BioCentury
ARTICLE | Finance

Keep it small

Atlas staying small with its $265M ninth fund; diagnostics need not apply

May 6, 2013 7:00 AM UTC

Atlas Venture decided to stay small with its oversubscribed ninth fund, raising $265 million that will primarily go towards seeding biotech and technology startups. Absent from the shopping list are young diagnostic companies, as the firm has decided it is too difficult to make money in that space.

Atlas' Bruce Booth admitted his firm experienced some mission creep in 2003-06, including some experimentation in the specialty pharma space, but that all came to a halt around the time of the financial meltdown later in the decade...