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Free Fundraising Bootcamps for Life Science Startups

31 Mar

By Antoinette Lowre, Manager of Business Development, LSN

Digital RESI returns in a virtual partnering format June 7-9. To prepare Life Science Nation’s network of startup founders and scientist-entrepreneurs to partner with the 400+ investors and strategic partners expected at this upcoming RESI, we are pleased to offer complimentary fundraising bootcamps. These 1-hour webinars dive into different topics pertaining to early-stage fundraising and digital partnering through the RESI platform. They also include sessions on the Innovator’s Pitch Challenge – one of the most popular and competitive events at RESI.

Check out details below and register to join a free fundraising bootcamp to support your current or next raise!

Tuesday, April 5, 2PM EDT
Branding & Messaging: Seed to Series B 
  • Antoinette Lowre, Manager, Business Development, Life Science Nation
  • Megan Rychwa, Analyst, Investor Research, Life Science Nation
To win capital, you must stand out from the crowd. The first way to do that is to have top-notch marketing collateral. This bootcamp discusses how to provide potential investors with high-quality, professional materials—materials that engage them, communicate your message clearly and concisely, and present the information they want to see in a way that helps them to decide quickly and easily if you are a potential fit for their needs.
Tuesday, April 12, 2PM EDT
Preparing to Pitch at RESI 
  • Alexander Vassallo, Manager, Business Development, Life Science Nation
The Innovator’s Pitch Challenge (IPC) is an opportunity for early-stage companies to gain additional exposure to conference attendees, pitch directly to a panel of relevant investors, and participate in a live Q&A session. This bootcamp will walk through the process of preparing your pitch materials and what to expect in a live pitch session, including frequently asked questions from investor judges.
Wednesday, April 20, 11AM EDT
Fundraising 101: Avoiding Pitfalls and Improving the Odds
  • Karen Deyo, Director, Investor Research, Israel Business Development, Life Science Nation
  • Candice He, Vice President, Business Development, Global Investment Strategist, Life Science Nation
This bootcamp is designed to help scientist-entrepreneurs navigate the world of fundraising. It starts out by debunking some commonly held misconceptions about early-stage startups and fundraising, followed by tips on how to improve your chances and increasing investor visibility.
Wednesday, April 27, 1PM EDT
Preparing to Pitch at RESI
  • Candice He, Vice President, Business Development, Global Investment Strategist, Life Science Nation
The Innovator’s Pitch Challenge (IPC) is an opportunity for early-stage companies to gain additional exposure to conference attendees, pitch directly to a panel of relevant investors, and participate in a live Q&A session. This bootcamp will walk through the process of preparing your pitch materials and what to expect in a live pitch session, including frequently asked questions from investor judges.
Wednesday, May 4, 2PM EDT
Strategies for Successful Partnering 
  • Alexander Vassallo, Manager, Business Development, Life Science Nation
  • Joey Wong, Analyst, Investor Research, Hong Kong BD Life Science Nation
This bootcamp is a fan favorite with tried-and-true tips to make your partnering experience exceptional, letting your technology, product, and team take center-stage. Whether booking 1-on-1 meetings or pitching to a panel, these strategies will help you prioritize the details that make a difference in telling your story to potential investors and strategic partners.

Help! How to Connect When an Investor Won’t Respond

17 Feb

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

Life Science Nation (LSN) is well-known for teaching startup founders how to identify fit, reach out, and follow up with early-stage investors, but a prominent issue remaining is this: What happens when the message is clear, the materials are strong, the fit is promising, but you cannot get a response? What happens when an investor ghosts you?

Let’s go back to the beginning: No outreach campaign should consist of just one message. When working with our clients, we always recommend crafting a four-part outreach plan. The first message, which should be your elevator pitch, should be followed by several other messages, each highlighting a different part of the company that makes you unique. Whether this is the management team, a KOL in your advisory board, a strategic partnership that will help your technology enter the market – the messages will depend on what makes your company unique. Make sure to wait a decent interval between your outreach attempts, as you do not want the investors to feel that you are overloading them with messages. Also, do not take the lack of response personally. Many investors liken their inboxes to ‘drinking out of a firehose’ with the sheer number of inbound messages they receive from startups, and they may have just missed the first message.

If you find yourself consistently getting either no or negative feedback, you may need to adjust your messaging. A service, like LSN’s Branding and Messaging, can help craft a message that will resonate. You may also have connections with investors who can help identify what should be adjusted for a better response. One company at a past RESI crafted multiple messages and tried them all just to see which got him the best result. Once he saw which message garnered the most attention, he went forward with that for the rest of his outreach and ended up with an extremely successful conference, with many connections made. When fundraising outside the context of a conference, we recommend waiting with your top-tier targets, specifically to allow you to adjust your messaging to improve the response.

Another way companies can make themselves stand out is by putting in the effort to customize their messages for the investor. Say why you think it is a good fit for them, based on their investment criteria, or mention a specific portfolio company that made you think you would be a good fit for them. Investors can tell when you exert special effort to catch their attention specifically, and that can make them pay more attention to you in turn. While this makes the outreach stage a lot more labor-intensive, the outcome can be worth the effort.

Lastly, be creative in your outreach strategy. Doing an email campaign or requesting a meeting at a partnering conference are obvious choices, but in addition to these, you can find alternative paths to an initial meeting. Social media platforms like LinkedIn can be extremely useful for this – Look for the investor you are trying to reach and see if any unexpected connections pop up that you can utilize to make an introduction. If, when looking through the investor’s portfolio companies, you find one that you know, they may be willing to connect you, as well. Business connections do not always start through an introduction by someone you know extremely well, sometimes an acquaintance will make the connection that matters most – So keep your mind open and keep trying until you succeed!

While these tips can help limit the chance of having messages missed or ignored by investors, there is no fool-proof way to ensure that does not happen to you. It is an inevitability that some messages may go unread or unanswered, even from an investor who seemed initially interested. In this case, your best course of action is to follow the outreach plan outlined above. Trying to understand why or reading into a crystal ball may not be the best use of your time. It is an unfortunate part of the process, which is why fundraising is a numbers game and you increase your odds with every message. Remember that it is not personal, and so long as you are crafting a compelling message with a strong story to the right people, you are heading in the right direction.

Want to learn more? Join us at a free bootcamp: Strategies for Successful Partnering on Tuesday, March 8 at 12PM EST. This bootcamp covers tactical fundraising skills for early-stage companies on how to build a target investor list to prepare investor meetings. Sign up today and learn more about LSN partnering events like Digital RESI, March 22-24. Early bird registration rates end Friday, February 18.

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Free Fundraising Bootcamps

10 Feb

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

In our 10 years of experience hosting the Redefining Early Stage Investment (RESI) conference series and curating our Investor Database, Life Science Nation (LSN) has interacted with myriad startup companies, investors and strategic partners, and witnessed many deals come to fruition. This is tremendously rewarding for the team at LSN. It has also given us a lot of insight into the keys to successful fundraising strategies and the tools that really help companies close a round.

Everything we do at LSN is aimed at promoting connections that will lead to companies getting the funding to take their technologies one step closer to helping real people. Our fundraising bootcamp series shares our insights on fundraising so that life science entrepreneurs can be better prepared to find and engage the right investors and strategic partners.

Take advantage of these FREE bootcamps and best of luck in your fundraising endeavors!

Wednesday, February 16, 2PM EST Sign Up
Wednesday, February 23, 2PM EST Sign Up
Tuesday, March 8, 12PM EST Sign Up

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Sometimes Money Isn’t Enough

7 Oct

By Karen Deyo, Director of Investor Research, Israel BD, LSN; Gregory Mannix, Vice President International Business Development, General Manager Europe, LSN

Life Science Nation (LSN) and the Redefining Early Stage Investment (RESI) conference series are built on the belief that a startup can improve its fundraising success by partnering often and making sure that the investors and strategic partners they reach out to are a fit for their technology and stage of development. However, while fundraising is a key piece of the puzzle to achieving success, it is not the only piece.

The other pillar of the RESI conference is our service provider attendees, many of whom sponsor the events. These companies can play a crucial role in giving startups advice to navigate the complex path of taking a technology to a finished product. Simply put, a lack of funding is not the only reason a company may fail – if the company makes an early mistake through inexperience, this can cause issues down the road when they can no longer be fixed.

The service providers who attend RESI can offer valuable insight to early-stage companies based on years, and often decades, of experience working in this space. Taking the opportunity to connect with them at RESI can help a startup achieve that next milestone on the most efficient path. It is often worth the additional cost to know that it is done right and often much faster than achieved in-house.

Sponsors at RESI Partnering Week represent a wide array of valuable services that early-stage companies will benefit from, and they offer guidance and workshops at RESI. Here are some examples:

  • MWE has offered workshops on Negotiating Term Sheets—always a favorite at RESI—and on Commercialization of AI Technologies.
  • Burns & Levinson has shared guidance on such relevant topics as Intellectual Property and Cross-Border Transactions.
  • First Republic Bank discussed the wide array of services that banks can offer to startups.
  • Venture Valuation offered valuable insight on Company Valuation for Fundraising

Other sponsors can provide information on topics ranging from insurance needs for life science companies (Medmarc) to Clinical Trials in Australia (Avance Clinical) to financing of scientific equipment (Boldview Capital), to name just a few.

Aside from information and insight, the great service provider companies that come to RESI are available to help early-stage companies on the long journey to commercialization or exit. Learn more about sponsorship opportunities and how LSN’s business development team can help you reach your goals.

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There’s Still Time to Join the Global Roadshow Prep Course

2 Sep

By Rory McCann, Marketing Manager & Conference Producer, LSN

There’s still time to sign up to join the Global Roadshow Prep Course, a one-day virtual training, which includes registration to RESI Partnering Week, September 13-17, with premier partnering access for only $1,950! The course is a hands-on, comprehensive experience designed to set up early-stage life science executives for success as they conduct their global fundraise, with availability on September 3 and September 10.

 Life Science Nation CEO Dennis Ford leads founders through tried-and-true modules targeting branding, messaging, marketing collateral, pitch materials, fundraising principles and strategies, tools for sourcing and developing partnerships, CRMs, outreach, pitching, and follow-up. Learning objectives include, but are not limited to:

  • Branding and messaging communicating your company’s unique story and market value
  • Understanding and creating collateral for use in a pitch setting, including tagline, elevator pitch, executive summary, and slide deck
  • Discovering the values of different types of investors and identifying the best fit -based leads
  • Communicating effectively in order to secure a meeting and following up to develop an ongoing relationship
  • Engaging in successful partnering strategies to obtain funding and strategic partnership

view the agenda

If you’re starting your early-stage fundraising with a RESI conference, set yourself up for success with this companion course and save!

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Hear from Past Clients: The Reglagene Story and How They Learned to Tell It

490

Free Fundraising Bootcamp Today!

26 Aug

By Claire Jeong, Chief Conference Officer, Vice President of Investor Research, Asia BD, LSN

claire

All Life Science Nation (LSN)’s services are dedicated to facilitating connections between early-stage life science companies and investors/strategic partners. To advance the mission of connecting companies and capital, as well as help more life science entrepreneurs prepare for global fundraising, we have organized and hosted several free Fundraising Bootcamps this summer.

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These free Fundraising Bootamps are not only great sessions to familiarize oneself with LSN’s services that can be leveraged for fundraising efforts, such as the LSN Investor Database or RESI Partnering Week, September 13-17, but they also provide fundamental insights regarding the fundraising process, covering topics including:

  • Top 10 Common Myths in Fundraising
  • How to Prepare Your Messaging for Investor Outreach
  • How to Prepare for Meetings

Sign up for today’s free Fundraising Bootcamp at 2 PM EDT!

Does it Work?

29 Jul

By Rory McCann, Marketing Manager & Conference Producer, LSN

I’ve heard a lot about RESI through the years, but does it work?

The question that comes from every fundraising executive at some point takes many forms, but this is frequently the hardest to answer. To do so requires a basic understanding of the Fundamental Facts of Fundraising, before explaining what RESI will and won’t do. While many entrepreneurs would enthusiastically jump at the promise of a partnering conference series offering low effort and high yield in terms of booking meetings with qualified investors and walking out with a term sheet or more, but reality doesn’t align with that story. Instead, reality aligns with the truths outlined below:

Fundamental Facts of Fundraising:

  1. Funding a startup into early-stage success and beyond is incredibly difficult and RESI won’t change that.
  2. Fundraising is a numbers game.
  3. Your best chances come from a good fit based on product and stage of development.
  4. There are strategies and best practices that set you up for success.
  5. You get out what you put in.

While not a silver bullet to any of the above, instead, RESI is a powerful tool that is:

  1. Designed to help early-stage entrepreneurs in life science and healthcare. That’s it. Every product, service, and resource are geared towards setting up scientific startups for success.
  2. A model that takes place five times each year with thirteen conferences, bringing in hundreds of investors and early-stage companies each time, creating many opportunities to book meetings.
  3. A connection vehicle that is designed for attendees to seek and target the best fits for their needs through its match-based partnering system.
  4. Equipped with an arsenal of resources set up for the early-stage entrepreneur to be successful in sourcing and booking well-fitting meetings, including free fundraising bootcamps, database subscriptions, branding and messaging services, one-day prep courses, and countless articles outlining best practices, marketing collateral, outreach strategies, and a four-step follow-up process.
  5. Rewarding to those who apply proven strategies and are willing to work.

No matter how expensive or high quality, a hammer will only build a house in the hands of a builder who knows how to use it and shows up to work. I recently connected with two CEOs – one had a very negative perspective of his RESI experience and one with a very positive one.

The first CEO stated that RESI was the “world’s worst meeting ever” and insinuated that he was more deserving of investors’ time with “hit my name in Google”. When I dug deeper, it was clear that he had sent roughly 15% of the meeting invitations of his counterparts with no attempt at follow-up. I’m not surprised he did not have a better experience.

The second CEO shared that he had had a very positive experience at RESI. He then outlined his pre-conference strategy in which he identified several investors who were an excellent fit for his company, and even prepared a secondary list of investors who were less of a match, but still may consider taking a meeting – which he inevitably used when an investor was unable to connect. He also detailed his post-conference follow-up strategy. He shared how he recognized the opportunity available to him and he was willing to work hard to make the most of it. While he didn’t ask me to “hit his name in Google”, I did anyway. His company raised a multi-million-dollar Series A shortly afterwards. Unsurprisingly, it says more about his ethic than whether a partnering conference “works”.

Like most things worth our time and effort, RESI is a valuable tool that will work if you do. Join us September 13-17 to see what it’s all about at the virtual RESI Partnering Week. Save when you register by August 6. We hope to see you virtually there!

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