I'm a graduate student at Cambridge University, which is one of the hottest biotech hubs in the world so this is a bit disappointing. I don't seem to be alone here, one slightly old WSJ article points in the same direction [2].

My startup would require ~$0.5M to get started, mostly for purchasing expensive machinery, which is a quite modest amount in biotech terms. That's partly because a large part of the startup functions would be machine learning-based, which is thankfully a lot cheaper to run than a wet lab.

We would be tackling a very general problem, so this amount seems even more modest in perspective. Google got funded with $25M back in '99 to get past the prototype stage.

Understandably, places like YC won't go up to that much of initial funding because it doesn't fit their model [3]. On the other hand, biotech VCs seem to prefer investing on drug pipelines. My idea is very IT-based, so they seem to dislike going into that alien route. Therefore, I might be stuck between both worlds.

Any ideas on who should I approach or possible VCs happy to fund this kind of thing? (Email details on my profile if you prefer to reach me that way).

[1] http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html

[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203961204577267814201399918

[3] http://www.nature.com/news/start-up-investor-bets-on-biotech-1.15096