Our Philosophy
IncTANK Ventures is a seed stage investor that takes an active role in mentoring and supporting early stage ventures. We work alongside entrepreneurs, researchers, and universities to reduce risk and increase value, often providing a company’s first outside capital. Our venture professionals understand the challenges of bringing innovations from the laboratory to the market. This partnership philosophy has resulted in early stage investments that have gone on to attract capital from top tier co-investors, such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Ferrer Freeman & Co.
Our Focus
IncTANK Ventures invests in Boston area technology ventures emerging from premier universities and research institutions with talented technical teams, defensible intellectual property, and compelling market opportunities. Rather than focusing on one specific technology sector or industry, we find that there are compelling opportunities derived from a cross-disciplinary approach amongst the applied sciences including:
- biotechnology and life sciences
- materials science
- computational science
IncTANK looks for opportunities at the seed stage where our experience, insight, and expertise are as valuable as our capital. Consistent with our early stage focus, incTANK provides the appropriate scale of investment with active support to grow a company toward success. Seed investments range from $150,000 to $500,000, with follow-on Series A funding of $1-3M. As a venture matures, we work with later stage investors that have particular competencies or strategic value in the venture’s technology or industry.
Our Competitive Advantage
We believe our success has been due in part to our ability to source compelling investments in an intricate and highly technical space- seed stage, laboratory sourced applied science ventures. Our performance can also be attributed to incTANK’s emphasis on developing strong ties with entrepreneurial and scientific colleagues. Extended pre-investment engagements, sometimes as long as 6-12 months, allow incTANK to assist entrepreneurs with technology licensing negotiations, evaluation of intellectual property, and development of key partnerships. This value-add relationship gives incTANK privileged access to an unprecedented level of due diligence and has led startup teams to choose incTANK Ventures over competing investment offers.
Our History
IncTANK Ventures was founded in 1999 as an angel fund focused on university-sourced technology startups with core intellectual property assets. Our emphasis on mentorship and extended due diligence was developed specifically for Boston’s extensive research community. The team has since invested their own capital in a growing portfolio of technology ventures from MIT and Harvard in a range of applied sciences. These early investments have gone on to attract capital from top tier co-investors, such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Ferrer Freeman & Co.