The well-known tech startup incubator and venture capital firm Y Combinator has announced a new special program named YC Bio. It is aimed at early-stage life science biotechnology startups which are still in laboratory mode. The first sub-area of biology in which the program will focus is healthspan and age-related disease, where ‘healthspan’ denotes the amount of time person is healthy as opposed to the time they are alive but unhealthy. Startups accepted into the program will be provided with free lab space, and will participate the standard Y Combinator program. Successful ‘graduates’ will be offered (by YC) between $500,000 and $1 million for 10 to 20 percent ownership of the startup (as opposed to $120,000 for 7 percent ownership for non-YC Bio companies in the YC class).
Hopefully this program, and potentially others like it, will help accelerate the development of everything from drugs to devices which will help people ward off the ravages of aging.
Below is a link to the YC announcement, together with a short recap of it:
YC Bio
Y Combinator is launching a biotech track
Both links have been added to Aging
