Beth Seidenberg and Sean Harper add $500M to their new VC, betting on the LA biotech ecosystem
On December 15, 2020, LA-based VC firm, Westlake Village Biopartners, announced the launch of two new funds totaling $500 million to build and invest in promising life sciences companies with transformative human therapeutic technologies.
“One fund, worth $430 million, will continue their original goal, allowing them to back about a dozen early-stage startups. Another, worth $70 million, will let the firm join Series B and other mid-rounds for the companies they helped launch,” Jason Mast of Endpoints News reports.
“Both funds allow Westlake to power into our winners and double down during the Series B or later rounds,” said Beth Seidenberg, MD, co-founding managing director of Westlake Village BioPartners. “WBP2 allows us to continue to build upon our success with WBP1, incubating promising startups with entrepreneurs that show potential to develop breakthrough medicines across a broad range of diseases using multiple modalities. With these two new funds, we will be managing more early stage venture capital solely from the greater Los Angeles area than any other firm.”
“We are rapidly moving into what we at Westlake call ‘The Golden Age of Biotechnology’ where the speed of innovation and discoveries is accelerating exponentially,” said Sean Harper, MD, co-founding managing director of Westlake Village BioPartners. “This exponential growth is presenting many opportunities to develop new medicines, and these additional funds will allow us to harness that innovation to develop therapies for serious diseases.”
The new funds bring Westlake to $820 million in capital in the two-plus years since their launch.
“Building viable life sciences companies require a biotech ecosystem that supports innovation, and the key ingredients that form this ecosystem—ingredients that other hubs such as the Bay Area and Boston have—are also present in greater Los Angeles,” said Dr. Harper. “The local talent pool is outstanding and talent retention is better than in a built-out hub. We are also attracting many people from outside of the area who are finding that the cost of building a company here is significantly less and the lifestyle more appealing than traditional biotech hubs.”
Westlake has been working with Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc., the first, longest-tenured, and preeminent owner, operator, and developer of life science campuses in the nation’s top innovation clusters, to build out laboratory and office space in the greater Los Angeles area.
Westlake’s first fund, established in 2018, has invested in or incubated 11 companies to date, with more than half in theLos Angeles area.
You can read the full press release here.
