Operations Management Solution & AI Platform for Biological Image Analysis

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Startup Spotlight:

#: Porosity

Founded: 2023, US

Product: Porosity - an end-to-end operations management solution for the oil and gas industry.

Why? - The oil and gas business operates within complex global and national frameworks. Expansion into new geographical regions and environments — such as ultra-deepwater drilling — is creating new opportunities for revenue growth. However, it is also increasing the complexity and risk of the business operations themselves. Additionally, ever-changing regulatory frameworks imposed by different national governments — such as those designed to cap carbon emissions and those imposed after the 2010 Macondo disaster — are adding to the growing complexity and scrutiny that oil and gas companies are operating within. As regulations continue to evolve rapidly, operators are finding it increasingly difficult to efficiently and accurately manage their operations, risking non-compliance. Operators must navigate the complexity of scheduling, tracking, reacting to, storing, and reporting operational activities, often involving multiple vendors.

Porosity offers a comprehensive platform that addresses these challenges, providing oil and gas companies with the peace of mind to focus on their core business.

Founders: Natasha Reddy (CEO) - ex-Senior Director, Growth @ Better, Originator, Energy Trading @ Shell; Julian Herwitz (CTO) - ex-Senior Software Engineer @ Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Funding (public sources): N/A

Investors: N/A

#: Biodock

Founded: 2020, US

Product: Biodock is an end-to-end deep AI platform, specifically designed for analyzing biological images. Its primary goal is to provide accurate quantification of features across different groups within the images.

With Biodock, constructing sophisticated pipelines for segmenting and quantifying metrics becomes effortless. This is exemplified by a few instances below:

• Phase-contrast image analysis of dendritic cells in mice.

• Identifying and handling out-of-focus or artifact regions for quality control purposes.

• Accurate detection and quantification of collagen and blood vessels in H&E stained images.

• Analyzing fluorescent epithelial layers and their intra-epidermal neurons.

Why? - Pharmaceutical scientists spend thousands of hours on microscopy image analysis. Biodock’s AI platform automates that work to minutes. Biodock has been meticulously developed from the ground up to cater to the specific needs of scientists, ensuring seamless integration with their workflows, data formats, and visualizations. Notably, it boasts a best-in-class compute infrastructure, capable of accelerating AI analysis by an impressive 3000 times.

The staggering cost of over $100 billion annually incurred by America's biopharmaceutical R&D engine highlights the immense importance of effective tools. The scale and complexity of biomedical data continue to grow exponentially, necessitating innovative solutions. In this evolving landscape, drug discovery has transformed into a collaborative endeavor, with multiple teams and stakeholders working together in unprecedented ways. As bench scientists turn to bioinformaticians for data analysis and novel medicines require coordination between various companies, the demand for technology to drive biotech advancements is greater than ever.

For biotech companies, software serves as a means to an end—their main focus is on advancing scientific knowledge, not on software development. The universal need to analyze complex, large-scale datasets and coordinate across multiple stakeholders has given rise to a robust ecosystem of cloud-first, data-centric software solutions. (Source: Doing More with Moore: Biotech’s Tech Moment by Jorge Conde and Jay Rughani)

Founders: Michael Lee (CEO), Nurlybek Mursaliyev - Stanford alumni

Funding (public sources): $2.1M (Seed)

Investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Operator Partners, Soma Capital, TQ Ventures

Which early-stage startup should we feature next in our newsletter? Send us a reply!

Fresh Powder:

• Valhalla Ventures raised $66M for Fund I to back the most audacious founders in deeptech and gaming.

• Frigade secured $3M in Seed funding, led by Craft Ventures and La Famiglia, with participation from Y Combinator, Defy VC, and Magic Fund. Frigade simplifies product onboarding and education for developers.

• Fabi.ai raised $3M in Seed funding from Eniac Ventures, Outlander, and Recall Capital. Fabi.ai focuses on data democratization, enabling business users to access and understand data without technical resources. The platform uses AI to streamline answering queries from various departments while maintaining data team control.

• Snowstorm, a New York-based company specializing in combating internet censorship, raised $3M in Seed funding. The round was led by Seed Club Ventures.

Library:

• Power your startup with TulaCo's free Startup Catalyst Pack, a tailor-made kit for qualified founders and early-stage teams. Secure your appointment to get started, and mention “Open Scout”.

• Customer Success Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It. by Joe Morrissey, Mark Regan, and Abbas Haider Ali

• On revenue, gross profit, and profitability by

• PitchBook's Q2 2023 European Venture Report breaks down five key trends that have defined the region's VC market in the first half of this year. Many European startups are still struggling to raise capital as venture deal-making continues to decline.

• Musk Explains Why He’s Axing Twitter Name, Iconic Bird Logo: Elon definitely has a strange obsession with the letter X.

Who's Hiring:

• PIN, a startup democratizing access to startup investing, is hiring a Growth Lead.

• Omnea, a procurement automation platform, is hiring a Founding Customer Lead, Software Engineer, and Founding Account Executive.

• Causal, a business planning platform for finance, is hiring a Product Engineer (Junior) and Backend Engineer - Data.

• Complete, a compensation management platform, is hiring a Founding Full-Stack Engineer.

Sign-up for job alerts to be matched with tailored opportunities.

Until next time,

Kenneth