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

Over the past 8 years, LSN has created a global early stage funding superstructure that has helped over 500 companies raise over $500M. Not a week goes by that a startup CEO doesn’t reach out to thank us for putting this partnering ecosystem together – it may not be perfect, but it works!  RESI is a great tool for those who are not connected to the “gods of Mt. Olympus” who can make “that” magical phone call to wire you into a top highfalutin VC in your space.

Over the years, RESI has coalesced a group of 2000+ early stage global investors, of which 400-600 attend 3 or more RESI events a year. These investors make an effort to attend RESI as regular part of their sourcing and vetting process, and as a reliable source of quality deal flow. For these investors, if they are a fit and you didn’t have a chance to speak with them at one RESI, they will be back. Or, if you are too early for them, meet at a future RESI once you’ve hit that next milestone, maintaining your relationship.

With the recent paradigm shift to all-digital conferences, there is an opportunity for companies to meet not only with investors who regularly attend RESI, but also a new group of investors that are taking advantage of the convenience of virtual partnering. Here are some metrics: at the first Digital March RESI event there were over 250 investors registered and at the second Digital RESI in April we had over 300 investors. Drum roll please, the up and coming three day RESI June event, already has in excess of 300 investors (expecting 400+) and of that 300, a whopping 125 new investors are signed up to Digital RESI June. This translates to more opportunity and proves that Digital RESI is working and investors are eager to continue sourcing new deal flow, despite the current restrictions.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to advance your fundraising efforts – remember that fundraising is a numbers game, and that you need to take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way!

By Jessica Yang, Investor Research Analyst, LSN

LSN’s inaugural Digital RESI event in March attracted over 500 attendees and featured over 60 panelists, and we expect a much larger event for June! The Digital RESI June event will feature 11 investor panels that span various investor groups (such as Family Offices and Big Pharma) and industry fields (such as Digital Health and Medical Devices), as well as a new panel, Longevity and Age-Related Disease. All these panels are aimed at providing entrepreneurs with insights and tips about raising capital and acquiring partnerships.

If you’re interested in hearing and meeting active industry experts, register here by May 11^th to get your biggest discount!

Here are some of the panelists who will be speaking at Digital RESI June:

Ton Berkien Director, Business Development Amgen	Alexandra Bause Partner Apollo Health Ventures	David Cruikshank Partner ARCH Venture Partners	Chris Haskell VP, Head of West Coast Innovation Center Bayer
Travis Whitfill Partner Bios Partners	Mark Ralph Global Head of Contracts and Alliance Management Boehringer Ingelheim	Debbie Lin Executive Director – Digital Health Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund	Brent Ahrens General Partner Canaan Partners
Marc Lambrechts Senior Investment Manager Capricorn Partners	Neil Swami Principal Catalyst Health Ventures	Anjan Aralihalli Venture Partner CTI Life Sciences Fund	Tim Luker Sr. Director, Emerging Technology & Innovation, Corporate BD Eli Lilly & Co
Shaoyu Chang Vice President FC Capital	Sherry Grisewood Senior Investment Officer FoxHill Asset Management	Bill Hyun Venture Partner Genoa Ventures	Juri Bach Investment Manager High-Tech Gründerfonds
Wouter Meuleman Director, Venture Investments Illumina Ventures	Emilia Gonzalez Principal Joyance Partners	Sohaib Siddiqui Managing Partner Kettlebeck Ventures	Laura Hong President Klus Pharma
Paul Russo CEO KYTO Technology & Life Science	David Gordon Head of Investments Longliv Ventures	Hakan Goker Executive Director M Ventures	Dave Schulte Managing Director McKesson Ventures
Randy Berholtz Senior Advisor Mesa Verde Venture Partners	Shaan Gandhi Principal Northpond Ventures	Bob Saunders General Partner OCA Ventures	Diana Saraceni Founder, Managing Director Panakes Partners
Sean Cheng Senior Investment Manager Philips Health Technology Ventures	Brian Meshkin Managing Partner Profound Ventures	Richard Proscia Senior Associate Providence Ventures	Alexandra Manick Associate Principal Schooner Capital
Sakae Asanuma President Taiho Ventures	Nat Brinn Partner VC23	Bryan Grulke Partner Volcano Capital	Bruce Cohen Advisor Xeraya Capital

By Karen Deyo, Senior Investor Research Analyst, LSN

At LSN, we always like to hear success stories and how they came about. I spoke to Richard Austin, CEO of Reglagene to hear about his success at our Digital RESI 2-day partnering event last week, and what he did to bring it about.

Karen Deyo (KD): I hear you had a very successful partnering event last week. How many meetings did you get?

Richard Austin (RA): Between the meetings through the partnering platform and those set up outside the event, we had 25 investor partnering meetings!

KD: Congratulations! What do you think contributed to your success?

RA: A large part of it was the work we did with LSN as part of their Focus on Cures, the immersion program for fundraising CEOs. LSN had to cancel their planned May class but provided me a modified version in which I interacted with Dennis Ford, LSN CEO, Erich White, LSN BD Manager, and I even had a chat with Bill Kohlbrenner, LSN CSO, all providing insights and pointers to improve our marketing materials. It began with our tagline. Cancer Medicines Reversing Drug Resistance turned into Epigenetic Medicines Regulating Cancer Genes. Previously, it wasn’t very effective, or memorable. Dennis and I went back and forth – we must have had about 20 versions before we reached the final tagline. When the right tagline surfaced it was very obvious and I immediately noticed the effect. The new tagline caught the attention of investors, increasing the number of responses we got. The LSN team knows the market and they know what is hot and what will resonate with prospective partners.

KD: What was the rest of your outreach process?

RA: In addition to the work on materials such as our pitch deck and executive summary, we created a compelling intro email based on our new messaging and then created 3 different follow up messages, each with different information. The first message was a well thought out, brief company intro that netted out Reglagene’s distinct value. The second, was a well-crafted, easy to understand, couple of paragraphs about Reglagene’s technology. The third was a message highlighting our CSO, who was responsible for over 20 years of research which led to our technology, and a final message with our one page tear sheet. I signed up for the partnering event only a week before, so my partnering was done in a condensed timeline. I reached out to my targets, and sent a follow up message every couple of days leading up to the event. After each follow up, I would receive more responses, either accepting or declining the meeting request, or scheduling a meeting after the event ended. Additionally, as a subscriber to the LSN Investor Platform, I reached out to each of my targets through their personal email, attaching my pitch deck and executive summary. This combination was a real game changer in terms of meeting requests. The quality of the investor participants was greatly upgraded and these investors are showing interest in next steps, NDAs and follow-on meetings.

KD: How was the response from investors different from what you have seen in previous events?

RA: To my surprise, using the new branding and messaging materials, we started ramping up meetings immediately. It just felt like we had new momentum and wound up with 25 meetings after reaching out to 50 targets that had been preselected by me and the team. LSN taught me that a rifle shot approach to known investor fits will give you a 50% response rate, which was much higher than my traditional shot gun approach, going after general targets.

My previous record for a RESI conference was 10 meetings in one event, and our average was 6 over the 8 RESIs we have previously attended. I was feeling very frustrated that I was trying my best but I didn’t feel like I was optimizing my efforts. After several conversations with the team they really bolstered my confidence, reinforcing to me that I had a great company and product and just needed some tweaking. They were right!

KD: And how did the meetings go for you?

RA: My first couple of meetings, I felt I could have done better. After a brief conversation introducing ourselves, I turned to our pitch deck and used that to guide the rest of the discussion. After another conversation with Dennis, I changed my approach to my meetings. Instead of immediately pulling up my pitch deck, I was advised to keep up the conversation with the investors, and concentrate on the dialogue and trying to get the relationship started, only referring to the pitch deck if I wanted to show specific data. The response was great, and the investors seemed a lot more engaged. This made me feel better and more confident and so the cycle started to repeat with each meeting. I just needed some minor coaching and things really started to change.

KD: One final question: what advice would you give to other CEOs?

RA: One big thing I would say: don’t assume you know how to do this and check your ego at the door. When working on my messaging, I realized that I knew what to say, but not HOW to say it. I would strongly advise companies to get an external third party source like LSN that can help with that. The benefit with working with the LSN team is the mix of technical and sales/BD people. Working with people without a technical background helped in making the message more universal for investors of all backgrounds. I did not feel I had to dumb it down or make it simple, but get the words and phrasing correct so that I could net out my core value and differentiation quickly. For me, the key was getting myself comfortable with the new flow and focusing on what makes the technology unique without burying it in scientific jargon and going into deep technology dives on the first meeting. Additionally, working with Dennis and his team was extremely useful on two levels: first, learning how to hone and net out my pitch as a sales/marketing pitch (in a good way) and develop those sales 101 skills that help make a fundraise successful; get a target list, triage that list, go after that list and follow-up, follow up, follow-up. I needed to learn follow-up! Last but not least, is learning these skills from a team that knows the state of the current market – investors – and what they specifically are looking for to shape our message to them. Finding the right advisors who can help you with your immediate needs, in the present, just really clicks and proves out immediately. LSN’s Focus on Cures immersion class will have made a big difference to my success going forward.

KD: Thanks for sharing all of this, and good luck!

Reglagene

Reglagene deciphers gene-based mechanisms of disease to deliver breakthrough epigenetic medicines that manage gene expression, the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a target protein. Gene abnormalities often result in the manufacture of too little or too much protein causing a myriad of life-threatening diseases, such as cancer.  Reglagene’s medicines target the protein production problem at its source, the gene, and gets it back to functioning properly.

By Gregory Mannix, Chief Conference Officer, Vice President International Business Development, LSN

The metrics and the global reach of the first Digital RESI 2-Day Partnering Event happening this week has shown that business development and investment in the life sciences can and must go on, despite the challenges of not being able to travel to major event venues as we have all done in the recent past. The response to this new format in these new and challenging times has been immense. The numbers speak for themselves.

•          500 Participating Attendees
•          1,450 Virtual Partnering Meetings
•          Participants from 5 Continents
•          48 hours of uninterrupted partnering

1,450 Partnering Meetings

Life Science Verticals Participating

Investors and Strategic Partners

Investor Types Participating

 

 

Partnering Activity

 

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

Digital RESI June is fast approaching, and, once again, there is an exciting panel lineup featuring investors and strategic partners sharing their insights with startup attendees. The panels will include ever popular panels such as Big Pharma, Corporate Venture Capital, and Family Offices and Angels. Other panels will cover specific topics such as Mental and Behavioral Health, AI in Healthcare and our newest panel, Longevity and Age-Related Disease. Also available will be workshops for startups, giving advice on legal issues, valuation and how to run a fundraising campaign. These panels will be prerecorded and posted on the Digital RESI Agenda page, along with all of the other RESI content, including the RESI Innovation Challenge participants, the Featured Company Pitch participants, and a virtual Exhibit Hall for exhibitors. The digital format of the conference is allowing us to include even more panels than at an on-site event, without taking away from partnering meetings to take advantage of the panel content. Check out all of the panels below, and keep an eye out for speaker spotlights!

By Karen Deyo, Senior Investor Research Analyst, LSN

LSN is giving startups an opportunity to pitch and have a live Q&A session with a panel of investors during the upcoming Digital RESI in June. Each company will have a 4-minute prerecorded pitch posted on a dedicated page linked from the Digital RESI Live Agenda, increasing their exposure to the 350+ investor attendees. In addition, companies will participate in a live Q&A session with a panel of relevant investors. Interested in pitching? Fill out the following application and send your pitch deck and executive summary to resi@lifesciencenation.com. Companies are selected on a rolling basis, so make sure to get your application in soon!

SPECIAL OFFER: Companies that apply to pitch and register June 3-day Digital RESI conference before May 8th will have the webpage fee of $250 waived, and enjoy the discounted price of $500.

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

RESI’s partnering platform is unique in its ability to filter and sort through investor and company profiles, allowing both companies and investors to find partners who are match for them. The partnering system increases the value for attendees participating in our events, eliminating wasted meetings discovering that you are not a fit for each other.

As an example, one of our fundraising CEOs, who has a blood-based technology in an orphan indication, asked us to look up investors who are interested in diseases affecting the blood, in combination with those investing in orphan diseases. At this up and coming Digital RESI event next week we found that of the 250 investors that 141 will look at investing in therapeutics treating diseases of the blood, presenting a terrific opportunity to connect with quite a few investors interested in that space. But there are subtleties here, because investors come in several flavors: those who are very specific in their investment interests, of which we found 37, and those who are opportunistic, 104 investors who seek compelling technology and look more broadly at the early technology assets that surface on their radar screen.

However, the benefit to companies improves greatly by employing the LSN Investor database in addition to participation in RESI events. Doing the same search in the Investor Platform yields 1439 investors interested in therapeutics treating blood diseases. It is even possible to narrow that down further, with a result of 311 investors that are interested in therapeutics treating orphan blood disorders. This kind of granularity is what makes LSN’s services so powerful, and so useful.

Trying to connect with investors? Register for our upcoming Digital RESI events and demo our investor database. Who knows what you will find?