NEXT PHASE

By Natasha Eldridge, RESI Conference Manager, LSN

On Monday August 21st, Partnering for RESI Boston will open and all the entrepreneurs and investors attending the event will be able to start filling out their dance cards for RESI’s one-on-one meetings.  While RESI Partnering has always been the heart of the event, RESI also offers dozens of educational panels and workshops and also an engaging venue for ad-hoc networking.

The new Premier Partnering Plus will feature deep profiles of investors and strategic players that can be used to ensure attending startups get in front of the most relevant, best-fit buy side players possible.  Below is a partial list of investors who are already signed up to take part.  These investors range from family offices to major pharma players, from local funds to international cross border investors. Entrepreneurs can meet an incredible diversity of global investors at RESI Boston and continue the dialogue 6 weeks later at RESI NYC November 15.

While all attendees can use RESI Partnering to send meeting requests to attending investors, Premier Partnering Plus registrants will have a new unique tool to vet investor fits through viewing full mandate data for each investor.  This additional service will inform entrepreneurs as to what kind of opportunities these investors are most focused on, and for the first time, will also provide entrepreneurs with access to direct contact info.  In a previous edition, we took a closer look at what Premier Partnering Plus adds to the RESI experience.  If you’re already registered and would like to talk about upgrading your registration, please contact us at resi@lifesciencenation.com.

CONFIRMED INVESTORS AND STRATEGIC PARTNERS

By Lucy Parkinson, Director of Research, LSN

The LSN team reviews a lot of pitch decks on behalf of our clients, and we also hear many investor responses to startup presentations. We therefore have a unique window into what catches an investor’s eye, and what makes them lose interest. In this article, we’ll take a look at some common mistakes we’ve seen recently.

Tell Your Story

It’s all too easy to fill a deck with information on your science and the market but not have any unifying message that brings this information together. A deck is much more likely to get you a meeting if it tells a cohesive story. What motivated you to start this company? What goal is your company working towards? How did your fellow founders get involved? The answers to these simple questions can build your deck’s story and convince an investor to take a meeting. Remember, investors allocate to people rather than to assets – they need to know what your vision is and why you believe in this company. If you do this right, the investor will begin to believe in your company too.

It’s Not A Science Presentation

We often see pitch decks that are laden with graphs, data and images from preclinical studies. Often, these decks are produced by career scientists who have much more experience in presenting at scientific conferences than in marketing a startup to investors.

It’s important to remember that the purpose of a deck is first and foremost to get an investor interested in meeting with you. Every slide should have some important information that you and the investor can then discuss in more depth if there’s an interest. So for example, your slide might briefly summarize the results of your study or state that you found a positive result, then in conversation with the investor you could share these results in more depth if the investor wanted to see them.

Remember that life science investors, even if they’re not scientific experts personally, have access to expert reviewers who will assess your scientific case in great detail if the investor is interested in your company. Neither the deck nor the meeting has to make that deep scientific case for your startup.

Don’t Forget To Talk Business

Some pitch decks devote a lot of space to demonstrating why the scientists believe that their product will successfully demonstrate safety and efficacy in humans, but reserve little space for talking about the business that the product will power. Be realistic about the investor’s motivation: return on capital. Investors will want to know that you’re looking at the competitive landscape for your product, how your product will compete with the current standard of care (or any late-stage assets that might become a new standard of care), and how many patients your product can reach.

Don’t Miss The Exit

Investors will also be focused on how/when your company might be able to exit. Show the investors some comparable companies that IPOed or were acquired recently. In our experience, early stage biotechs benefit from starting discussions with strategic partners as early as possible – how are you positioning the product to such partners to align with their pipeline needs?

Don’t Lose Focus

Early stage biotech companies are often formed around several assets, either related via an underlying platform or created by the same scientist or academic institution. Many new entrepreneurs therefore assume that investors will be interested in the breadth of their portfolio as an opportunity to get several “shots on goal”. However, our experience is that investors generally prefer to see a clear focus on 1 or at most 2 highly promising lead programs. It is useful to mention that you have other assets as well – many strong pitch decks include a ‘Pipeline’ slide that shows all the company’s assets and the stage of development that they’ve reached – but investors primarily value the company according to the development of a lead program.

If you’re interested in getting some feedback on your deck and your investor outreach campaign, we’d be happy to provide a free consultation – you can find more details here.

By James Huang, Research Analyst, LSN

With medical technology entrepreneurs facing a challenging capital landscape, angel capital remains a vital source of early stage funding in the sector.  According to studies by the Angel Resource Institute, of every angel dollar invested in the USA, nearly 20 cents goes into healthcare and life sciences.  In recognition of the importance of angel financing to early stage companies, RESI features two angel panels, and today we would like to announce our Medtech Angels panel for RESI Boston.  If you’re interested in how to pitch to an angel group, what makes a medtech opportunity suitable for angel investment, or how angels work with their portfolio companies to hit subsequent milestones and follow-on raises, this panel is for you.

LSN has brought together five highly experienced angels who have a focus on medical technology investment.  The participants are:

• Laura Davis – Managing Director, Golden Seeds
• Eric Dobson – CEO, Angel Capital Group
• Harald Stock – Managing Partner, Alta Life Science
• Bernie Rudnick – Founding Member, Mid Atlantic Bio Angels
• Bob Williams – Angel Investor, Life Sciences Angel Network

By Natasha Eldridge, RESI Conference Manager, LSN

LSN is pleased to announce WuXi AppTec will be a title sponsor to the RESI Conference Series in our upcoming Boston, NYC and San Francisco conferences. WuXi AppTec is a leading global pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device open-access capability and technology platform. WuXi AppTec joins RESI as a title sponsor along with JLABS, which currently has eight locations in innovation hotspots across North America and produces entrepreneurial programs and campaigns to seek out the best science. This pair of global early stage players will add another conduit to the early stage companies that come to RESI to find investor capital and strategic partnerships as they move forward in their product cycles.

The WuXi AppTec-LSN relationship has been growing over the years and WuXi AppTec has helped and been a contributor in our efforts with RESI content programing, panel participation, and creation of relationships with the scientist entrepreneurs and fundraising CEOs who are the main constituents of the RESI conference series.

By Chris Cummings, Senior Business Development Manager, LSN

With just over seven weeks to go RESI Boston, LSN is getting ready to assess which health innovators will be awarded a display spot in our NIH-sponsored RESI Innovation Challenge.  If you would like to participate and get an exhibit hall display spot to market your company to life science investors, it’s not too late to apply.

The RESI Innovation Challenge covers startups in therapeutics, medtech, diagnostics and healthcare IT companies from around the globe. All applicants will be vetted based on not only the quality of the company’s scientific work, but also the strength of the management team and how well-positioned the company is to receive investment.

On September 26th, RESI’s estimated 1000 attendees will receive “RESI Cash” to allocate to the entrepreneurs whose technologies they expect will be most influential. The capital invested will be tallied up and the top three winners will receive prizes and be featured in our RESI newsletter recap that will go out to LSN’s 20,000 newsletter readership. See below for the previous RESI Innovation Challenge first place winners – a diverse group of startups from every area of the life sciences.

• Taithera (New York, NY) – Therapeutics
• Steadiwear (Toronto, ON) – Medical Device
• Pathcore (Toronto, ON) – Healthcare IT
• BioMedomics (Durham, NC, USA) – Diagnostics
• Perimeter(Toronto, ON) – Diagnostics
• GeneSegues Therapeutics(Chaska, MN) – Therapeutics
• Clearsight(Aurora, CO) – Medical Device
• Rna Diagnostics(Toronto, ON) – Diagnostics
• Redox(Madison, WI) – Healthcare IT
• Empiriko(Newton, MA) – Therapeutics
• ORIG3N(Boston, MA) – Service Provider
• Kineta(Seattle, WA) – Therapeutics

Michael Quigley, VP of Market Research, Life Science Nation | Mo Chen, Co-Founder & Chief Science Officer, Taithera | Seth Harlem, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Taithera

See below for the previous RESI Innovation Challenge testimonials.

“RESI Innovation Challenge was a fantastic way for us to increase exposure to investors attending the event. We highly recommend leveraging the Innovation Challenge with the one-on-one partnering platform to get more face time with investors.”

– Herman Lo, CEO, ViewsIQ Inc.

3^rd Place in San Diego IC

“It was an absolute pleasure to participate in the RESI conference held at MaRS in Toronto. The unique structure of the conference facilitated creating new relationships with potential investors and partners. In particular, the Innovation Challenge pushed us to introduce ourselves to new people, which will be useful as we look towards a future financing round. I definitely recommend the RESI conferences to entrepreneurs seeking financing in the bio / health space.”

– Raymond Shih, President, Co-Founder, QoC Health

3rd Place, RESI on MaRS, June 23, 2016

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

For the week of September 25-29th things will be jumpin’ in the city of Boston! Life Science Nation’s Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) Conference takes place on Tuesday September 26th, and several other events are coming to the city as well. So if you are attending RESI Boston, please peruse our list of recommended hotels and get a room booked ASAP.

It is eminently clear to me that Boston will be fully occupied that week. If you are a scientist entrepreneur or a fundraising CEO, check out the early stage investors and strategic partners already signed up to attend RESI. As a born and raised Bostonian, I implore you to not wait any longer – you can get signed up for RESI Boston right here. And once you’ve signed up, save yourself the aggravation and book a room early. The one thing you don’t want when attending a conference in Boston is a tedious commute from outside of city – it can be a challenge even for the well-worn road warriors of life science.

The good news is RESI Boston has an amazing program line up and is likely to be one of the biggest RESI events we’ve ever run. The most dynamic partnering event in healthcare will be hoppin’ as usual.

By Shaoyu Chang, MD, MPH, Director of Research & Asia Business Development Liaison, LSN

An increasing number of Chinese biopharma companies are entering the global stage and changing the dynamics in life science innovations. In 2016, Simcere Pharma made a splash by hosting a life sciences startup competition across East and West coast. This year, not long after Qilu Pharma launched its 25,000 square-feet incubator in Brighton, Luye Pharma also opened its new Boston R&D Center.

As these Chinese firms are setting foot in North America, they typically hire industry veterans with multinational pharma experiences to spearhead their business development efforts. These professional deal-makers not only are equipped with deep domain knowledge, but they develop a unique perspective on cross-border opportunities for biopharma innovators.

At RESI Boston, entrepreneurs are invited to the China Strategic Partners Panel to learn about where market opportunities and challenges are, and how to collaborate with Chinese corporations. The speakers include:

• Larry Cai, Head of Business Development New England, Qilu Pharmaceutical
• Weimin Tang, Interim CEO, Hengrui Therapeutics
• Sean Fu, President, Luye Boston R&D Center, Luye Pharma
• Joyce Pei, Executive Director, Simcere Pharmaceutical
• Yuan-Hua Ding, Senior Director and Head of External R&D Innovation – Asia, Pfizer, Inc.