If you take a fellowship to start a company and then spin that company off from a university, you've gotta be careful to choose the right uni and structure the work appropriately. Some universities will take pretty big stakes when they can.

Calling this a fellowship is a bit confusing, but I'm not sure it's anything more nefarious than perhaps simply misleading/confusing. At least they're up front with the fact that they'll take a 10% stake. Many universities that will try to take a pretty similar stake aren't so up-front.

We're optimizing how we run things to build a community of scientists over maximizing our financial returns. We care most about about inspiring scientists to pursue translational research with greater resources and team coordination than they may find in a more traditional pathway.

Words can have multiple meanings; sometimes troublesome ones (i.e. 'tabling' an item on the agenda).

That said if you need more money than what we are offering at the start, our first thing to do will be to help you figure out a greater fundraising process.

But $400,000 is a lot of money so the confidence has to be there for all, that they will actually make enough progress before the money runs out so that it's comparable to what a more mature operation would have who is worth over $2 Million at least.

Even if the new venture is still ramping up and not yet expected to have marketable products, services, or IP yet, that kind of progress needs to be there or how could further investment be justified.

Basically it can be just one or two top performers actually capable of accomplishing a couple million worth of work, or building something that would otherwise cost almost $3 Million if given this type of opportunity.

OTOH you could get 10 to 20 contributors who each work with lesser resources but could still build equal momentum over a respectable runway.

If either of these or anything in between is built for $400,000 that's a good start for all.

In my field I could dispatch a calibration crew from a single reference instrument, or arrange with a preferred client to maintain theirs as a reference instrument and go labless.

Too bad Theranos ended up taking massive funding instead of you less-well-connected biotech entrepreneurs, so much real progresss could have been deployed instead.

If you want to be upfront, don't call it a fellowship. That word has a specific meaning, especially for scientists. It comes with a stipend and is attached to a research institution, neither of which is the case here.