Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

Genapta founders Dr Julian White (left) and Prof David Richards

The Cambridge University spin-out will say no more about the specifics of the sale than that it is to a "North American instrumentation company for an undisclosed sum."

But what ever the figures involved, the chances are that having assiduously avoided venture capital, founders Dr Julian White and Prof David Richards will see more of the final consideration that would have otherwise been the case.

Spinning out from of the University’s physics lab in 2001, Genapta received £157k from the University of Cambridge Challenge Fund in two instalments, in July 2001 and February 2002; undisclosed seed funding in July 2002 and DTI Smart funding in February 2003; but interestingly, no VC funding.

Speaking to Business Weekly in 2004, Dr White said: "To be frank we got bored of talking to VCs, the few deals on offer in 2002 were poor and the strings were somewhat thick and pulled in odd directions."

In the seven years since foundation Genapta has built a technology portfolio specialising in high performance optical platforms for biochemical screening such as DNA sequencing and genomic testing.

The Genapta systems are capable of screening chemical compounds down to the few molecule regime. The capability is potentially valuable to the pharmaceutical industry where accuracy is required sometimes in very challenging circumstances within drug discovery.

The company took a novel approach to developing optical measurement equipment by using techniques borrowed from the telecoms industry.

White said:  “We are delighted that the hard work of the Genapta team has been recognised.  In recent years we have worked with customers and partners to commercialise our patented technology, but on the whole it is a challenging task for a small enterprise to protect, develop, manufacture and support a new application and market. Using the resources of our new parent company, all these issues will now be addressed”.

Cambridge Enterprise Seed Funds is part of Cambridge Enterprise Limited which is the commercialisation office of the University of Cambridge. 

Bill Matthews, formerly Head of the Seed Funds said: “Genapta is a good example of a start-up that got the essentials right. They combined a high level of relevant technical expertise with skilful husbanding of financial and human resources.

"They avoided the trap of diluting their holdings through raising too much equity capital but instead were frugal personally and developed the product through collaboration with potential customers."

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