Page 35 - Innovation Delaware 2021

| BY ROGER MORRIS
A STATE of GROWTH
From startup to IPO to maturation, Delaware is the place for businesses to get big
KRIS VADDI
In late September, BILL PROVINE celebrated the “graduation” of one of his prime tenants at the Delaware Innovation Space when Prelude Therapeutics pulled the trigger on an IPO by listing on Nasdaq (PRLD). Its shares opened on the high end of the estimate of $19 a
share, for a capitalization of $158.2 million. As of this writing, the share price had risen to $76.
For Prelude’s CEO, KRIS VADDI, it has been a whirlwind four years since he founded the company in 2016, first finding a space to develop the company’s cancer-fighting technology and then receiving help with startup funding at the Delaware Technology Park (DTP) incubator, before moving on to gain additional lab room at the Innovation Space. The State of Delaware has twice supported the company with job-growth incentive packages. At launch, Prelude had 51 employees. Now, it has three Phase 1 drug candidates.
It was not the first time Vaddi experienced a facet of Delaware’s business- growing environment. Previously, he had joined Incyte Corporation as vice president after it relocated here from California in 2002 to take advantage of the state’s pro-business climate and financial incentives package. That
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