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PBL-Ventures

PBL-Ventures is the business start-up and mentoring arm of PBL. It was established in 2001 to broaden the PBL technology commercialisation offering and to take advantage of increasing opportunities to create new businesses from research at the institutes that PBL serves.

PBL-Ventures is dedicated to:

conceiving and creating new businesses to exploit parts of PBL’s technology portfolio
providing a comprehensive business mentoring and support service to scientists and bio-entrepreneurs wishing to establish their own technology based businesses.

PBL-Ventures is an extension of PBL's activities in technology commercialisation, which has traditionally been through licensing. PBL-Ventures offers a comprehensive business incubation process to scientists and bio-entrepreneurs seeking to establish new technology-based ventures. There are a number of key success factors for any such new enterprise including: a valid (value-adding) business concept, excellent technology and/or products, well protected IP, experienced management team, and suitable funding from appropriate investors. During the business development process PBL-Ventures attempts to optimise these factors for any particular business creation project in order to give the new enterprise the best chances of succeeding.

New Ventures Established by PBL

www.novactabio.com

www.chameleonbio.com

www.idnagenetics.com

www.procartabio.com

PBL-Ventures also assists, or has assisted

www.inspiralis.com

www.ncyc.co.uk

www.modelgut.com

PBL-Ventures recognises the limited resources available to most academic entrepreneurs and provides its services entirely on a success basis, with its consideration coming in the form of equity or fees on successful financing and/or establishment of the company.

PBL-Ventures utilises the wide range of business and intellectual property expertise available in PBL and actively draws on the skills and experience of PBL’s Board of Directors, Dr Jan Chojecki, Dr E Dart, Dr John Bedbrook, Mr Andy Sandham, Dr Celia Caulcott and Prof Dale Sanders.

PBL-Ventures has an extensive network of contacts built up in the core business of PBL, this includes all the necessary necessary specialists and professional advice: specialist consultants, lawyers, accountants, banks, executive search etc all offering special deals for working with PBL-Venture’s projects.

There are a number of potential benefits to scientist entrepreneurs and academic institutions from using PBL-Ventures to manage their business creation projects and ideas:

PBL-Ventures has significant expertise and experience in the commercialisation of biotechnologies and an in-depth understanding of the markets in which they are applied.
PBL-Ventures covers significant out-of-pocket costs in the pre-financing stage.
PBL-Ventures has, or can access through its network of contacts, a wide range of expertise and experience in new business formation and technology enterprise.
PBL-Ventures offers access and IP rights to a broad variety of technology in plant and microbial science.
PBL-Ventures has in-depth experience and proven skills in working with academic scientists to develop their ideas into commercial success.
As part of PBL, PBL-Ventures is an independent resource dedicated to commercialisation of public sector technology and will represent the best interests of the founding scientists and their institutes.
Utilising PBL-Ventures will provide assurance to public funding bodies and their auditors that a business creation project is being handled in a competent manner by an organisation that is experienced in managing the exploitation of publicly funded research.

In addition to PBL-Ventures’ core skills and resources and the expert infrastructure provided by the staff and Directors of its parent organisation, PBL, there are two other important resources available to PBL-Ventures: Norwich Bio-Incubator and the Iceni Fund.

Norwich Bio-Incubator (www.norbio.com)

Opened in 2002, the Norwich Bio-Incubator (NBI) is a state-of-the-art purpose built facility providing 20,000 square feet of highly specified plug-and-play laboratory and office space for newly established biotech companies. NBI cost nearly £5m to construct and was funded by the John Innes Foundation, East of England Development Agency, DTI, South Norfolk Council and Norfolk County Council. The project is being co-managed by PBL-Ventures and the John Innes Centre.

The Iceni Fund (www.icenifund.com)

This fund was awarded by the DTI under its University Challenge Fund Competition to a consortium including: University of East Anglia, Plant Bioscience Limited, John Innes Centre, University of Essex, Sainsbury Laboratory and the Institute of Food Research. The award creates a seed-corn investment fund of £4m to be used to invest in spin-out companies arising from research by members of the consortium. PBL, along with the University of East Anglia, led both the application for, and implementation of, this fund.

Please click here for more information on the support and advice services PBL-Ventures' business development process can provide.

Please contact Jan Chojecki.