By Lucy Parkinson, VP of Investor Research, LSN

The Boston area is known worldwide as a hub for early stage biotech companies, and this year’s RESI Boston event will also feature young biotech spinouts from tech hubs and universities from all around the biotech ‘First Coast’ in the US Northeast.  To commercialize their discoveries, these young companies will need to access capital.

This panel of Early Stage Therapeutic Investors aims to bring a diverse group of experts and senior decision making staff from VCs, corporate pharma, and other investor types together to discuss topics such as:

• • How they make decisions
  • What can startups do to be more attractive?
  • Areas of high need
  • Overcrowded areas

• Common mistakes/red flags

The participants are:

• Kuldeep Neote, Senior Director – New Ventures, Johnson & Johnson Innovation
• Sunil Shah, CEO, O2h Ventures
• Bibhash Mukhopadhyay, Principal, New Enterprise Associates
• Marta New, Partner, Agent Capital
• Imran Babar, Chief Business Officer, Cydan

The discussion will cover topics including how the investors source and vet novel therapeutic assets, what kinds of technology are of interest to them right now, and how they as investors work with a startup to move a new drug toward commercialization.

By Dennis Ford, Founder & CEO, Life Science Nation; Creator of RESI Conference Series

The Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) conference series consists of investors (the buyers) and the life science startups  (the sellers), and the service providers who have the services that the startup companies need to move their products towards commercialization. Service provider sales and business development staff have a tremendous opportunity to use RESI to keep their business pipelines full, as a good portion of the capital raised after an investment transaction often goes to 3^rd party service providers.  LSN and RESI act as a hub for the early-stage life science ecosystem, bringing all of the players together to interact and form relationships. Indeed, It is a twofold proposition for the service providers who attend RESI: first, they have an opportunity to meet the startup firms that would benefit from their services. Second, they have the chance to meet the investors that attend RESI,  who are not only funding these new prospective clients but also have a portfolio of funded firms that may be in need of 3^rd party services.  A lot of the big global CROs that regularly attend RESI love the fact that creating relationships with the funding source can help drive ongoing strategic relationships.

The BD staff of the service providers can also take advantage of the RESI format – having a partnering conference every few months across North America allows them to regularly schedule a full day of meetings with prospective new clients and potentially closing a lot of new deals.  RESI has been the ONLY conference to regularly coalesce (5 times a year) the global early-stage investor community (10 categories of investors) and their billions of investment dollars.  No other conference entity is dedicated exclusively to the early-stage life sciences ecosystem. It is our relationship with this community that makes RESI unique. The hook for RESI is that the early-stage capital is meeting with the early-stage companies across the silos of drugs, devices, diagnostics and digital health thus creating extremely compelling business targets for service providers.

The smart early-stage service providers know that attending RESI and putting these fundraising CEOs and scientist/entrepreneurs on their radar screen can funnel business into their pipeline.  Moreover, being able to meet and cultivate relationships with “the money” and obtain insights into the portfolio companies of the investors  and the services they may need offers another avenue for obtaining new clients. After 19 conferences over three years we have seen that the service providers are a solid part of the RESI ecosystem. The combination of regional, smaller service providers and big global players makes RESI incredibly dynamic.  RESI generates business and forges important industry connections for service providers, making them an important part of their sales and BD strategy since day 1.