KIZOO provides mentoring, seed and early-stage financing with a focus on rejuvenation biotech.
Having been entrepreneurs, VCs and mentors in both, high growth tech and biotech companies ourselves for many years with multiple exits and massive value created for the founders, we now bring this experience to the emerging field of rejuvenation biotech - a young industry that will eventually become much bigger than today's largest technology markets.
If you are looking for financing and support please feel free to send your story to [email protected]
Having been entrepreneurs, VCs and mentors in both, high growth tech and biotech companies ourselves for many years with multiple exits and massive value created for the founders, we now bring this experience to the emerging field of rejuvenation biotech - a young industry that will eventually become much bigger than today's largest technology markets.
If you are looking for financing and support please feel free to send your story to [email protected]
Accelerating Rejuvenation Biotech
As part of the Forever Healthy Group, we directly support the creation of startups that turn research on the root causes of aging into therapies and services for humans.
Forever Healthy's other initiatives include the evaluation of new rejuvenation therapies, evidenced-based curation of the world's cutting-edge medical knowledge, funding research projects on the root causes of aging and hosting the annual Undoing Aging Conference.
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Elevian is a Harvard spinout developing therapeutics to stimulate regenerative capacity, the body’s ability to repair itself, that declines as we age.
Elevian’s founders have identified circulating blood factors, including GDF11, that broadly stimulate regenerative capacity in aged animals in many organs and tissues (e.g. brain, heart, pancreas, muscle, and others). Initially planned indications include Alzheimer’s disease, heart failure, Type II diabetes, and age-related muscle dysfunction. |
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Antoxerene uses proprietary next generation screening technology to identify small-molecule compounds that target pathways of aging.
The team focuses on next generation screens with higher predictive value than traditional approaches and expects first on-target therapeutic candidates for the p53/MDM2 pathway, a oncology target, and the p53/FOXO4 pathway, a newly identified pathway involved in cellular aging. |
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FoxBio will develop Antoxerene’s collection of small molecules that specifically target senescent cells.
There has been a lot of interest surrounding the therapeutic applications of senolytic drugs – compounds that clear toxic senescent cells – particularly with respect to age-associated disease. As molecular pathways unique to senescent cells have begun to be identified, drugs to target these pathways can now be developed. |
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AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. is a biotechnology company applying technology relating to cell immortality and regenerative biology, to aging and age-related diseases.
The company has three initial areas of product development: pluripotent stem cell-derived brown adipocytes; vascular progenitors; and induced tissue regeneration. Initially planned indications for these products are Type II diabetes, cardiac ischemia, and cancer respectively. |
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When a cell reaches the end of its life or becomes damaged beyond repair it is supposed to either kill itself or signal the immune system to remove it. Unfortunately every so often this mechanism fails, the cell stays around indefinitely and starts poisoning it's environment. Over time we accumulate more and more of these harmful, death resistant senescent cells.
A recent study in rodents has shown that clearing senescent cells can both reduce the negative effects of age-related diseases and extend the healthy lifespan by up to 35%. Oisin is developing a cellular repair therapy based on a genetically-targeted intervention to clear senescent cells from our body. |
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Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of vision loss among people over the age of 50. AMD is thought to be caused by aggregation of A2E a toxic, non-degradable cellular waste product in our eye's retina cells. Lysoclear is a molecular repair therapy based on the targeted delivery of exogenous A2E degrading enzymes to our retinal cells to eliminate A2E, treat AMD and restore vision.
The team recently announced a Series-A offering to bring its product through Phase I clinical trials. LysoClear would be the first clinical candidate based on the repair and rejuvenation paradigm, pioneered by the SENS research foundation. |
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CellAge is aiming to increase human healthspan and reduce the incidence of age-related diseases by helping the human body destroy senescent cells. The team is focusing on a novel approach for this challenge by developing synthetic promoters for senescence cell detection and removal.
The teams joint expertise in senescence, synthetic biology and bioinformatics gives CellAge a unique angle on improving ways that gene therapies could be targeted to senescent cells. |
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Grapeseed.Bio is a life science accelerator program for young companies that develop therapeutic interventions for age-associated diseases.
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Our annual Undoing Aging Conference is focused on the cellular and molecular repair of age-related damage as the basis of therapies to bring aging under full medical control.
Among the 40 brilliant speakers at Undoing Aging 2019, there were giants in regenerative medicine such as: Dr. Nir Barzilai, Dr. Jerry Shay, Dr. Evan Snyder, Dr. Judith Campisi, and many more. Undoing Aging 2020 will once again bring together scientists and startups from around the globe, all pioneers in their respective fields, who are leading the charge in maintaining and restoring full health in old age.
Among the 40 brilliant speakers at Undoing Aging 2019, there were giants in regenerative medicine such as: Dr. Nir Barzilai, Dr. Jerry Shay, Dr. Evan Snyder, Dr. Judith Campisi, and many more. Undoing Aging 2020 will once again bring together scientists and startups from around the globe, all pioneers in their respective fields, who are leading the charge in maintaining and restoring full health in old age.
Technology Ventures
Being part of the German Internet right from the beginning, founding, funding and developing several major internet companies ourselves, has been an incredible journey for us. We are still excited to support and mentor some of our country's most promising startups.
Staffbase closes the intranet gap for non-desk workers. It is a ready-to-go SaaS solution to extend the reach of internal communications to employees working outside the office, a group representing more than 2/3 of the global workforce. |
Zur Mambu enables any financial institution to easily deliver state-of-the-art banking through its software-as-a-service cloud solution. Agile, flexible and open, Mambu eliminates the complexities typically associated with core banking software, at a fraction of the cost.
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Babbel has made learning languages fun, easy and accessible to everyone. The market-leading app consists of high-quality courses in 14 learning languages (Spanish, French, English, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, Polish, Indonesian, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Russian). |
MOQO is the SaaS-engine for shared mobility services. Its cloud-based platform enables everyone to offer shared mobility services with outstanding quality and exceptional economy of scale.
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Shyftplan is an online shift-planning service that SMEs can use to organize and communicate with their employees. Company administrators can quickly and easily create the payroll for all employees. |
Prescreen is an e-recruiting solution that enables organizations to optimize their recruiting process. The system helps HR departments in the advertising of job vacancies, the search and recruitment process, as well as interviewing and assessment of candidates.
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Suitepad is a new communication channel that brings hotels and their guests closer together, renders an even more comfortable guests experience, and yields additional financial value for hotels.
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Tamyca is Germany's first and leading peer-to-peer carsharing marketplace, connecting car owners whose vehicles are sitting idle for most hours of the day with people who need a car.
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REVL is a new kind of action camera, a better camera. One that allows you to enjoy the moment, knowing your footage will look great and you can spend less time editing and more time having fun.
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MegaZebra is a developer and publisher of Social Games. Its platform allows users of social networks to play online games against their friends. Millions of games are being played by its users. |
Management
Michael Greve
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Michael and his brother Matthias are among the most successful founders of the German-speaking Internet industry.
Alongside numerous other ventures, they created lastminute.de and turned it into the largest last-minute travel site in Germany. Most notably, the brothers founded WEB.DE , and after a successful IPO, grew it into one of the country's largest internet portals and online media businesses. After the successful sale of his companies, Michael created the seed-stage venture capital investor Kizoo that came to fund and mentor some of Germany's most promising tech startups including Babbel, Mambu, and Staffbase. Forever Healthy started out more than a decade ago as a personal quest to shed the extremely unhealthy lifestyle he acquired while building WEB.DE, and over time turned into the focus of his entrepreneurial energy: To enable people to vastly extend their healthy lifespan and be part of the first generation to cure aging. Initiatives of Forever Healthy include the evaluation of new rejuvenation therapies, evidenced-based curation of the world's cutting-edge medical knowledge, the annual Undoing Aging Conference, funding research projects on the root causes of aging, and supporting the creation of startups turning that research into therapies for human use. |
Matthias Hornberger
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Matthias is CFO of Kizoo. He has been part of the senior management team of the group since the IPO of the AG in 2000.
With his long-standing experience in the investment sector and his comprehensive knowledge of typical features of successful business models, he is a competent reference person for young founders. Matthias has extensive contacts in the high-tech industry and numerous local and national networks. Before joining the AG he had a career in Investment Banking. He studied Business Administration at Universities in Mannheim and Toronto (Dipl.-Kfm). |
Frank Schüler
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Frank Schueler, MSc is Managing Director of Kizoo.
Frank led the IPO of web.de, co-founded the Kizoo Venture Capital business with Michael and Matthias, and since then has helped numerous startups to grow. Among Franks board-level assignments, he is COO of the Forever Healthy Foundation, co-founder of the Undoing Aging science conference series, member of the board of the SENS Research Foundation, Mountain View, California and on the executive board of Atevia AG, a public company for 16 years. Previously, he was a strategy consultant with PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Frank holds a M.Sc. (New York) and a Dipl.-Wirtsch.-Ing. from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. |
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Patrick Burgermeister
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Patrick Burgermeister recently joined Kizoo coming from the venture capital group BioMedPartners where he was one of the partners. His experience in the industry encompasses both banking (as a senior analyst for pharma/biotech) as well as pharma (as a senior portfolio manager at Novartis). Patrick supported various biotech companies as a director on their boards, was a successful business developer for early-stage biotech companies and led collaboration and licensing deals with public and private companies. He headed business development at several companies including Apeiron Biologics and BioVersys.
Patrick holds a Master's degree in molecular biology from the University of Basel, an MBA from the University St. Gallen and a degree as a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). |