After a first degree in physics and a PhD in optical techniques, Dr Alex McVey joined Prof Teuta Pilizota’s lab, where they quickly discovered the pain of manually culturing bacteria. Bacteria keep their own hours, and commercial automated culture systems were too expensive, so Alex and Teuta decided to build their own. Once others saw the lab using it, they asked Alex where they could buy one, which is where the idea for OGI-Bio first began. Image Getting Started After speaking to Edinburgh Innovations, Alex successfully applied for a BBSRC Flexible Talent Mobility Award, which allowed Alex to spend six-months working alongside a masters student to further develop the prototype and start making a case for investment. The feedback from a couple of unsuccessful funding applications suggested that the team really needed to validate their potential market, and in May 2019 Alex was successful in applying to participate in ICURe: Innovation-to-Commercialisation of University Research. Alex spent three months speaking to potential customers to understand whether an automated system could be of use to them, and whether they would buy it. At the end of the programme the team was invited to create a spinout company and awarded £250k of follow-on funding from Innovate UK, providing they could find some match-funding. In parallel, Alex applied for a Royal Society of Edinburgh Enterprise Fellowship, which started online during lockdown in April 2020. This is probably one of the most useful things that I did during my process of transitioning from physics through biology to running a company. Not that they necessarily taught me everything that I needed to know, but they taught me the bits that I needed to find out more about. It was a real eye-opener about all the tiny things that I certainly didn’t consider when I was part of the university - the contracts required with managing people, how to balance your books at the end of the month, how to pay your suppliers – all of that, as well as how to turn what you’ve got into something that you could sell. Sourcing Investment At the end of 2020 OGI-Bio sold their first systems and raised sufficient private investment to draw down their Innovate UK grant, allowing Teuta and Alex to recruit their first employee. They continued to pick up further funding and awards from Innovate UK, Scotland CanDo Unlocking Ambition, Scottish Enterprise, the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and even “the weird world of startup competitions” including Scottish EDGE and Converge Challenge. In March 2022 OGI-Bio closed a second investment round worth over £1m. This investment, which included investment from Old College Capital, the University's in-house venture investment fund managed by Edinburgh Innovations, enabled them to establish their own premises. By May 2023 the OGI-Bio team had grown to eight, and they were about to launch the second iteration of their system with additional features. OGI-Bio have closed their third, and largest, round of investment, which will enable them to grow into the North American market, and see the team expand to 14 over the next 12 months. Alex’s top tip for starting a company Make friends with people who can help you, who know more about things you don’t...make friends with your customers...find people who have been through the process just ahead of you...make friends with a lawyer! And if you are just starting to think about forming your own company, we’d very much like you to make friends with the Staff Enterprise team at EI Image This article was published on 2024-07-01
