Mentoring Pheronym

to bring the world’s first nematode pheromones to the market

They say “It takes a village to raise a child”. The same is true for startups. It takes the whole business ecosystem to make a startup succeed; incubators, accelerators, marketing, law firms, advisory/mentorship programs, and more. Accelerators and incubators provided us with infrastructure, funding, and mentorship. As we have been developing the world’s first nematode pheromones for pest control, we learned that you can never have enough mentors. Keep reading

Pheronym is a Hello Tomorrow Top 500 deeptech startup!

Pheronym, Inc. is excitedto be selected as one of Hello Tomorrow’s Top 500 deeptech startups worldwide in the Food, Agriculture & Environment track !

This year, Hello Tomorrow had a record of over 4,500 applications from 119 countries. Being in the Top 500 means Pheronymrecognizedised as one of the most promising projects in deep tech to date.
To celebrate this, Pheronym is invited to Hello Tomorrow Investor Day on March 13th, 2019 and to the Hello Tomorrow Global Summit on the 14-15th of March in Paris! 

Hello Tomorrow, supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is the world’s leading organization accelerating science and tech entrepreneurship. Its mission, since 2011, has been to catalyze the intersection of top researchers, entrepreneurs, industry experts and financiers to build the next generation of companies that can really solve humanity’s big challenges.

 

Accelerating Pheronym: Bringing the first nematode pheromones to the market

The IndieBio accelerator experience made us realize that the accelerators have a unique function as a catalyst to bring the barriers down for biotech startups. Briefly, accelerators are short-term programs that can provide funds (very important), a network of investors, customers, business mentors and many other intangible perks. Furthermore, it can synergize with the other startup programs such as incubators and mentorship programs. Accelerator networks and support can last long after the program is over. Surprisingly, no two accelerators are alike. The ones we have participated in and the ones we plan to participate in are quite different. The way they are run, the things they offer, and the stages they support are all different. For example, IndieBio accelerator (San Francisco, CA) was the first accelerator we participated in while we were at the UF Innovate the HUB. It was a 4.5-month seed stage accelerator program with a wet lab space, science and business mentors, and $250K investment funding. At the end of the program, there was a highly publicized pitch event. For us, the accelerator lab space and funding synergized with the USDA-SBIR Phase I to develop our first dispersal pheromone prototype (NemaStim) and conduct proof of concept trials.

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