Who is ARCH Venture Partners & Can They Help Your Life Sciences Company?

Great science doesn’t happen overnight. A venture capital firm plays an essential role in creating socio-economic value by introducing companies that build transformational technologies and products—products that can shape people’s lives and make them better.

ARCH Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that does just that by supporting early-stage life science companies in the healthcare sector.

Despite their focus on early-stage companies, they also invest across the venture spectrum, including seed and series A, B, and C rounds as well as post-IPO equity rounds. The company has raised ten funds, the latest being the ARCH Venture Fund X and ARCH Venture Fund X Overage.

Originally founded in 1986 in Chicago, Illinois by Clinton Bybee, Keith Crandell, Robert Nelsen, and Steven Lazarus, ARCH Ventures now operates in several major cities, including Chicago, IL, Seattle, WA, San Francisco, CA, and Dublin, Ireland.

In January of 2021, the company announced a new fund of $1.85 billion for early-stage biotech companies. The ARCH Venture Fund XI will support early-stage biotechnology companies studying infectious diseases, oncology, mental health, immunology, clinical trials, anti-aging medicines, data sciences, genomic and biological tools, and more.

The key players involved in running the company include:

• Robert Nelsen is a Co-founder and Managing Director of ARCH Venture Partners. He is involved in generating new ideas for disruptive technologies or business models, as well as partnering with founding management teams and entrepreneurs.
  
  
• Keith Crandell is a Co-founder and a Managing Director of ARCH Venture Partners. He focuses on life science tools, devices and diagnostics, specialty materials, electronics and instrumentation, and optics and photonics businesses.
  
  
• Clinton Bybee is another Co-founder and Managing Director of ARCH Venture Partners. He serves as a board member for Impinj, CoolEdge Lighting, Agrivida, and Voxel8. Bybee is also an organizing member of the Texas Venture Capital Association.
  
  
• Kristina Burow is a Managing Director of ARCH Venture Partners. She is focused on the creation and development of biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and health technology companies.
  
  
• Steve Gillis, PhD is a Managing Director and is focused on the evaluation of new life science technologies. Additionally, he is involved in the development and growth of ARCH’s biotechnology portfolio companies.
  
  
• Paul Berns is currently a Managing Director and a board member for Unity Biotechnology, EQRX, and the Chairman of Epirium Bio.
  
  
• Mark McDonnell is a Managing Director as well as the Chief Financial and Chief Administrative Officer for ARCH Venture Partners. He oversees the operational, financial, and administrative aspects of the firm.

ARCH Venture Partners’ Portfolio

ARCH Venture Partners helps startups at all levels—from creating strategic options and business models to connecting them with important industry partners, academic experts, and other investors.

The firm takes a long-term, start-to-finish view when it comes to building companies. It stands with companies that work on developing revolutionary technologies that impact the overall quality of people’s lives.

This is why it follows such a flexible approach when it comes to supporting life science companies with as little as $50K and as much as $150M fund per company.

Some of the portfolio companies who have been supported by ARCH Venture’s funds are mentioned below:

• bluebird bio has an aim to treat a broad range of serious conditions. It is dedicated to building integrated product platforms that cover gene therapy, cancer immunotherapy, and gene editing.
  
  
• Twist Biosciences provides synthetic DNA tools to people working in the area of medicine, agriculture, industrial chemicals, and data storage. Its proprietary semiconductor-based synthetic DNA manufacturing process features a high-throughput silicon platform that allows miniaturizing the chemistry necessary for DNA synthesis.
  
  
• Prime Medicine is powered by groundbreaking, next-generation “Prime Editing” technology. The company uses this tool to search and restore normal genetic function almost anywhere in the genome to prevent genetic diseases.
  
  
• Vir Biotechnology is focused on combining immunologic insights with cutting-edge technologies to treat and prevent serious infectious diseases. Vir Biotechnology aims to provide solutions for some of the world’s most serious infectious diseases. It is hyperfocused on infections that are especially evasive, challenging, or inadequately addressed by current approaches, including COVID-19, hepatitis B, HIV, and others.
  
  
• Sana Biotechnology aims to help patients with untreatable diseases by repairing, replacing, and controlling genes in any cell.
  
  
• Juno Therapeutics (Bristol Myers Squibb) is a global biopharmaceutical company whose mission is to discover and develop medicines that help patients battle serious diseases in the areas of oncology, hematology, immunology, and cardiology.
  
  
• Alnylam Pharmaceuticals’ vision is to harness the potential of RNAi therapeutics to transform the lives of people living with diseases but have limited treatment options. Alnylam is advancing the pipeline of their RNAi-based medicines in five therapeutic areas: genetic medicines, cardio-metabolic diseases, infectious diseases, central nervous system (CNS), and ocular diseases.
  

Learn more about ARCH Venture Partners, its portfolio companies, and investment strategies at www.archventure.com.

Don’t have the budget to purchase lab equipment outright? Consider leasing through Excedr to save your lab time and money. Browse your leasing options today!

Extend Your Cash Runway by Leasing Through Excedr  

ARCH Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that’s focused on providing seed funds to information technology, life sciences, and physical sciences companies. Since 1986, it has meticulously found and created transformational products and technologies using its LP’s capitals.

While funding is certainly valuable, it is finite.

Research and development is a multi-faceted venture, and it’s easy to spend all of the money you raised on reagents, lab space, salaries, and more. Equipment purchasing is a common culprit of depleting funding as well. So how do labs procure essential, high-tech equipment without using up their latest funding round?

Leasing with Excedr.

We help labs extend their latest funding rounds by spreading out the high costs of equipment over two to six year terms. Furthermore, our customized leasing options provide the financial and operational flexibility labs need to continue operating at full capacity.

If you’re interested in leasing, check out our comprehensive selection of life sciences, biotech, and clinical equipment. Once you know what equipment you’re interested in, feel free to get in touch with our team to learn more about our leasing program.