EXIT: 2011
* Investment Date & Round, Invested in Seed round in 2011
* Initial Premoney Valuation $750K (convertible note) * Acquisition: Illumina in Jan 2013 * Exit Valuation: $10M * Return Multiple: ~5X Long-read DNA sequencing enables the phasing of genome sequences and the detection of structural variants, a class of genetic mutations that are important genetic determinants of intellectual disability, cancers, and many other disorders.
Moleculo spun out of the lab of Stanford Bioengineering Professor, Stephen Quake (currently Co-President of Chan Zuckerberg BioHub). In just 13 months, the company, led by Quake-lab post-doctoral Fellow Dr. Mickey Kertesz built a product and service business with cloud-based data storage platform that was sold to industry leading DNA sequencing company, Illumina (ILMN) in 2013. Jay Flatley, Illumina CEO, said that Moleculo's technology has the "capability to take short reads and combine them into synthetic long reads that exceed 10,000 bases." Illumina promptly commercialized the Moleculo product as the TruSeq Synthetic Long-Read DNA Library Prep kit. Gary Zweiger served as Vice President of Business Development up until the acquisition. |