Blue Bear Ventures

Deep tech from the lab bench

Blue Bear Ventures, known as BBV, puts money behind scientists and engineers who are turning research into companies. The scientists and engineers it backs come from research groups at the University of California campuses in Berkeley, San Francisco and Santa Cruz, and from MIT and Stanford, and the problems they work on range across biology, energy, computing and the environment. The firm says its ambition is to help solve some of the most pressing challenges facing the world.

Investing in the team

BBV says the most important element of a deep tech company is its founding team. It is not betting on a single idea or a lone founder, but on the co-founders and early employees who carry a company through growth. In its view a company needs both technical skill and entrepreneurial drive around it to make an impact.

A relationship rather than a spreadsheet

The firm describes itself as more than a traditional investor that reads metrics. It wants to be a confidant to founders, building trust and advising on every part of the business from the earliest stage so that the team can concentrate on getting its technology to market. It compares building a company to climbing a mountain with peaks and valleys, and says its role is to help founders choose with conviction while leaving the direction to them. It stays with its companies for the entire journey, not only at the start.

Portfolio examples

The portfolio the firm shows includes:

• Aether Bio, which engineers enzymes for biological manufacturing using deep learning and high-throughput robotics.
• Aluna, a respiratory health management system for people with asthma and chronic lung disease.
• Ayar Labs, which shrinks fiber-optic transceivers to help computing keep pace with growing data volumes.
• Clarity, offering dense air quality monitoring for smart cities.
• Coreshell, developing liquid-deposited nanolayer coatings for lithium-ion batteries.
• Correlia Biosystems, working on high-throughput protein assays for pharmaceutical use.
• ImpriMed, applying precision medicine to cancer in pets.
• New Sun Road, building modular smart micro-grid management for energy infrastructure in developing regions.

The current site groups the work under sustainable economies, applied biology and emerging technology, and notes a strategic partnership meant to encourage collaboration between large corporations and deep tech start-ups.