Building a Company While Defining a Category.

About this episode

Dr. Sioned Fôn Jones discusses building BoobyBiome and addressing the research gap in breast milk microbiome.

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Sioned Fôn Jones co-founder of BoobyBiome and award-winning scientist with a PhD in Biophysics. Alongside co-founders Dr Lydia Mapstone and Dr Tara O'Driscoll, Sioned is doing something truly rare: building a science-led company in a space that barely existed before they arrived. We get into the breast milk microbiome, the staggering research gap (we know more about tomatoes, coffee and wine than breast milk), and why that gap is not accidental. It sits at the intersection of women's health and infant health, two of the most historically underfunded areas in science, and BoobyBiome is determined to change that. The episode covers the origin story of both products: the live microbiome drop developed to give every baby a foundational microbiome regardless of how they are fed, and the preservation device born out of a serendipitous discovery about oxygen's impact on stored breast milk. Sioned walks us through the full funding journey, from a £750k pre-seed in 2022 led by VenRex, to a £2.5M seed in 2025 led by Empirical Ventures, alongside six Innovate UK grants totalling £2.6M after five failed applications first. We also explore the very real…

People in this episode

Host: Leo Tyson

Guest: Dr. Sioned Fôn Jones

Topics covered

• breast milk microbiome
• women's health
• infant health
• science-led companies
• funding journey
• investor challenges

Keywords

• breast milk
• microbiome
• funding
• women's health
• infant health
• science
• startups

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: BoobyBiome, VenRex, Empirical Ventures, Innovate UK

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