entrepreneurs really need that support at the early
1:37.2	stage. They need that capital at the early stage. And frankly, this is an absolutely
	...

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