PETAGENE
Founders: Dan Greenfield & Vaughan Wittorff
Headquarters: Cambridge, UK
Year Founded: 2016
Year Romulus Invested: 2017
Founded by a University of Cambridge PhD, PetaGene is a bioinformatics company that has created a novel, best-in-class method to compress and manage genomic data. The company won first place at BioIT World (the top conference for the industry) and is working with some of the largest players in the industry.
The PetaGene-Romulus story:
Krishna had been passing through the University of Cambridge campus regularly over the years, particularly given the historical relationship between MIT and Cambridge. He had also been looking to find a suitable entry into the genomic data space. “I was impressed by what part of the genomics value chain PetaGene was targeting with its best-in-class compression solution,” says Krishna. “Customers actually want PetaGene’s product! This is different from most of the other companies I’d seen in the space, which often target more downstream applications.” PetaGene became our first portfolio company in the UK, and our first company in the genomics sector.
Romulus value in action: Engineering. PetaGene has engineered an industry-leading solution that enables customers to more efficiently manage genomic data storage and transfer, a problem many others have been trying to solve for years. The team adopts a similar problem-solving approach to efficiently building the company.