Impressions of TWB start-up day

We caught up with Gregory Segala (an iGEM Biofounder) and founder of FluoSphera, who are working to develop Predictive assays for Human Health, using multi-tissue culture to make the physiological profile of molecules. FluoSphera, were participating in the 2021 Toulouse White Biotechnology (TWB) Startup Day and were overall winners of the Go for it competition earlier this month on Feb 3rd! We caught up with Gregory to learn more about his experiences and to share his insights from  Toulouse White Biotechnology (TWB) Startup Day!

Hello Gregory, could you please tell us a bit more about your founder Journey?

The idea of making a start up with this project came very early doing the iGEM competition because we we already had some contact with the university tech transfer office.

To help us with our intellectual property and to support our business idea.

Without IP protection, there is no business case, maybe this is possible, but this is really tricky.  After the iGEM competition we really learned a lot about how to get this technology to the market. We are all scientists and were not business people, so we really needed all these tips and tricks to help us make a good business. With this support were able to raise some public/non-dilutive funding, so we can now further prove the concept.

How did you learn about iGEM and EPIC?

In fact I learned about iGEM in 2008 as I was invited to join the team of of Paris, but I was 700km away in Toulouse. Since then I really had the idea to one day participate in iGEM but it was too late for me to be a team member. So, I decided to be the founder of the iGEM Team in Geneva. Nobody else was doing before before me, so it was the first time and it was challenging to recruit the team to join this very nice adventure. I was training and supervising the students to transform an idea into a concrete scientific technology and because I was postdoc at this time it was easier to for me to change my carrier and go from academia to put a foot into the world of the business.

I learn more about iGEM EPIC as I was contacted on linkedin, because my profile mentioned that I had participated in iGEM and I saw the iGEM EPIC Start-up Showcase as a very nice opportunity to keep the contact with the community and as a very important way to share my experiences with the new iGEMers about a creating a startup.

What was your impression of TWB startup day?

So, this was a very nice event, especially to see really well-established startups and to see from TWB’s earlier ideas that they are the beginning to see how they can change society. So this was really interesting and especially to know to see how much now biology is a bit pivoting to the AI and computational biology. This is extremely important, to understand and and solve a problem in biology today, so yes TWB startup day was extremely interesting for us.

So what are your next steps?

I was presenting this yesterday during the TWB start up day, so the next step is to finish the proof of concepts, because now the customers decide what would be the final shape of the product and by interviewing many potential customer they want to see data and with this proof of concept we will be able to generate a lot more data. So, we will make a large scale validation also have our product to convince more customers. When that is finished, we will collaborate with early adopters in the launch of the product and they will help us to refine and polish the final product. We expect to start really going to the market next year, this is why in biotechnology, it is far easier to to to sell methods compared to a drug, that needs clinical trials and everything.

Final question, do you have any advice for the iGEM alumni?

Yes! I can give an advice about the maybe the strategy that we follow was really safe to create a startup. I mean before making the website of iGEM and disclosing the information really try as much to protect your IP, because once this is published it’s too late and the project can die and even the idea because no one can develop an idea that is not protected. So you can have a very great IP for iGEM but if you can't bring it to the market it lost to the founders but also it is lost for the world.

About EPIC

The Entrepreneurship Program Innovation Community (EPIC) supports the development of iGEM’s entrepreneurial community. We aim to become the driving force behind hundreds of SynBio based start-ups globally to help accelerate our transition to a more sustainable bioeconomy. The core of the program is focused on supporting iGEMers by providing resources and training in biobusiness, and connecting them to relevant co-founders, mentors, accelerators, investors and partners. This is done through a range of activities globally including the Venture Creation Labs, Mentorship Program, Fast Track Program and the annual Startup Showcase.

Feel free to learn more about EPIC and reach out to us if you have any questions to epic@igem.org.