union square ventures

union square ventures

The California Institute of Technology ranks as one of the top universities in the world when it comes to receiving patents. But more of those inventions should successfully be making it to market, at least according to the investment thesis of Freeflow, a new pre-seed and seed stage venture firm that exclusively backs Caltech startups focused on human and planetary health.

"The people there are amazing scientists who are not afraid to tackle the hard problems," said Freeflow founder and managing partner David Fleck, who was an early Google employee who has spent the last 20 years tackling big data. "But as I started to spend more time there I realized the ecosystem was somewhat underdeveloped. They needed investors that could help them with capital and help them develop a company."

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Nate Cavanaugh has a penchant for prophecy. The 24-year-old founder of Venice-based Brainbase wrote a letter to his future self when he was 13 in which he presciently asked, "Do you still want to start your own computer company?" At 18, in a high school assignment describing his role model, he chose Mark Zuckerberg, and proclaimed that "I, too, plan on starting my own technology company in college... (and) plan to drop out of college once I can comfortably support myself."

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There is still considerable confusion about whether venture-backed startups are eligible to apply for the $349 billion in forgivable loans being furiously doled out by the Small Business Administration. But there's also another more complicated ethical question being debated on social media and within the startup community: Should they apply?

"VC backed companies already have so many advantages over bootstrapped [small businesses]...they don't need another one paid for by taxpayers," tweeted David Jackson, founder and CEO of FullStack Labs, a Sacramento-based software consultancy. "VC's own these companies...time for them to put their money into their companies."

As one might imagine, Jackson's company is not venture funded. But it's not just those on the outside that are posing the question.

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