Research and development platform Halo aims to give researchers and scientists a place to find their next venture and bring new innovations to market where investors are just a click away.
Now the Chicago-based startup too has connected with investors, announcing a $2.6 million seed funding round this week led by Asymmetric Capital Partners.
Other investors include Village Global; Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of 23andMe; AirAngels; Conrad Irwin, co-founder and CTO of Superhuman; and Rachel Hepworth, marketing chief at Notion, among others.
With Halo, companies can post requests for proposals on the platform for specific needs or open calls around general areas of interest. On the flip side, scientists submit responses to the RFPs and learn more about what funding, technology and facilities may be made available to them.
According to Halo Founder and CEO Kevin Leland, companies spend around $2 trillion on research and development every year, and Halo wants to tap into that market.
“We’re tapping into what is called external R&D,” he explained. “More companies are doing less of their own internal R&D and instead are collaborating with university scientists with startups."
Halo was founded in January 2020 just before the onset of Covid-19 and first incubated at the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Since it went live, 4,000 scientists across 650 universities, 500 startups and 100 government labs have joined the Halo network.
Finding the perfect backer
Leland told the Chicago Business Journal that Asymmetric Capital Partners provided not only backing financially as the lead investor but was also a great partner as an expert in the marketplace.
"Rob Biederman is the co-founder and former CEO and chairman of Catalant, which is a marketplace of consultants, and they couldn't be a more perfect complement to us since it's also an expert marketplace that's centered around connecting a specialized audience with large corporations," he said.
Leland said he got connected Asymmetric through other local venture funds, and the number of Fortune 500 customers Halo secured while raising less than $200,000 was a big selling point.
But fundraising did not come without its challenges as the space was not one that many investors could immediately identify with.
"When you're trying to pitch a VC who is going to invest in just a handful of the thousands of pitches they get, they're looking for any reason not to invest, and one of those reasons can often be [that they] don't know enough about this space, or don't have the time to learn about it or get up to speed, which I think is totally understandable," Leland said. "I think Asymmetrical saw a lot of parallels with the business that they were growing."
