Pillar VC and Petri Announce Winners of $200K Pitch Competition

Pillar VC and Petri have announced the winners of the $200K Pitch Competition that took place during the Founder-Led Biotech Summit, a free virtual event that brought together biotech founders, faculty, PhDs, scientists, investors, and executives to support the founder-led biotech movement.

“Biotechnology is one of the most valuable levers we have to solve critical challenges of the 21st century, but too often, our industry constrains the capital needed to start a new biotech to seasoned executives and venture creation teams who have done it before,” said Tony Kulesa, Co-founder of Petri. “My hope is that events like the Founder-Led Biotech Summit will inspire more scientists to take the first steps towards turning their cutting-edge research into businesses that can potentially impact the lives of millions.” 

Winners of the $200K Pitch Competition include:

$100K First Place Winner

Alexi Choueiri: Developing “dominant” mRNA therapies to destroy viral replication and prevent antiviral resistance, in an attempt to combat viral evolution and future pandemics. 

$25K Second Place Winners

FORAY: Producing wood-derived products without cutting down a single tree. By optimizing plant cells, FORAY grows only the components of the plants that we need with improved properties for downstream processing.

Huminly: Powered by biology’s incredible capacity for chemical transformation, Huminly aims to tap into plastic waste as a way to replace petroleum as a feedstock for the chemical industry. 

$15K Third Place Winners 

Drūl: Developing a compact at-home diagnostic device that analyzes saliva samples collected through passive drooling and detects the early onset of oral disease. 

Chelsea Goddard: Imagining a world where getting rid of hair is easy and enjoyable. Goddard’s new company’s mission is to inspire delightful hair removal experiences by creating revolutionary products using small molecule research and traditional drug discovery. 

$5K Awards 

Skywalk: Building a wearable platform that unlocks your superpowers in real and virtual worlds. Skywalk’s first product is a wearable AR controller that enables augmented reality OEMs to utilize the full potential of their platforms. 

Robigo: Each year, over six billion pounds of pesticides are used globally to protect crop production. Robigo is creating sustainable alternatives to traditional chemical pesticides that will be more effective at controlling crop diseases, safer for human field workers, and compatible with next-gen agricultural practices. 

Lime Therapeutics: Aiming to be the world's leader in developing therapies targeting lipid metabolism.  The company’s proprietary nanosensor, developed by Lime's scientific founders at Memorial Sloan Kettering, is the only technology available that can perform high throughput discovery of (a) lipid metabolism targets in live animals and (b) drugs to go after those targets. 

Learn more about the winners and finalists at https://founderledbio.com/200k-pitch-competition/winners/.

About Pillar VC

Pillar VC is an early-stage venture firm co-founded by 22 CEOs who have built Boston’s most successful companies, including the leaders of Wayfair, Ginkgo Bioworks and DraftKings. Pillar is typically the first capital in for founders building next-generation pillar companies; the firm’s investments include PillPack, Desktop Metal, Algorand, Hometap, Jellyfish and Asimov, among other companies. Pillar is one of the few firms that will buy Common Stock, which fully aligns the firm’s interests with founders’. 

In 2021, Pillar announced $192 million of capital for Pillar III and Pillar Select, the firm’s latest venture funds. To learn more, visit www.pillar.vc.

About Petri

Co-founded and funded by Pillar VC, Petri is a new approach for funding formation-stage startups at the intersection of biology and engineering. Petri invests pre-seed and seed capital, and works one-on-one with founders to build world-class teams, develop intellectual property, find customers, and raise a subsequent round of financing. To learn more, visit www.petri.bio.