The round was co-led by defy.vc and LDV Partners 

SEATTLE — Genemod, a cloud-based workspace collaboration software for biopharma R&D teams, today announced it raised $4.5 million in seed funding, co-led by defy.vc and LDV Partners, with participation from Dolby Family Ventures and Vulcan/Cercano Ventures.

In the past year, Genemod has expanded into the biopharma R&D space working with teams from startups to enterprise companies including AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers, Merck, and more. Working across siloed spreadsheets, updating data in real time and collaborating on projects in disparate geographical locations are just a few examples of how teams using Genemod are able to eliminate busywork and other barriers so they can focus on developments in biopharma.

“We believe that scientists must be empowered with tools to discover and develop medicines and ultimately get them to market faster than ever before,” said Jacob Lee, CEO and Co-founder of Genemod. “That’s why we built Genemod – to transform the way biopharma companies operate.”

Legacy R&D software and other traditional methods are decentralized, disorganized and inefficient, ultimately resulting in higher healthcare costs. Genemod is working to be the solution to this problem by building a dynamic cloud-based research platform designed for research teams to house their entire R&D lifecycle: from data acquisition and project documentation to inventory management and reporting. The intuitive interface allows users to easily visualize their data and track progress and updates – including what changes are made by whom.

“Genemod aims to be the go-to standard for research scientists just as how designers use Figma and engineers use Jira,” said Jin Choe, Co-founder at Genemod.

Genemod is also working to solve the “reproducibility crisis”: an ongoing phenomenon that continues to plague research scientists. Reproducibility is the ability to recreate the same experiment to achieve the same results. While this might sound simple in theory, disorganized data and a chronic lack of cloud-based organizational tools (among other issues) mean that experiment results continue to be inconsistent – costing the US government and researchers billions per year.

Discovery and clinical translation are no longer driven from siloed one-off experimentation but rather are compounding from accelerating gains in scale of data, reproducibility, and fidelity of experiment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has played a pivotal role in accelerating Genemod’s innovation and development, with Genemod playing an important role in aiding pandemic-related research. The pandemic overall led to collaboration between an increasing number of companies and research teams in a variety of industries. This includes the pharmaceutical and biotech business, which are leaning into dynamic, market-driven solutions in order to meet ever-increasing global healthcare and environmental challenges.

“Biotechnology is one of the fastest growing industries in existence, and the software that powers efficiency and communication in labs has the potential to radically transform the world,” said Neil Sequeira, Founder and Partner at defy.vc. “Genemod is positioned to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems in the coming decades, from pandemics and other diseases to climate change. We are pleased to be investing in this great team and company and look forward to partnering with them as they continue to scale and grow.”

About defy.vc
Founded in 2016, defy.vc is a Silicon Valley based early stage venture capital firm. Defy was founded to invest in entrepreneurs and companies looking to solve complex problems. Defy’s focus is to help early stage companies mature and scale into companies ready for growth capital. The firm’s team has more than 50 years of venture experience, successful operating backgrounds and actively helps successful entrepreneurs grow companies from inception through exit. Connect with defy at https://defy.vc/ and @defyvc.

About LDV Partners
We chose to name our firm LDV Partners in honor of Leonardo Da Vinci. Da Vinci mastered and combined multiple disciplines to create groundbreaking innovations. We believe that technologies can only disrupt markets by combining multiple disciplines. Based in Silicon Valley, the LDVP team seeks to partner with talented entrepreneurs working on deep technologies and innovative business models to build a world-class company.

LDV Partners is a team of experienced company builders, industry leaders and anchor investors. We provide experience, insights and connections needed to find and support visionaries who are changing the world.

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