The world is decades behind in pandemic readiness. Entrepreneurs can help. The Pandemic Impact Fund will put private investment to work in early stage tech companies with innovative solutions to detect, mitigate and respond to pandemics, and to build a more resilient future.
The pandemic has impacted everyone and everything: how we live, work, learn, socialize, exercise, travel, raise our children. The Pandemic Impact Fund will focus on four areas of pandemic readiness:Fintech news
Know Faster: It took too long. The Fund will invest in startups that can speed identification of a potential pandemic and understand its movement through a population via surveillance, testing, analytics, population health, GIS, AI.
Fix it Faster: Velocity matters – even before an epidemic reaches pandemic scale. The Fund will seek startups working on rapid drug development platforms, novel disinfection technology, medical devices that can speed recovery, contact tracing and social distancing apps/tools, mobile and telemedicine.
Make Work, Work: Work, and consequently the economy, have suffered. The Fund will invest in technologies that help keep the economy (and life) running during a crisis including teleconnection, collaboration, business continuity, EdTech, robotics, HR tech.
Do Better Next Time: COVID-19 has exposed cracks in life as we knew it. The Fund sees these as opportunities including timely and accurate communication, food and toilet paper security, supply chain, process & manufacturing resilience.
The veteran team of investors includes Peter Adams, co-author of Venture Capital for Dummies, Wiley, 2013, and executive director of the Rockies Venture Network. With over 125 investments across 50+ companies over the last 5 years alone, including needle-free injection startup, PharmaJet, and telehealth provider, CirrusMD. The investment team has a honed process and a passion for accelerating impact while targeting top quartile returns. Peter commented, “We decided to take the same advice we give our portfolio companies: Success requires focus! Our focus now is pandemics because we can’t afford to get this wrong next time, whether a subsequent surge or the next pandemic.”
“An entrepreneurial and collaborative culture drives Colorado’s innovation,” commented Katie Woslager, Senior Manager of Advanced Industries at the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, “That same spirit can be found in the Pandemic Impact Fund. Colorado innovates its way through adversity, and this fund offers a vital source of capital for startups leading the way forward to pandemic solutions and resilience.”
