Silicon Valley’s core investment philosophy is “bet on founders.” Research Bridge Partners takes that philosophy and extends it to midcontinent university scientists: we bet on the labs and the scientists who have or will co-found the company. That’s why Research Bridge Partners developed the most comprehensive national database of academic researchers and invented analytics to identify the less than 1% of academic researchers whose talent and mindset can lead to pivotal advancements and who can be serial co-founders of successful science-based startups.

Our proprietary analytics study factors ranging from the volume and velocity of an innovator’s published research to the unconventionality of the research itself. This lets us create a fingerprint reflecting the researcher’s unique approach to science.

Once we find these researchers, we position them to succeed by giving them the same support that they would have if they were located in one of the deep, liquid commercialization markets on the coasts. Trying to do everything locally – as some university- and regionally-focused initiatives endeavor – inevitably hamstrings the researchers’ prospects for success, due to thin commercial networks and the inability to configure the market incentives downstream investors require.

We invest both not-for-profit and for-profit and capital. While both types of capital reside in separate funds, they nevertheless complement one another in the overall financial returns on our investments. The not-for-profit capital underwrites the cost of identifying and readying individual startup opportunities for downstream investors, whereas the for-profit capital enhances the returns on program related investments.
By investing both not-for-profit and for-profit capital, we enable investors to achieve their investment objectives—financial, societal, or a combination thereof.

Our approach is informed by the experiences of our co-founders: Isaac Barchas, who has deep roots in mid-continent translational research, and Reid Hoffman, who has successfully scaled Silicon Valley startups for decades.