5 Lessons Robotics Founders Can Learn From the AV Industry

Founders must learn the hard-fought lessons of the last five years to find success in this unique category.

Throughout the late 2010s and early 2020s, the autonomous vehicle industry captured the imagination of the startup community and the public. However, the category’s meteoric rise preceded an even more meteoric fall over the last 18 to 24 months. From 2018 to 2021, investments in the AV sector across the U.S. and Europe increased by nearly 2.5x, eventually peaking at close to $10 billion in 2021. Then, in 2022, investments fell to $4 billion, with 2023 likely to see further precipitous declines.

Meanwhile, the broader robotics ecosystem has continued to flourish, with companies focused on mostly industrial “vertical” use cases now commanding the bulk of investment dollars. In 2022, these companies attracted $7 billion in investments, defying the broader slowdown in VC investment by growing 15% over the previous year.

We recently analyzed the trends shaping the industry in our State of Robotics report, and identified five lessons that the next generation of robotics founders can take from the successes and failures of the AV industry.

vertical robotics investment overtakes autonomous vehicles

VC excitement for hardware businesses is higher than ever

In the U.S. and Europe, more than $60 billion have been invested in robotics and AV alone over five years, with the AV sector leading the way. AI is making hardware much smarter, which is enabling companies to generate the kind of high-margin recurring revenues typically associated with software businesses.

AI also creates opportunities to disrupt traditional industries with massive addressable markets. For example, across the logistics ecosystem, AV companies such as Aurora are disrupting the trucking industry, while companies like Locus and RightHand Robotics (an F-Prime portfolio company) are transforming how fulfillment operations are done.

For founders, this surge in interest means there are more robotics investors than ever, ranging from newcomers in the category to those with an extensive track record in the space. Even top-tier investors such as Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz are starting to make investments in the category, an encouraging bellwether for overall VC interest in robotics.

Nevertheless, hardware-oriented investments are not the right fit for all investors, and it’s best to seek out those who have made a commitment to robotics and understand what it takes to be successful.

You must eventually build a real business

Much of the early effort in AV focused on technology development, and success was defined by performance of demos and pilots. However, pilots are not the same as commercial success. As both acquirers and investors realized the challenges of creating self-sustaining AV businesses, capital started to dry up and many companies shut down or were forced to scale back their strategy.

Today’s robotics founders must focus on real commercial proof points at every phase of their journey. Investors want to see production deployments that deliver measurable ROI (return on investment). Pilot customers who are “excited by the technology” are very different from customers who are motivated enough to manage the operational changes required to adopt it and demonstrate high utilization.

At the same time, founders must demonstrate attractive unit economics associated with their offering — for example, more than 70% gross margin after subtracting BOM (bill of materials) and support costs from lifetime revenues.

Use case selection matters

Early efforts in AV targeted the largest, most challenging problem: generalized autonomy on passenger roads. While the TAM (total addressable market) was massive and the use case seemed like the obvious one to target, technology challenges and uncertain timelines ultimately led many players to pivot toward more tractable use cases, such as trucking and delivery. Lots of capital was burned in that transition, and as investor interest waned, many companies did not survive.

Founders must identify use cases that have real value and that can be realistically automated without massive capital investment. Many companies are now pursuing use cases in constrained operating environments with greater fault tolerance, and often with a human-in-the-loop element, which creates more technical feasibility. Identifying such use cases where the TAM is still significant is the sweet spot for a VC-backed robotics business, often requiring founders to have a deep understanding of the target industry.

Acquisition and exit activity drives a virtuous cycle of investments

GM’s acquisition of Cruise for $500 million in 2016 sparked the AV race. The deal made the startup community realize AV’s disruptive potential in the eyes of incumbents, and how much capital they were ready to invest in the acquisition of technology. The ensuing years saw annual AV investments take off, the creation of 10 AV unicorns, and large IPOs or acquisitions for companies such as Aurora, Zoox, and Uber ATG.

The lesson for startups is that large incumbents can propel investment momentum and help overcome investor reluctance around what may be a still-unproven use case. Investors will look to incumbents for validation of the problem statement, and many incumbents are starting to actively engage startups for exactly this purpose, like John Deere’s Startup Collaborator and Suffolk Technologies’ BOOST. If your startup is able to drive real customer value and disrupt legacy business models, incumbents will eventually come calling, even if they are not yet active acquirers. Investment dollars will follow, more incumbents will jump in, and startup formation will accelerate.

Only the strong survive

AV businesses were very capital intensive, and as investments ebbed, only the strongest players were able to continue raising capital. Even companies such as Argo AI, with more than $1 billion of capital, were ultimately shut down, whereas Aurora was able to raise an additional $820 million as recently as mid-2023.

Founders must focus on being the winner in your chosen segment or use case. There will inevitably be competition for any good idea, and those startups will often find willing early-stage investors to support them. However, being an “also-ran” is ultimately a losing strategy in robotics. Later stage dollars will flow disproportionately to the winner, customers will favor the most established providers, and acquirers will focus their efforts on the market leaders.

Today’s robotics founders have a number of factors on their side: technological acceleration, labor shortages, stagnant productivity gains, and a cadre of investors who are increasingly interested in the category. However, founders must learn the hard-fought lessons of the last five years to find success in this unique category.

Originally published in TechCrunch. Read the full story here.

Check out our State of Robotics report here.

Influencers Are a New Class of Travel Agents — But Lack the Right Tools

For many, “travel agent” sounds like an anachronistic job title, conjuring images of shoulder pads and strip malls, corded telephones and desktop computers with cathode-ray tube monitors. Indeed, ever since the advent of online booking, travel industry watchers have been predicting the demise of traditional travel agents. But in reality, travel agencies are still estimated to be a $72 billion industry in the United States alone, and upwards of $450 billion globally. Travel agents haven’t disappeared, many have just swapped the drab offices and chunky monitors for ring lights and smartphones.

In this story for travel industry publication PhocusWire, Betsy Mulé explores the opportunities awaiting startups who can build useful tools to help influencers step into their newfound role as modern travel agents.

Read the full story here.

Originally published in PhocusWire

How Quovo Became Embedded in the New Financial Services Tech Stack

Lowell Putnam joins David Jegen to reflect on Quovo’s biggest wins

If you’re a fintech startup and the prospect is a top three bank, the answer is probably “as much as possible — without breaking your team.”

In the late 2010s, financial API startup Quovo spent two full years selling and onboarding one of the largest banks in the United States.

“We were a company of 60 people at the time, and eight of them had to be on a call with this bank every day, five days a week,” CEO and Co-founder Lowell Putnam said recently, speaking with F-Prime’s David Jegen about their partnership in the years after we co-led their 2017 Series B. “They did all of their releases on Saturday nights after midnight, and they needed people from our team to listen in. Not a lot of startups are ready for that.”

“It was quite telling that one extremely old and traditional FI would reach out to acquire Quovo at the same time that you’re also getting offers from one of the fastest-growing companies in fintech.”

David Jegen, F-Prime Managing Partner

The Perks of Being a Grownup

Nevertheless, David and other investors on the board backed the team to close the deal. Quovo ultimately won one of the largest open banking contracts in the U.S., a market-moving vindication of the company’s account connection and aggregation services — and its implementation team’s execution.

“Having a top three bank, especially, gave us this great sense of being a grownup compared to the other folks out there,” Lowell said. “We remain one of the few startups that had a contract from them, but it was a two-year process. David and some of our other investors stuck with it the whole way: ‘Keep doing it, keep putting the implementation resources in.’

“And everything that went into that deal ended up making the company stronger. But if you guys hadn’t supported us — because it was bending everything from a spend standpoint — it would’ve been so much more difficult.”

The Mafia Effect

Quovo developed some serious go-to-market muscles selling to a major bank, and they helped the company knock down logo after logo across the financial services industry in the years after that deal.

“We had to build a full implementation, customer success, and account management team — and not like, you know, a typical client success team taking folks out for beers,” Lowell said. “Some of the folks from that team are now doing amazing things. Adams Conrad, a principal who’s crushing it at QED right now, was managing our entire relationship with Betterment. Nicole Newlin is doing great things at Ocrolus. Our first data science hire is now a senior member of the engineering team at Plaid. And the rest of Quovo saw this team putting out fires for that one big bank — it just grew the rest of the company up, too. It was incredible for the culture.”

“I often say that successful alumni say as much about a startup’s founders than the ultimate financial outcome,” David added. “And I think it’s a wonderful statement that the people Lowell attracted and helped to grow went on to do other great things.”

Building Again

With great logo diversity among its customers — from financial titans to tiny startups — and clear momentum, it wasn’t long before acquirers came knocking.

“You had a foot in the world of big financial institutions,” David said, “and fielded an offer from a player in that space who respected you and Quovo in a way that was disproportionate to your size.

Plaid and Quovo ultimately combined to become the clear category leader for financial data aggregation and account authentication, and one of the great success stories of the fintech disruption.

Behind the Breakthrough: Q&A with Emanuele Ostuni, ARTBIO

What does it mean to be CEO? It is more than holding the highest-ranking position in an organization. It is becoming a business builder.

In a way, all CEOs have the same responsibilities — expanding the company, collaborating with the board, engaging stakeholders, defining strategy, and creating a positive culture. However, the way in which one approaches these tasks is a means to stand out from the crowd.

Emanuele Ostuni is founding CEO of ARTBIO and worked closely with Roy Larsen and ARTBIO’s investors to build the company and its business model. Previously, he was head of Europe for Cell and Gene Therapies at Novartis Oncology, where he oversaw all commercialization aspects for Kymriah in Europe, the first FDA-approved CAR-T cell therapy.

For Ostuni, he never spent time in radiopharmaceuticals, but his role at Novartis had overlapping complexities. The products they were pursuing were multifaceted to make, deliver, and administer and he got satisfaction out of sorting through how to simplify it for patients, physicians, and ultimately payers. He felt his best when he was managing something multi-dimensional.

He explained, “The potential for efficacy in radiopharmaceuticals is high and there is an opportunity to build a platform, establish a supply chain and create a differentiated pipeline that allows ARTBIO to stand out from what the rest of the industry is doing.”

As ARTBIO launched in June 2023 with a $23 million seeding financing, Ostuni shares what drew him to ARTBIO, insights into his current role including leadership style, and advises fellow CEOs to connect with each other since they are “the few people who really understand what we go through.”

1. What motivated you to join ARTBIO?

As a scientist and seasoned executive, I was really intrigued by the potential of the technology and the science behind the company. The radiopharmaceuticals industry is not as well developed as the rest of oncology and immuno-oncology offering an opportunity to extract some good wins for patients while at the same time moving the field forward in a meaningful way.

In my early conversations with the F-Prime team, they were very open about sharing what they were thinking about and allowed me to share my views on how my experience in CAR T could lend itself to the innovation that was required to bring forward radiopharmaceuticals. It became a joint project very quickly where everybody brought something. F-Prime identified the technology from the scientific founders and allowed me to assess how it could be pushed forward.

2. What differentiates ARTBIO from other RLT players in the industry?

Our choice of medical isotope was driven by what is best for patients to beat their cancer. With that decision, we built backward to the technology needed to produce the isotope and have supply chain security – we are unique in that we also own and control the manufacturing of isotopes instead of relying on a third party. Our manufacturing approach is distributed to match the dynamics of the isotope, instead of trying to force fit it into a centralized approach that is exposed to several risks as most others are doing – issues with that approach have already surfaced with a negative impact on patients. Lastly, we created our own discovery labs to build a pipeline of new experimental therapies leveraging our ideal isotope manufacturing. We are creating this important infrastructure in part alone and in part in collaboration with a focus on simplifying and improving the delivery of therapies to patients and hospitals.

3. What’s been the most rewarding aspect of ARTBIO coming out of stealth?

We recently attended the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging’s 2023 Annual Meeting, and it was amazing to see the team in action. I am most satisfied when I see them succeeding and it really showed when we were there all together. At ARTBIO, we believe in the importance of teamwork, exchange, and collaboration to bring our field forward.

We were also having conversations with peers and investors, both on the ground and in the background, that gave me clarity that we have accomplished a tremendous amount. Since the fundraise, it is clear to me how our differentiation from competitors is emerging. We are inspired by the many advances and innovative ideas that our industry is working on and there are many unmet needs left to be addressed.

4. How would you describe your leadership style?

I tend to be a giver, and I start with trust. I am also an experimentalist by nature and focus less on if something is right or wrong, but rather on having a robust approach and hypothesis. If things do not work as well as we expected, I ask why? What is the learning so that we quickly adjust and reach our goals?

I also surround myself with deep experts who also have personal characteristics that I think are critical for our team. We are building a new space, and the way things worked in the past is not going to work this time around. I am looking for people who have expertise in neighboring areas of the business, and also the ability to learn what is going to be different about our approach from what’s been done in the past. I aim for people who are driven and those who are doing it in a humble way. They put the team before themselves, thrive on data and value the importance of being transparent.

5. What’s one lesson you’ve learned so far as CEO of ARTBIO?

As a giver, it is hard to stop, but as CEO I have had to learn to modulate and know when it is the right time to stop serving. The CEO role can be a bit lonely, but I prioritize understanding what my stakeholders need rather than what I need from them.

6. ARTBIO just launched, but are there any noteworthy goals that you as CEO are currently focused on achieving?

My number one focus right now is rounding out the team. We can fundraise, but we need the people who manage those funds. I want to bring people with the right know-how, and also those who have chemistry with the team that we have in place now. Only the team can move the company forward.

As we work to optimize isotope manufacturing, therapy manufacturing, preclinical research, and clinical development, I need to make sure that all aspects move forward without becoming each other’s obstacle.

7. What is the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

I have been blessed with many managers, peers, and direct reports who taught me a lot through their actions and words. The quote that I always go back to that summarizes a lot of my learnings and attitude is by Winston Churchill: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

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Revolutionizing gene-based editing to create lifelong cures

The team developed a DNA base editing technology that enabled more precise edits through direct chemical conversion of one base to another compared to approaches that introduce double-strand breaks.

Unlike first-generation approaches that introduce double-strand breaks, Beam’s base editing allows precise edits through direct chemical conversion of one base to another to address the point mutations that underlie many human diseases.

Industry Overview: The dawn of a new era in gene editing with CRISPR

CRISPR gene editing ushered in a new era of both modifying and understanding the genome. Prior editing approaches such as zinc finger nucleases, TALENs, and meganucleases are more cumbersome, costly, and time-consuming, as they require significant protein engineering for adaptation to the corresponding target sequence. In contrast, CRISPR uses a guide RNA to direct the active protein to specific genomic sequences through base pairing with the target location. Once in place, CRISPR cuts DNA and then allows natural DNA repair mechanisms to take over.

The Opportunity: Understanding use cases – gene disruption vs. specific gene editing

First-generation editing technologies, including CRISPR, rely on introducing double strand breaks into the genome. While precise edits could theoretically be achieved through homology-directed repair (HDR) or non-homologous end joining (NHEJ), these processes are much less efficient, and as such, traditional editing approaches are more suited for gene disruption than for specific and precise gene editing. Safety is also a lingering concern with first-generation editing approaches due to the potential for chromosomal rearrangements, as insertions and deletions occur with high frequency.

CRISPR sparked a revolution for new, next generation gene editing technologies that allow scientists to more efficiently and precisely modify the genome.

Why We Invested: Supporting the next wave of gene editing technologies

At F-Prime, we understand that breakthrough technologies require time to develop, which is why we continue to seek out innovators pioneering new approaches who embrace both the excitement and the challenges associated with advancing nascent modalities alongside us.

F-Prime recognized the transformative therapeutic potential of DNA editing and made early investments in companies focused on furthering CRISPR-based platforms such as Caribou. We also realized the power of technologies that could achieve direct single nucleobase editing to significantly expand the overall utility of this entirely new therapeutic category.

Our affiliate FBRI, which is comprised of a team dedicated to supporting research efforts to identify breakthrough discoveries, funded David Liu’s early base editing work. Dr. Liu is a renowned gene editing expert, scientific co-founder of Editas and Harvard and Broad Institute researcher. His team developed a DNA base editing technology that enabled more precise edits through direct chemical conversion of one base to another compared to approaches that introduce double-strand breaks. This discovery paved the way for the second generation of gene editing technologies and ultimately led to the creation of Beam Therapeutics.

Source: Beam Therapeutics

To facilitate the progress of this tremendously promising research, we invited the company to work out of F-Prime’s incubator office space with biopharma executive, John Evans, leading the team as CEO. Meanwhile, F-Prime’s President and Managing Partner, Stephen Knight, M.D., and Partner, Jessica Alston, Ph.D., helped to establish the company by assisting with licensing and IP discussions, and other members of the F-Prime team supported the company with recruiting key management hires, developing a strategic business plan and ultimately preparing the company for its public offering.

Founded in 2017, Beam Therapeutics raised nearly $223 million privately before going public in February 2020. They also announced a collaboration with Pfizer in January 2022. Today, Beam Therapeutics is a leader in harnessing base editing to develop precision genetic medicines that provide lifelong cures to patients suffering from serious diseases.

Learn more about Beam’s approach and vision for base editing in this video.

Our Focus: F-Prime continues to invest in biotech leaders

As we did with Beam, we’re constantly searching for the next breakthrough to invest in; sometimes, we build companies from scratch which we’ve done over 30 times and counting.

The convergence of science, technology, and healthcare in ways that achieve groundbreaking advancements gives rise to inspiring businesses and great investment opportunities.

“F-Prime played a critical role in establishing and growing Beam, helping us assemble our team and develop our vision to become the leading platform for precision gene editing. We are incredibly grateful for the team’s support for our mission to bring life-changing treatments to patients suffering from serious diseases.”

—John Evans, CEO

The RTP Gold Rush: 10 FedNow Predictions

Originally published in Forbes

The United States’ long-awaited real-time payments (RTP) system, FedNow, is due to launch any day now. The availability of instant money transfers has huge potential to impact virtually all players in the economy, from financial institutions and corporate giants to online shoppers, small business owners and employees.

In her second story as a Forbes contributor, Rocio Wu draws parallels between US payments infrastructure and the rest of the world, where centralized RTP infrastructure has been up and running for some time now. The result is ten predictions about how the payments landscape will change now that FedNow is live.

Read the full story here.

E-Commerce Divergence & the Neobank Conundrum

The Fintech Index in Q2: Cautious Optimism Despite e-Commerce Divergence

Let’s dive in.

Headline: The Fintech Index was up 21% in Q2 (+69.2% YTD), from 423% at the end of Q1 to 533% at the end of Q2. Overall, the Fintech Index outperformed other indexes we’re tracking: the Emerging Cloud Index was up ~10%, Nasdaq grew ~13%, and the S&P 500 climbed ~8%.

The Fintech Index regained almost $40B in market cap in Q2 with the median market cap increasing from $2.5B to $2.8B. As we would expect from larger companies, especially amid a turbulent macro environment, the average LTM growth rate for Fintech Index companies continued to decelerate, falling from 48% (Q4) to 35% (Q1) to 28% (Q2).

A Tale of Two E-Commerce Platforms: There was one company that drove the index’s gains this quarter: Shopify. The company makes up ~16% of the Index and was up 35% in Q2. Shopify’s rebound primarily took place during the first week of May, when the company announced surprisingly robust first-quarter results along with its decision to abandon its logistics aspirations via a Flexport partnership. The e-commerce giant increased GMV by 15%, raised its subscription plans by an average 33%, and cut its workforce by 20%.

Conversely, MercadoLibre, Latin America’s largest e-commerce platform was the biggest drag on the Index this quarter, after a strong Q1. The stock makes up ~12% of the Index and was down 10% in Q2. While the company is still growing at an attractive clip (~30% YoY), its fintech business is decelerating. The fintech segment historically grew by 100%+ QoQ but grew by 64% in Q1 2023 (after posting 93% growth in Q4 2022). This deceleration weighed on public investors’ minds in Q2.

Source: Fintech Index

Multiples: The public markets continue to value goldilocks performance: solid growth with capital efficiency. Companies growing 20-40% traded at a higher 5.7x EV/Revenue multiple than companies growing faster than 40%, which were valued at 3.9x EV/Revenue. Overall, the broader Fintech Index continues to trade below historical averages, though there are notable outliers like Shopify (13.4x), Xero (13.3x), Bill.com (12.3x), and Flywire (9.6x).

By industry: Fintech B2B SaaS, lending, and wealth & asset management companies saw modest increases in multiples over the past quarter.

Fast-growing fintech B2B SaaS companies such as Bill.com and Xero have a 12.8x multiple. However, that’s still a significant decline from the 50x multiple that companies in this category enjoyed at the market’s peak in Q3 2021.
Fast-growing lenders like Affirm have nearly doubled their revenue multiples over the past 6 months to ~6x.
Similar to high-growth lenders, growing wealth & asset management companies like Coinbase have seen their revenue multiples almost double over the past six months as well, currently trading ~5x.
Check out the Fintech Index website to explore multiples for each sector and growth rate.

Index removals: While M&A and acqui-hires are ramping up, none of the Fintech Index companies were acquired this quarter. However, Dave no longer met our criteria and was removed from the Index. More on that below.

Index Additions: None

Fundraising: North American fintech startups raised a total of $2.7B in Q2, pretty much on par with Q1 if you exclude that massive Stripe deal.

Consumers Still Like Neobanks. Public Investors, Not So Much

Despite continued revenue growth, a march towards profitability, and stable unit economics, neobank valuations continued to decline. We removed Dave from the Fintech Index because it failed to meet our market cap and liquidity criteria.

Dave has maintained strong growth for both revenue (37% YoY growth) and membership (27% YoY). The company’s credit metrics have also demonstrated consistent stability, with notable improvements in unit economics. Customer acquisition cost decreased 39% (YoY), from $26 to $16 while ARPU grew from $121 to $124. Credit metrics also showed overall stability, with Q2 net charge-offs ~10bps lower YoY at 2.4%, and the 28-day delinquency rate 67bps lower YoY at 2.6%

More broadly, neobanks continue to gain market share against incumbent banks, accounting for 47% of new checking accounts opened (2023 YTD) up from 36% in 2020. The share held by megabanks (>$1T in assets) fell from 24% to 17% over the same time period.

Nonetheless, public investors have reservations about the neobank model. By the end of the quarter, Dave’s enterprise value ($47M) had dropped 98% since its public listing in January 2022. In order to avoid delisting from stock exchanges, Dave and other neobanks conducted reverse-stock splits to exceed the NYSE minimum of $1. However, despite these efforts, share prices continued to decline. Public investors remained concerned with:

Credit Cycle: Dave successfully built a model to serve lower-to-middle income consumers who were previously underserved by major banks; however, in a negative credit cycle investors are especially apprehensive about the potential impact on Dave’s customer base. A downturn in the economy or a rise in credit defaults could significantly affect the company’s profitability
Customer Base: Dave’s younger customer base has lower spending capacity and also raises concerns about the bank’s ability to grow ARPU
Low absolute unit economics: While Dave’s unit economics work, with such low absolute dollars per customer, Dave requires high growth and new customer acquisition to achieve profit scale. In a cycle where capital is expensive, Dave’s growth model is constrained.

It’s unclear if neobanks can outlast the current macro cycle or become cash flow positive to control their destiny, but we believe that in the fullness of time — and potentially in the hands of a larger balance sheet — the neobanks will play an important role in banking. We will track this segment closely over the coming quarters.

Written with Zoey Tang.

ARTBIO: Redefining cancer care through an entirely new class of alpha radioligand therapies (ARTs)

There is a need for better isotopes to make ARTs that will enable transformative efficacy and a stable treatment supply for reliably reaching patients.

ARTBIO is developing ARTs that have the potential to unlock a new generation of more effective and safer precision oncology medicines.

Radiopharmaceutical Landscape: Seeking a best-in-class isotope

Radioligand therapies are a category of innovative targeted cancer medicines. These drugs home specifically to tumors to deliver a potent radioactive isotope warhead, causing catastrophic DNA damage and cancer cell death. While the radioligand landscape is currently dominated by beta-emitting isotopes, the alpha emitters comprising ARTs are expected to offer a superior therapeutic index, because they can directly cause double-strand DNA breaks, which are lethal to cancer cells, and, due to a shorter emission distance, alphas can kill tumor cells locally while sparing nearby healthy tissue.

Early clinical data with a warhead called actinium-225 (Ac-225) supports the potential for ARTs to be more effective than beta emitters. However, the supply of Ac-225 has been limited creating a challenge for deploying ARTs at scale. Ac-225 also has a relatively long half-life, facilitating distribution but potentially limiting maximal therapeutic efficacy. There is a need for better isotopes to make ARTs that will enable transformative efficacy and a stable treatment supply for reliably reaching patients.

Read the Frontiers in Medicine article ‘Commercial and business aspects of alpha radioligand therapeutics’ to learn more about the research conducted on targeted alpha particle therapy in oncology.

The Origin Story: Capitalizing on a foundational discovery

In observing the many complexities in the field (including recent supply chain challenges faced by pharma), F-Prime Partner Alex Pasteur, Ph.D., and Senior Associate, Martin Taylor, Ph.D., searched for a viable solution that would fully unlock the tremendous potential of ARTs. They established relationships with world-leading experts Roy Larsen, Ph.D., and Øyvind Bruland, MD, based in Oslo, Norway, and became interested in an innovative approach they were developing for ARTs.

“ARTBIO’s roots trace back to a remarkable scientific discovery of the 20^th century by Marie Curie that radium can destroy tumors, and the early dissemination of that discovery to Norway,” said Alex Pasteur. “We have tapped into long-established expertise at the Radium Hospital in Oslo for some of the foundational technology in ARTBIO.”

Roy and Øyvind are serial entrepreneurs in the radiopharmaceuticals field. They previously co-founded Algeta (acquired by Bayer) and invented Xofigo®, a drug for prostate cancer patients based on radium and currently the only alpha-emitter based medicine on the market. Alongside other companies they founded, their expertise and success has established Oslo as a hub for innovation in radiopharmaceuticals.

“F-Prime’s global presence, including our office in London, enabled us to identify radiopharmaceuticals as an area of excellence in Europe, where we saw a thriving ecosystem with an exceptional degree of innovation, ripe for further investment,” said Martin Taylor.

Why We Invested: ARTBIO’s mission to unlock the full therapeutic potential of ARTs with an optimized warhead platform

Roy and Øyvind had an intriguing idea, derived from their experience with radium. Recognizing the clinical and commercial importance of isotope choice and abundance, they turned to lead-212 (Pb-212), a decay product of radium.

Pb-212 solves many of the challenges of ARTs:

It has an abundant raw material supply from existing stockpiles which avoids the expensive supply chains of other isotopes by recycling natural -byproducts of other industries.
It has a short half-life, enabling maximal radiation exposure in tumors, while sparing healthy tissue and reducing post-treatment patient isolation time.
It also has limited industrial competition, and can be directly imaged using existing medical systems.

Working closely with the founders and Anders Tuv from Radforsk, a local investor affiliated with the Radium Hospital who also played a key role in establishing the company’s Norwegian operations, F-Prime led an effort to design and develop a robust Pb-212 manufacturing technology platform. ARTBIO was born.

“The true value that ARTBIO brings to the ART landscape lies in aligning radionuclide half-life to drug half-life, rather than aligning radionuclide half-life to centralized manufacturing constraints,” said Emanuele Ostuni, CEO of ARTBIO. “This mindset has allowed us to choose what we believe to be the most patient-centric isotope available for clinical applications. F-Prime has been an exceptional partner on this journey, with a sleeves-rolled-up approach to company building which has significantly enabled ARTBIO’s trajectory.”

Our Focus on Company Creations: The art of curating a smarter strategy, at every turn

At F-Prime, it’s our privilege to invest in high-conviction entrepreneurs such as Emanuele, Roy, and Øyvind. We focus our energy on early company incubation, financing expertise, and industry relationships to help establish our companies on a strong trajectory.

At ARTBIO’s earliest stage, we were pleased to provide operational support including:

Talent:

- Hiring team: Backing a world-class team is central to F-Prime’s approach. We helped to recruit cancer industry veteran Emanuele Ostuni from Novartis to be CEO. We value Emanuele’s background in managing complex deployments of CAR-T cell therapies and his strong drive to develop new drugs for cancer patients. In parallel, F-Prime helped to onboard several key early hires, spanning clinical development operations, productization of the Pb-212 manufacturing technology, and BD and portfolio strategy.
- SAB: F-Prime assembled the company’s world-class scientific advisory board. The team helped to organize an inaugural SAB meeting and a radiopharmaceuticals workshop in 2022, bringing together key opinion leaders to help define ARTBIO’s drug discovery pipeline build strategy.

Research & Development:

- Pb-212 Manufacturing: F-Prime helped to establish early manufacturing capability that was essential for initiating ARTBIO’s first clinical trial in Norway in early 2023.
- Target prioritization: The SAB and workshop meetings evolved into a collaborative target prioritization working group led by F-Prime, ARTBIO team members, and the SAB and leading to the initiation of several drug discovery campaigns in the pipeline.

Distribution:

- Strategy: F-Prime provided active early support to build a production and distribution ecosystem, with embedded redundancy and flexibility. We forged strategic partnerships to create a network of manufacturing sites, as opposed to a centralized facility with a risk of single-point failure. F-Prime identified multiple sources of radioisotope raw materials to ensure a plentiful Pb-212 supply.

We were excited to announce the launch of ARTBIO on 21 June 2023 with a $23 million seed financing alongside our co-investor Omega Funds.

Read the press release for more information on the financing.

Key Takeaways from Robotics Invest 2023

Sanjay Aggarwal reflects on our inaugural Robotics Invest summit

Co-authored with Fady Saad of Cybernetix Ventures

The ideas outlined below come from the panelists, as summarized by our team taking notes on the day. To stay in touch, follow Robotics invest on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Last week, we welcomed some of the robotics industry’s leading entrepreneurs, investors, and operators to Boston for Robotics Invest, an invite-only summit packed with keynotes, panels, case studies, and robot demos.

We were very intentional in curating the speakers in these panels and, judging from the overwhelming response in the room, these discussions delivered. We’re extremely grateful to all our panelists for sharing their wisdom and experience with the group.

While the event itself was oversubscribed, we wanted to make sure everyone had the chance to access the insight, experience, and tactical advice that was available throughout the day. Luckily, our team was on hand to take notes. Here, we’ve summarized the key takeaways from each Robotics Invest panel conversation.

Robotics as an Investment Class

robotics as an asset class

– Robotics sits in between two ends of the spectrum in the investing community: SaaS and biotech. This means that investors might look at robotics companies with a lens that may not fit, and try to optimize for metrics or markers for success that aren’t relevant for this category.

– Likewise, robotics companies often don’t follow the typical growth trend of your average SaaS business. For example, Kiva Systems spent three-to-four years with flat growth before it really took off.

– We are still in the early days of robotics investment, especially when compared to the SaaS sector. The labor shortage is a secular issue, and the economy requires automation to keep up GDP growth.

– A solution’s lifetime value is an important metric in robotics, after factoring in capital and operational costs. Only looking at year-by-year margins may tell the wrong story.

– We are starting to see an evolution in financing models, which includes availability of equipment financing, which is helping to mitigate the capital costs of hardware.

– Revenue benchmarks aren’t as important for robotics companies at the Series A stage, nor is LTV/CAC. Instead, investors are looking for evidence that customers are moving beyond initial pilots and deploying the systems in production and at scale.

Building Product, Manufacturing & Supply Chain Strategies for Scale

building robotics companies for scale

– To succeed, robotics companies need to build great applications at the right time. For example, companies had tried to build cleaning robots in the 1990’s but the timing wasn’t right. And while matching macro conditions to the tech and value proposition is key, robotics companies should not let perfection trump a solution that’s “good enough.”

– Your first two hires should be a subject matter expert who can build the technology, and a subject matter expert who deeply understands the problem. Your first sales hire should be able to roll with the inevitable bugs and customer success issues, and be willing to go on this journey with you.

– Understand your technology’s core competency and be able to do that in-house. Everything else is an opportunity to outsource. However, you need to be careful about which tier of contract manufacturer you go with — if you don’t have a level of mind share with them, it can be hard to maintain the quality of your end product.

– Identify what’s essential and build it — over-engineering solutions is a common issue that can lead to cost escalation. It’s easier to add a feature in the future than take it away to reduce costs.

– There are a number of advantages to a Robotics-as-a-Service model. Reducing the capital intensity of an up-front sale can accelerate deployment, and you get a lot more customer engagement through the RaaS model. When a customer is evaluating your service’s value on a regular basis, you get a certain baseline of customer engagement.

Building a GTM Strategy for Scale

go to market strategy robotics

– Robotics startups should be talking to and incorporating the feedback of customers on day one. The transition to asking for payment can be tough and industry dependent — for example, contractors tend to pay their subcontractors when the job is done, and will not pay up front — so a pilot is usually necessary.

– Sales tend to fall apart when startups overpromise. Your timing needs to be realistic, and you must provide support over the longer term.

– The systems integrators flywheel can take a while to get going, and it’s not right for every use case. Startups at the very early stage should work directly with customers for design iteration. When you’re ready to deploy 10-99 units, a smaller system integrator (SI) can help customize the solution. And when you’re selling 100+, you’re ready for a larger SI like Dematic, Schaefer, or Honeywell.

– Lock-in long lead times on your supply chain early, and then design around them. You also need to be flexible and creative on how you source — for example, second-hand markets can be invaluable. As a general rule, designing around your supply chain up front can solve a lot of problems.

– Not all growth is good growth. The number one thing autonomous mobile robotics companies should work towards is a high number of customer relationships, and how you can expand the profitability for each. In other words, land-and-expand is critical.

Raising Money from Later Stage Investors

– The later stage is less aspirational than the early stage. The early stage is about selling the sizzle — the later stage is about selling the steak.

– Valuation matters, but it’s more important to focus on getting a fair valuation based on a business’ metrics, results, history, team, and other factors, rather than squeezing out the last dollar.

– Presenting realistic numbers is better than presenting spreadsheet projections that don’t make sense. Investors would rather see a credible number than an outsized revenue projection.

– Units matter more than revenue. Having credibility with customers and executing against your commitments matters, because it’s not just one transactional event.

– Investors want to be convinced that they’re investing in a team, not just one person. So showcase the team and let them present and answer questions during diligence.

– Diligence for later-stage investments involves talking to customers and getting conviction from them about whether they will do what the company says they will. Procuring customer references through videos or visits is a scalable solution here.

Role of Corporates in Start Up Innovation Landscape

role of corporations in the robotics investment landscape

– Corporates can provide access to markets and distribution networks, and build trust in early-stage companies by putting their weight behind their product and brand. However, startups must clear high risk and benefits bars during the evaluation process to land a potential partnership.

– FOMO does not necessarily enter into the equation, but if there’s a deadline to meet, the team will try to meet it as fast as possible.

– Large corporates have integration teams responsible for combining new technology into the company after mergers or acquisitions, while smaller companies may assign temporary teams for this task.

– To maintain relationships with corporates through different team members and priorities, early-stage companies should focus on key advocates and sponsors while also branching out to other stakeholders within different teams and functions.

– Corporate venture capital investments can offer access to expertise that would otherwise be costly, and accelerate regulatory timelines.

– Manufacturing experts from large corporates can help reduce costs by renegotiating contracts, playing hard ball with suppliers, and identifying alternatives.

Exiting a Robotics Business

exit strategy robotics

– When it comes to exit strategy for startups, good communication channels are key in keeping options open. Founders should be proactive and keep everyone updated quarterly.

– Opinions are mixed on strategic investors. If you get the right partner, it gives your business model some validation. However, you want to limit your involvement with strategics if you have lots of options, as you don’t want to be limited to a single acquirer. Bottom line: either have multiple strategics on your cap table, or zero.

– The lifecycle of a robotics company can be up to 20 years, so plan for the long game.

– Personal relationships between board members and CEOs are more important than anything right now. A good board will have consistent and easy-to-pitch messaging for potential investors.

– The use of robotics is a long term secular trend that will not stop, and is accelerating with broader adoption and understanding of AI and machine learning.

To stay in touch, follow Robotics invest on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Albert Invent’s $7.5M Seed Round

Modernizing the chemical R&D tech stack

We’re excited to partner on Albert Invent’s $7.5M Seed round!

You’d be surprised how much pen-and-paper is still used in chemical R&D labs nowadays.

The current state of the market involves:
– Low levels of digitization (Excel + paper notebooks)
– Unintegrated tools and machines
– Experiment data loss, leading to repeat experimentation
– No ability to search and share cross-functionally

The solution:
Albert, which lets R&D teams track chemistry data

Why Albert?
– Co-founders Nick Talken and Ken Kisner have roots in Henkel, a giant in the chemicals industry, which they joined after it acquired their 3D photopolymers manufacturing startup, Molecule, in 2019. Ken grew up in a paint factory and, as he put it to us, has “paint running through his veins”
– Albert’s product is now used by multibillion dollar corporations across multiple regions