- Zal Bilimoria worked as a product manager at Google, LinkedIn, and Netflix before becoming a venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz.
- In 2015, he branched out on his own, launching an early-stage VC firm called Refactor Capital that focuses on healthcare and science-heavy tech.
- Refactor just raised a new $30 million fund. With it, the venture firm is looking to back a crop of fresh startups, many of which will be focused on something Bilimoria calls ‘consumer biology.’
- “Biology isn’t just eating healthcare and drug discovery,” Bilimoria told Business Insider. “It’s eating the whole world. Everything around us is going to be impacted.”
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Zal Bilimoria is not a health VC. He’s not a tech VC or a science VC, either. Instead, he feels in some ways like he’s all of the above.
You could say the same thing about his investments in startups. As the cofounder and managing partner of venture capital firm Refactor Capital, Bilimoria backs companies that straddle the space between healthcare, science, and technology.
Most of the companies in Refactor’s portfolio fall into a category he calls “consumer biology;” that is, they all use biology as a manufacturing platform to make products ranging from beverages to drugs to chemicals. For that reason, most of them are simultaneously tech, health, and science startups.
Earlier this month, Bilimoria’s firm launched a fresh $30 million fund, its second ever. With the new money, Bilimoria plans to invest even more heavily in consumer biology-focused companies, he said. As part of the launch, his cofounder, David Lee, will shift his role from co-managing partner to chairperson. Bilimoria will be the sole managing partner at Refactor going forward.
“I’m going to continue doubling down on health and biology in this second fund,” he told Business Insider.
Already, Bilimoria has backed Kin, a beverage startup creating a new category of alcohol-alternative drinks called euphorics; Solugen, which uses biology to make less-toxic chemicals; and Lucy, which sells nicotine gum that’s formulated to satisfy the cravings of ex-smokers.
To determine where to place his next bets, Bilimoria is thinking a lot about the various ways people will use biology to do everything from edit human DNA to find precursors to the next generation of chemicals to make new types of clothing and food.
One thing he’s excited about are startups focused on developing platforms that allow other, more niche startups (such as those focused on plant-based or cultivated meat, for example) to experiment with new ingredients and new recipes.
The only thing he likely won’t invest in, he said, is medical devices, because he doesn’t feel he has the expertise to successfully vet companies in that space.
Biology is ‘eating the whole world’
As a product manager at Google, Netflix, and LinkedIn, Bilimoria watched as a revolution in computing and software enabled the success of hundreds of tech startups like Slack and Stripe.
Then he joined the legendary Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, which has become famous for Marc Andreessen’s 2011 statement, “Software is eating the world.”
As a partner with Andreessen Horowitz, Bilimoria helped the firm launch its first fund dedicated to science and health. Called the bio fund, the initiative was, at the time, a departure from Andreessen’s traditional tack of exclusively backing software companies.
His work on the bio fund hooked Bilimoria.
Fascinated by the idea that healthcare and science companies could finally start taking advantage of the software revolution after tech startups like GitLab, he and David Lee, a former colleague from Google, started Refactor Capital. Their goal was to back companies working on what they call “fundamental human problems” ranging from a lack of treatments for cancer to society’s dependence on toxic, environmentally-damaging chemicals like petroleum.
Bilimoria was particularly intrigued by the role that biology would play in this transformation. Today, he thinks biology will be an even more disruptive force for companies going forward.
“Biology isn’t just eating healthcare and drug discovery,” Bilimoria said. “It’s eating the whole world. Everything around us is going to be impacted.”
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