Dan Watkins
Angel Investor · at DFJ Mercury
Houston, United States
Dan Watkins is a Series B investor at DFJ Mercury in Houston focused on Biotechnology and Health Care. Dr. Watkins is a Managing Director of DFJ Mercury, a venture capital firm focused on seed and early-stage investments in the sciences and software sectors in the mid-continent region. He is actively investing in both energy related physical sciences startups and life sciences startups.Prior to co-founding DFJ Mercury, Dr. Watkins was thefounder and Managing Partner of A3 Associates, a venture firm focused on seed-stage investments in university and research center-based technology transfer opportunities.Dr. Watkins received his BS in Materials Science and Engineering from Rice University and his MS and Ph.D in Materials Science and Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.He currently serves on the advisory boards of BioHouston, the Rice Alliance for Technology & Entrepreneurship, and Northwestern University’s Innovation and New Ventures Office.
- Total investments:
- 35
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 26%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Dan Watkins invests in
Stages Dan Watkins invests in
Countries Dan Watkins invests in
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
|---|---|---|
| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
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Investment Focus
Industry
- Biotechnology 7 (20%)
- Health Care 4 (11%)
- AgTech 2 (6%)
- Medical 2 (6%)
- Agriculture 2 (6%)
Stage
- Series B 6 (17%)
- Debt Financing 5 (14%)
- Series A 4 (11%)
- Series C 3 (9%)
- Series D 2 (6%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Benson Hill is a crop improvement company that unlocks the natural diversity of plants and empowers innovators with a revolutionary crop design platform to develop healthier and more sustainable food and ingredients.Benson Hill empowers innovators to develop more healthy, flavorful, and sustainable food by unlocking the natural genetic diversityof plants. Benson Hill’s CropOS™ platform combines machine learning and big data with breeding techniques and plant biology to drastically accelerate and simplify the product development process. | $150M / Series D / Oct 29, 2020 | ||
| Benson Hill is a crop improvement company that unlocks the natural diversity of plants and empowers innovators with a revolutionary crop design platform to develop healthier and more sustainable food and ingredients.Benson Hill empowers innovators to develop more healthy, flavorful, and sustainable food by unlocking the natural genetic diversityof plants. Benson Hill’s CropOS™ platform combines machine learning and big data with breeding techniques and plant biology to drastically accelerate and simplify the product development process. | $32.6M / Series C / Aug 02, 2019 | ||
| Sight Machine specializes in manufacturing analytics and used by Global 500 companies to make better, faster decisions about their operations. Sight Machine's analytics platform, purpose-built for discrete and process manufacturing, uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics to help address critical challenges inquality and productivity throughout the enterprise.The platform is powered by the industry’s only Plant Digital Twin, which enables real-time visibility and actionable insights for every machine, line, and plant throughout an enterprise.It was founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. | $29.4M / Series C / Apr 23, 2019 | ||
| Benson Hill is a crop improvement company that unlocks the natural diversity of plants and empowers innovators with a revolutionary crop design platform to develop healthier and more sustainable food and ingredients.Benson Hill empowers innovators to develop more healthy, flavorful, and sustainable food by unlocking the natural genetic diversityof plants. Benson Hill’s CropOS™ platform combines machine learning and big data with breeding techniques and plant biology to drastically accelerate and simplify the product development process. | $25M / Series B / May 28, 2017 | ||
| Sight Machine specializes in manufacturing analytics and used by Global 500 companies to make better, faster decisions about their operations. Sight Machine's analytics platform, purpose-built for discrete and process manufacturing, uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics to help address critical challenges inquality and productivity throughout the enterprise.The platform is powered by the industry’s only Plant Digital Twin, which enables real-time visibility and actionable insights for every machine, line, and plant throughout an enterprise.It was founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. | $6M / Series B / Nov 16, 2016 | ||
| Clean Chemistry is a biotechnology company that specializes in the field of water management and water purification. It develops oxidant chemistries based on activated oxygen in liquid formulations for water treatment, reuse, and recycling, particularly for use in hydraulic fracturing and enhanced oil recovery processes.The company wasincorporated in 2012 and is based in Boulder, Colorado. | $300K / Debt Financing / Sep 07, 2016 | ||
| Sinopsys Surgical develops medical devices for surgical procedures for the lacrimal glands. The company was formerly known as DCS Surgical, Inc. The company was incorporated in 2011 and is based in Boulder, Colorado. | $100K / Debt Financing / Sep 02, 2016 | ||
| Resonant Therapeutics’s platform allows for the simultaneous discovery of novel targets and high affinity, functional antibodies with unprecedented speed. Using novel insights into the tumor microenvironment and the immune system, their platform identifies targets and therapeutic candidates for any patient derived tumor tissue or cell line,including cancer stem cells. The platform is extensible to other microenvironment regulated disease. They have created a pipeline of candidates with potent, direct anti-tumor activity, initially in breast and ovarian cancers. Their antibodies are expected to work as a monotherapy or in synergistic combination with emerging immunotherapies. | $559.8K / Series A / Jul 05, 2016 | ||
| Sight Machine specializes in manufacturing analytics and used by Global 500 companies to make better, faster decisions about their operations. Sight Machine's analytics platform, purpose-built for discrete and process manufacturing, uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics to help address critical challenges inquality and productivity throughout the enterprise.The platform is powered by the industry’s only Plant Digital Twin, which enables real-time visibility and actionable insights for every machine, line, and plant throughout an enterprise.It was founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. | $13.5M / Series B / Mar 22, 2016 | ||
| Illumitex is a manufacturer of precision LEDs, LED lights, LED grow lights, and digital horticulture solutions. It transforms traditional LED design and increases the functionality with the creation of an LED package that emits light in a uniform, highly-precise beam directly from the source. Its devices provide LED lights which are mainly based onoptics technology that predict, diagnose, monitor, and improve all aspects of operations that enable customers to improve the brightness and efficiency of flat-panel televisions, portable electronic devices, and digital projectors to be used for their vertical farms, greenhouses, and indoor gardening. | $4M / Debt Financing / Oct 14, 2014 | ||
| See all 35 investments → | |||
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FAQ
What does Dan Watkins invest in?
Dan Watkins invests primarily in Biotechnology, Health Care and AgTech startups, most often at Series B and Debt Financing stage. Most of the 35 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
How do I contact Dan Watkins?
Public channels for Dan Watkins include LinkedIn and X (Twitter). For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
When did Dan Watkins last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Dan Watkins closed in Oct 2020. Shizune tracks 35 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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