Next Phase Newsletter

By Alexander Vassallo, Manager of Business Development West Coast (US), LSN

Launching and successfully growing a life science company is an extremely challenging endeavor, but if done successfully, can foster new paradigms of healthcare and lead to healthier lives for individuals around the globe. It is for this reason that Life Science Nation (LSN), the industry leader in connecting early-stage life science firms with capital investors and strategic partners, has developed a series of new educational courses, ranging from half a day to three days, for aspiring scientist-entrepreneurs and fundraising executives.

Launching and Funding Startups: Seed to Series B is a free half-day course designed to introduce early-stage life science executives to the tools and tips they will need to successfully launch a company and begin to interact with your target partners and investors. The course will cover several fundamental entrepreneurial concepts such as how to perform entrepreneurial due diligence, branding and messaging and the importance of telling a cogent company story through multiple modalities, and the 10 myths of fundraising. This course can be complemented by an optional afternoon session (bringing the course to a full day) where LSN staff will work directly with companies to help review their non-confidential materials, perform a competitive landscape analysis, and generate a global target list of investors.

Mapping the Landscape of Strategic Partners for Your Startup is a paid one-day course for fundraising executives who have launched an early-stage life science firm and will actively be seeking partners for capital (Seed to Series B), joint product collaboration, or licensing distribution deals. The course will cover a tactical to-do list for the early-stage entrepreneur and participants will be equipped with the skills and tools necessary to successfully undertake a global fundraising campaign. The course will finish with a Tales from the Road (TFTR) panel that will involve seasoned entrepreneurs in the LSN network sharing their experiences of their fundraising journeys and launching life science companies. The price of this course is $1,400 per company and includes two spots per company (one business and one science executive).

Preparing for Your Global Fundraising Roadshow is a paid two-day course that will cover an extensive dive into developing a professional set of marketing, non-confidential materials that the early-stage life science executive can bring to any investor meeting and partnering conference during their fundraising campaign: tagline, elevator pitch, executive summary, one-page data sheet, and pitch deck. Participants will also be taught how to research global investors, collaborators, and licensing partners who are a right fit for your company’s technology and stage of development and how to interact with your target partners. A third day of early-stage life science strategics can be added to the course (bringing it to a full three days) to further prepare participants for their fundraising journeys. Navigating the pitfalls that commonly catch first-time CEOs off-guard, creating a network of global alliances through social and business media, and mapping the competitive global landscape to elucidate the value of your startup are important themes that will be covered. The three-day version of the Preparing for Your Global Fundraising Roadshow course will conclude with a live Shark Tank to active investor judges. The price of the two-day course is $3,500, and the price of the three-day course is $4,500, with two spots per company for each course (one business and one science executive).

If you’re interested in learning more and participating in a course, please feel free to reach out to Alexander Vassallo at a.vassallo@lifesciencenation.com to schedule a call and explore the new range of LSN entrepreneurial education courses.

By Dennis Ford, Founder and CEO of Life Science Nation, Creator of the RESI Conference Series

The coaching and mentoring universe is divided between those who think that selling, cold calling, and follow-ups are dirty words. They’re likely to proselytize that if you do not have a warm referral, you are wasting your time. The other camp (where I live) supports finding partners based on the fit of product and stage of development and reaching out until you book that meeting or are told, “No.” Life Science Nation created the RESI conference to be a vehicle to make this happen, based on fit – the other “warm referral.”

Opportunity abounds in the golden age of life science with new tools and technologies adding to the dynamic, but we’re also seeing startups fail faster, and therefore pivot, restart, and draw a straighter line to viable targets and products. I hear frequently that the magic combination is being smart and lucky, but somewhere in the middle of being smart and lucky is determination, commitment to hard, tedious work, and navigating the path to a new product. This is the case for founders taking their companies from regional to global and finding investors and licensing partners that are a fit.

RESI is a conference designed for these entrepreneurs to flourish. It’s frustrating to see partnering events with little vetted investors or licensing partners, but rather services providers wanting to charge for their partnering services. These other partnering events are more of a social gathering for reconnecting business acquaintances, which makes it a challenge in choosing the right event for you. None of this is inherently wrong, but the current need is for real vetted partners who are looking to fulfil investment mandates and product pipelines.

The early-stage marketplace is heating up with growing buy-side players seeking these startups. Join us for Digital RESI, June 7-9 and mark your calendar for the first in-person RESI since 2020 – RESI Boston, September 21-22.

By Rory McCann, Marketing Manager & Conference Producer, LSN

Launching a successful startup requires data. Life science entrepreneurs know the value of data when pitching to investors, but those investor meetings don’t happen without a well-curated dataset and global target list (GTL). In a recent conversation with Life Science Nation (LSN) business development manager Alex Vassallo, we discussed how fundraising founders can source a GTL of investors and strategic partners who are a fit for their product and stage of development using the LSN Investor Database, and how to use this tool in conjunction with tried-and-true principles of successful partnering.

Contact us to learn more about the LSN Investor Database, view a demo, and discuss how our products and services can help your early-stage fundraise.

Want to learn more? The Business Development team at Life Science Nation is available to answer questions and share additional details to help you meet your partnership goals!
International	East Coast (USA) & China	Midwest (USA) & Canada	West Coast  (USA)
Greg Mannix Vice President International Business Development Book a Meeting Email Me	Candice He VP, Business Development & Global Investment Strategist Book a Meeting Email Me	Antoinette Lowre Manager of Business Development Book a Meeting Email Me	Alexander Vassallo Manager of Business Development Book a Meeting Email Me

By Alexander Vassallo, Manager of Business Development West Coast (US), LSN

“If I told you to jump out of an airplane without a parachute, would you do it?”

This was not the first question that the Fulbright scholars attending the Boston seminar were expecting to receive, but after a 3-day entrepreneurial masterclass workshop delivered by Life Science Nation (LSN), it was a question all the scholars had an answer to. Starting a company is one of the most difficult tasks an entrepreneur can undertake, however, with the right mindset and genuine entrepreneurial agency, your chances of success can greatly improve.

The Fulbright Commission invited LSN to help equip the next generation of aspiring scientist-entrepreneurs with some of the skills they would need to be industry leaders in the life science arena. Led by LSN Founder and CEO, Dennis Ford, alongside the VP of Business Development, Candice He, and the BD Manager for the West Coast, Alex Vassallo, the Boston Fulbright seminar, April 21-23, was an engaging experience that this year’s cohort of scholars would not soon forget.

Participants were given an opportunity to explore and examine the process of taking life-saving inventions from ideation and creation stages to the public market. The life science domain is unique in that a startup entity’s journey starts with academic tech transfer agreements, which lead to regional and national government non-dilutive funding followed by capital investors and licensing partners. This entrepreneurial masterclass highlighted the core elements of launching an early-stage company’s branding and messaging in conjunction with a global partnering campaign. The theme of the workshop was finding your entrepreneurial voice, developing a compelling narrative, and then clearly telling the story of team, product, company milestones, and partnering strategy.

The 3-day entrepreneurial workshop concluded with an impressive pitch competition that highlighted not only the talent and entrepreneurial agency that the Fulbright scholars possessed, but that the key take-home messages of the masterclass had been well integrated and understood. We can expect many of these students to be industry leaders in the coming years and were honored to be a part of their journey. Whilst starting a company in many ways is comparable to jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, the scholars of the Fulbright Commission are taking the plunge.

By Karen Deyo, Director of Investor Research, Israel BD, LSN

Life Science Nation (LSN) has built a funding superstructure over the past decade, but what is the true metric of success in the complex early-stage life science ecosystem? The number of companies funded, and the amount allocated are terrific metrics, but when consumed as comprehensive and independent of context, this data can be misleading and unhelpful. Let’s dive into LSN’s tracking of these companies and discuss the value this data holds and how it can work for you.

As previously mentioned, LSN tracks companies funded in part through participating at the Redefining Early Stage Investment (RESI) partnering conferences, subscribing to the LSN Investor Database, or using our Branding, Messaging and Matching services. The organic nature of partnering, along with its typical 9–18-month timeline, makes it challenging to track and verify, therefore, this data is typically self-reported by our partners and verified through public press releases. As such, we estimate this list makes up only about a third of these deals with LSN as part of the strategy, as many cannot be publicly disclosed. The funded partner list consists of nearly 85 startups across early-stage life science and healthcare with deals valuing more than $1.3B that have used LSN’s products and services as part of the campaign strategy. Check out the basic structure of these deals below:

From the data, we see that the 4Ds (Drugs, Devices, Diagnostics, and Digital Health) that LSN focuses on are broadly represented in the number of companies that receive funding, but they are not the only companies that investors are pursuing. Additionally, therapeutics leads the pack, despite the reputation that pre-clinical, early-stage therapeutics are too great a risk for investors to jump into. Learn more about that in our recent interviews with RESI Innovator’s Pitch Challenge winners: OncoXome CEO, Auriane Gamelin and Prolifagen CEO, Claudine Bruck.

We see that early-stage deal flow is alive and well in the life sciences, but not all capital is the same. Know what you want but keep an open mind when meeting with relevant and knowledgeable partners who are a fit for you. Early-stage fundraising is a critical point in a startup’s development and growth, but these partnerships will last beyond the round and will play a large part in bringing your company forward.

The tools LSN offers are powerful, but what these funded companies also have in common is leg work. LSN helps companies build their global target list of capital investors and licensing partners through services, data, and events, but it’s the founders and their stories that shine in those meetings. Every successful raise has dedicated, hard-working, creative, and resourceful founders and team members doing research, booking meetings, and pitching to investors who are a fit for their product and stage of development. LSN has long provided guidance and resources to help entrepreneurs, but it’s their own work that gets them over the finish line.

Has LSN played a role in your fundraising or investing? Tell us your story! We want to add your deal to our list and share what you have learned throughout the process. If you’re interested in learning more about what LSN can help you achieve in your own global fundraising campaign, connect with our business development team!

Want to learn more? The Business Development team at Life Science Nation is available to answer questions and share additional details to help you meet your partnership goals!
International	East Coast (USA) & China	Midwest (USA) & Canada	West Coast  (USA)
Greg Mannix Vice President International Business Development Book a Meeting Email Me	Candice He VP, Business Development & Global Investment Strategist Book a Meeting Email Me	Antoinette Lowre Manager of Business Development Book a Meeting Email Me	Alexander Vassallo Manager of Business Development Book a Meeting Email Me

By Greg Mannix, Vice President International Business Development, General Manager Europe, LSN

Do you know the players in your field that are developing similar technologies, or different technologies for the same application? Do you understand how your technology compares to those potential competitors? These are issues investors will want to see you have a grasp on, so having a clear vision of your Competitive Landscape will add a lot of value when you are pitching for investment.

Life Science Nation (LSN) offers valuable resources to early-stage companies as they seek funding and develop their strategies to grow and progress. To track your competitive landscape, LSN has a powerful business development database that tracks more than 60,000 companies across all the verticals of the life sciences and all stages of development. In just a few clicks, you can see your own competitive landscape.

Once you’ve seen the competitive landscape, it’s important to understand how to communicate your unique value. We can also help you understand and effectively communicate this, extracted in part from your better picture of the Competitive Landscape, through LSN’s Branding & Messaging consulting services. Experts will work with you to develop optimal marketing collateral for you to use in your communication with investors and partners, increasing your odds of success. Hear from Reglagene CEO Richard Austin on how he learned to tell his company story and how it impacted his early-stage fundraising.

Finally, you can put your enhanced market comprehension, communication skills and story to the test in the Innovator’s Pitch Challenge (IPC) at Digital RESI, June 7-9. The IPC is a fantastic showcase for founders who participate in a live Q&A from investors and strategic partners from different sectors in life science and healthcare. Investors frequently ask pitching founders about their unique value and market competition. A keen and well-communicated understanding of the competitive landscape shows investors that you don’t just function within an industry – you know it.

This knowledge can help you position yourself, not just accurately among competitors, but as someone who really knows their industry. To learn more about your competitive landscape or about any products or services mentioned, reach out to connect with LSN’s dedicated business development team.

Want to learn more? The Business Development team at Life Science Nation is available to answer questions and share additional details to help you meet your partnership goals!
International	East Coast (USA) & China	Midwest (USA) & Canada	West Coast  (USA)
Greg Mannix Vice President International Business Development Book a Meeting Email Me	Candice He VP, Business Development & Global Investment Strategist Book a Meeting Email Me	Antoinette Lowre Manager of Business Development Book a Meeting Email Me	Alexander Vassallo Manager of Business Development Book a Meeting Email Me