Next Phase Newsletter

By Gregory Mannix, Vice President International Business Development, LSN

LSN’s journey to spread the word about the first RESI conference in Europe, taking place on March 25^th in Vienna has been a great success. With three Fundraising Boot Camps in France and Sweden, followed by one in Denmark tomorrow, it has been an exciting week! The reception of these boot camps has been amazing, with high attendance and a lot of good interaction with the companies.

The workshop emphasized the need to look beyond regional resources, and tap in to the global ecosystem of investors and strategic partners. Of course there are a myriad of challenges to overcome to successfully enter the global stage.  It can be difficult, but necessary, to break out beyond normal protocol and be more aggressive in outreach to investors. It is important to remember that a fundraising executive has to go and actively chase the opportunities, they are not simply waiting to be caught.

Dennis Ford, CEO of LSN, at Copenhagen Bio Science Park

The race to find funding can be a long journey, and companies should not expect it to last only six months. The entire process generally takes from 9-18 months – it’s a full-time commitment that involves more than just going to a conference or two a year.  This is why the RESI conference series is such a powerful tool – with the ability to attend up to five conferences a year, it is a great way to build and maintain relationships with investors and strategic partners.

Last, but not least, Boot Camp attendees learned that it’s never too early to start fundraising they want you on their radar screens. Fundraising is ultimately a numbers game, and meeting with investors sooner rather than later can help you hone your message and get an idea of what issues you may need to address to fully capture an investor’s interest, and, hopefully, to secure their funding.

Click the image to learn more about the agenda

We will be continuing this journey, with a boot camp in Spain at the University of Barcelona Science Park next week. This will be followed by three boot camps in Israel, taking place in Ra’anana at Sanara Ventures, in Haifa at MindUP and in Nazareth at NGT³. The following week, we will be back in Europe with boot camps in Heidelberg at BioRN, in Basel and in Brussels. For more information on the boot camps in Israel, please reach out to Karen Deyo at k.deyo@lifesciencenation.com and for more information on the boot camps in Europe, please reach out to George Kamphaus at g.kamphaus@lifesciencenation.com.

By Karen Deyo, Investor Research Analyst, LSN

LSN’s first RESI in Europe is rapidly approaching and Early Bird pricing ends on February 8^th! With Partnering launching on the 25^th, take a sneak peek at some of the investors coming to RESI. Don’t forget to register to have the opportunity to meet with some of these investors one-on-one! Do you want added exposure? Apply to the Innovation Challenge, where you could be selected to present a poster in the exhibition hall at RESI, with additional exposure in the LSN Newsletter and the RESI Program Guide. The application deadline is February 20^th!

We hope to see you in Vienna on March 25^th!

By Lucy Parkinson, VP of Investor Research, LSN

While raising early stage capital is vital to a life science startup’s journey from the bench to the bedside, it’s also important for entrepreneurs to make connections with potential strategic partners.  Big pharma licensing and M&A is the ultimate exit strategy for most biotech startups, and in taking an in-depth look at 2018’s licensing deals, LSN found that the major pharmas are looking earlier than ever for promising new assets.

In addition to curating the LSN Investor Platform and organizing the RESI Conference series, LSN also provides the LSN Company and Licensing Deals platforms, which provide information on life science activity all over the world.  Our Licensing Deals data includes any deal announced that includes a financial metric (such as an up-front or milestone payment).  Therefore it doesn’t capture deals that are announced with no financial specifics, but it does provide a broad overview of current activity in the pharma dealmaking space.

So what happened in 2018?  The most stark point is that many deals were made very, very early.

In reading the notes attached to these deals, one often sees the words ‘Drug discovery platform,’ followed by descriptions of cutting edge technologies.  By contrast, very few deals mention ‘drug delivery’, which in past years was a major topic in pharma licensing.

The effect of this high level of interest in novel drug discovry platforms is that a large proportion of 2018’s deals took place at a research or preclinical stage – in total, 60% of the deals we tracked involved assets that had yet to enter human clinical trials.  Many biotech entrepreneurs underestimate the importance of targeting a pharma partnership – some believe their asset is too early stage, but many are held back by the belief that the only reason a big pharma company would be talking to an early stage startup is because the pharma company wants to steal their ideas.  While it’s important to have strong IP protection, the data makes clear that the reason pharma wants to talk to you early is because they are increasingly inking deals early – deals which benefit everyone involved.

In terms of indication, oncology remains the largest area of dealmaking, but CNS assets also provided a significant number of deals, as did metabolic diseases and dermatology.

One trend that continues to hold is that deals are now rarely about me-too technologies; instead, almost every deal represents a new cutting edge.  Undiscovered targets in the microbiome.  Protein degradation drug candidates.  Tumor-specific targets.  Gene therapy.  Major themes in new biotechnologies are finally flowering at the deal stage – precision medicine, -omics, synthetic biology, cell therapies, CRISPR.  With global pharmaceutical companies bringing these technologies into their pipelines, we hope that new treatments will not be far away.

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

Life Science Nation (LSN) is bringing the Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) Conference series to Vienna on March 25th. In an effort to spread the word about RESI coming to Europe, myself, Greg Mannix (VP International BD, LSN) and Patrik Frei, (CEO, Venture Valuation (VV)) are heading out to give one-day boot camps on global fundraising, company valuation and licensing deal metrics. Click here for agenda.

The road trip will be quite the adventure. Starting tomorrow, I arrive in London for a round of discussion with some tech hub players, then off to Paris to do a workshop at Medicene, then on to Gothenburg and the AstraZeneca BioventureHub, then up to Stockholm with Sweden Bio at the H2 Health Hub, then on to the Novo Nordisk BioInnovation Institute in Copenhagen and finishing in Spain at the University of Barcelona Science Park.  The LSN Fundraising Boot Camp is a vehicle to help startups and potential RESI attendees sharpen up their partner pitches, improve their marketing packages and help them address the all-important topics of valuation and licensing strategy, in addition to informing entrepreneurs about the ten categories of global investors that will be attending RESI.  RESI is expected to bring 200-300 early-stage investors to gather in Vienna, including VC, PE, Big Pharma, Foundations, Angels, as well as featuring the Global Family Office BioForum led by Stetson Family Office.

 LSN wanted to take the time to “hit the road” and educate startups on how to produce a compelling message and marketing package, how to approach licensing deals, and to help them know how to answer all of the tough questions investors will ask about their technology and their valuation, in order to help them raise capital.  LSN and VV have proven methodologies, which many companies have used to successfully raise early-stage capital; the LSN Fundraising Boot Camp events provide an introduction to these methodologies, and attending startups also receive a discount to RESI registration.  RESI’s body of investor attendees have a global outlook on finding new technologies, and at our most recent event in San Francisco, all of the RESI Innovation Challenge winners were international startups (including MedTrace from Denmark, plus Novotalk from Israel and Heroic-Faith Medical Science from Taiwan).

LSN’s goal is to help early-stage companies connect with the most relevant early-stage investors and try and move the needle in life science. RESI caters to both the earliest stage companies that seek seed, grants and angel capital in the range of EUR 25K to 2mm, and also to early stage seeking series A and B round funding of 2-10mm. RESI is unique because the event gathers startups and early-stage investors from across all the main life science technology silos – drugs, devices, diagnostics and digital health.  With an audience of global investors, RESI can boost your fundraising campaign from regional to global, and an LSN Fundraising Boot Camp will teach you how to get the most out of those investor connections.

Presenters: 

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

Dennis Ford is an entrepreneur and author with expertise in sales, marketing, and business development. He has spent most of his career finding, vetting and launching a myriad of technology-based companies. Over the last decade, he has worked extensively with global alternative investors and is deeply interested in getting funding for high-growth early-stage technologies. He is a big proponent of using profiling and matching technology to find that all-important business fit in the marketing and selling process. In today’s context Dennis can connect early stage life science companies with 10 categories of global partners thus making the finding of capital and distribution channels very efficient.

Dennis created the Redefining Early Stage Investments conference series to facilitate an interactive ongoing dialog between buyers and sellers in the life science arena. Before LSN, Dennis was the President and CEO of a company that improved the way hedge fund and private equity fund managers raised capital and marketed their funds to investors. Ford is the author of The Peddler’s Prerogative and The Life Science Executive’s Fundraising Manifesto, two well-received sales and marketing books.

Greg Mannix, VP of International Business Development, Life Science Nation

Greg Mannix is Vice President of International Business Development at Life Science Nation. After graduating from the University of California, he moved to Europe where he began a career in the life sciences and obtained a Master’s degree from IE Business School in Madrid. He has extensive experience in sales and marketing management in the medical devices field. He has worked extensively in Europe, North America and Latin America and he speaks English, Spanish and French. Greg’s role at LSN is to provide international early-stage companies with the tools and strategies to succesfully fundraise and to facilitate cross-boarder investments, licensing and M&A transactions.

Patrik Frei, Founder & CEO, Venture Valuation

Dr. Patrik Frei is founder and CEO of Venture Valuation AG, Switzerland. He started the company in 1999 when he noticed a need for independent valuation services during a collaboration with Novartis Venture Fund, which became his first client. Since then he has been involved in over 400 valuations. Venture Valuation also runs Biotechgate. Patrik graduated from the Business University of St. Gallen and completed his Ph.D at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, EPFL Lausanne. Patrik was a board member and a founder of Ineo. He is also the Chairman of Ophthalmopharma, where he out-licensed a portfolio of 4 products. Furthermore, Patrik is a board member of Kleinkraftwerk Birseck AG. Patrik’s articles have been published in a number of scientific journals and business publications. Patrik is a reviewer for the Nature journals. Patrik also headed the Venture Valuation APAC office in Singapore.

About Life Science Nation

Life Science Nation (LSN) accelerates fundraising using its matching platform to create highly compatible relationships between early stage scientists/entrepreneurs and emerging technology investors. LSN researches and curates market intelligence on two industry sectors: The first is emerging biotech and medtech companies, which by their ephemeral nature are challenging to find and track. Second, LSN tracks ten categories of early stage life science investors and identifies who is filling the void left by venture capital. LSN owns and operates the Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) conference series, which brings together global early stage biotech and medtech companies with early stage investors. Learn more at www.lifesciencenation.com

About Venture Valuation

Venture Valuation specializes in independent assessments and valuations of companies in high-growth markets, such as biotechnology, life sciences and medical technology. Venture Valuation offers independent company valuations for fund raising as well as product valuations for licensing deals. Learn more at www.venturevaluation.com

By Lucy Parkinson, VP of Investor Research, LSN

In addition to RESI’s industry leading one-on-one partnering experience, RESI Europe also features an agenda of panels focused on informing entrepreneurs on how to go about raising capital for their life science technologies.  While panels span various investor groups (such as Family Offices and Big Pharma) and industry verticals (such as Diagnostic Investors and Medical Device Investors), all are aimed at providing RESI’s entreprenerial attendees with insight from the other side of the table.  Today, LSN would like to introduce you to some of our RESI Europe panelists – all of whom are experienced investors or strategic business development staff who are actively making deals with startups in the life science space.

Digital Health Investors Panel

Tony Chang – M Ventures 

Tony Chang, PhD, MBA, is an Investment Associate with the New Businesses team at M Ventures. In this role, Tony is focusing on the early stage venture deals in health-tech and digital health, with a particular attention on digital therapeutics deals. Tony has developed substantial experience in assessing digital health deals for both in-clinic and out-of-clinic applications. Prior to M Ventures, Tony was a technology commercialization officer at the University of Western Cape in South Africa where he was responsible for the development of several industry research collaboration and licensing deals. Previously, Tony was a consultant at the strategy practice of EY in Johannesburg.

Medical Device Investors Panel

Diana Saraceni – Panakes Partners

Diana Saraceni is an investor with long experience in Venture Capital. She is currently Co-Founder & General Partner at Panakes Partners (www.panakes.it), an Italian Venture Capital firm dedicated to early stage investments in healthcare in Europe and Israel. Diana can rely on over 15 years of Venture Capital experience. She has also co-founded and managed 360 Capital Partners (www.360capitalpartners.com), one of the leading Venture Capital firm in Europe. She has led investments in a significant number of companies all over Europe, not only in the medical device sector, and generated several exits as IPO and M&A transactions. Ms Saraceni has a strong knowledge of the Venture Capital community in Italy and Europe. Ms. Saraceni holds an Msc in Engineering and an MBA from Luiss University.

Family Offices & Angels Panel

Christopher de Souza – Broadview Ventures

Chris de Souza, PhD, MBA, is a Director at Broadview Ventures. He started his career at Novartis as a scientist in the Metabolic and Cardiovascular Diseases group and then as Director of Strategic Alliances. After Novartis, Christopher was Vice President of Business Development at SkyePharma US Inc. He then founded a business development consulting practice with clients including JSB-Partners, Diagnostics For All and Metaome. Christopher has a Masters in zoology from the University of Bombay, PhD in physiology from Louisiana State University and MBA from Rutgers University along with post-doctoral training at The Upjohn Company and Joslin Diabetes Center/Harvard Medical School. Christopher currently serves on multiple Broadview Ventures portfolio company boards, the board of MassBio and several grant review committees.

Big Pharma Panel

Natalia Novac – Eli Lilly & Co

Natalia Novac is a part of the Emerging Technology and Innovation Group and is responsible for search and evaluation of novel healthcare technologies across all Eli Lilly indications in Europe.  Natalia is involved in the scientific evaluation of novel life science assets coming from multiple venture funds where Eli Lilly participates as a limited partner. Natalia is an experienced pharmaceutical industry professional with solid background in oncology, endocrinology, immunology and multiple sclerosis. Natalia has a PhD in molecular biology and MSc in Microbiology. Natalia’s LinkedIn

Diagnostic Investors Panel

Tom Miller – GreyBird Ventures

After receiving a degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, Tom studied Medical Physics at the Harvard/MIT Health Sciences and Technology joint program graduating with a Masters degree in 1982.  During his academic career he worked at Los Alamos, the Swiss Institute for Nuclear Research (now the Paul Scherer Institute), Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Massachusetts General Hospital as a research associate in radiation biophysics. Tom then joined Siemens Medical Systems where, after 9 years, he became the first non-German CEO of a German factory and business unit.  He left Siemens after 15 years to become CEO of the global medical operations of Carl Zeiss.  Completing a successful turnaround, he joined Analogic Corporation as CEO.  After three years and a doubling of the stock price, Tom left to become CEO of LightLab Imaging, a start-up that he helped to establish.  Completing a profitable sale of LightLab, Tom re-joined Siemens eventually serving as a member of the operating board of Siemens Healthcare and the CEO of Customer Solutions Division, responsible for 26,000 employees in over 130 countries.  Tom co-founded GreyBird in mid-2013 with an investment focus on technologies enabling precision medicine diagnosis.

Zohar Beeri

An interview with Zohar Beeri, Chairman & CEO, Novotalk – By Karen Deyo, Investor Research Analyst, LSN

Karen Deyo

Imagine you speak with a stutter. You take a speech therapy class, and it works! The stutter is gone. However, the symptoms start to come back, and you realize that only continuous practice will maintain your progress. So you create an app for that. This was the beginning of Novotalk, which aims to be a full-service speech therapy digital platform, helpful for all types of speech therapy, accessible to patients 24/7 and eliminating the need for office visits. This technology would allow patients to practice when they need it, would give measurable outcomes and could alter treatment strategies if necessary, to improve efficacy. I spoke with Zohar, who, along with his colleagues Lilach and Jonathan, generated a lot of excitement around Novotalk’s technology, winning 1^st place in the Innovation Challenge at RESI SF on Jan 8^th.

Karen Deyo (KD): Congratulations Zohar on winning the IC. How was your first experience at RESI?

Zohar Beeri (ZB): Before coming to RESI, one of my colleagues was a bit skeptical, but at the end of the day, we all thought it was great! Having a conference dedicated to early-stage investing, with the speed-dating style meetings was very useful for making a lot of good connections with investors. There is no other event like it.

KD: Did you get many good meetings, both through partnering and at your poster? Are you following up with any that you met?

ZB: We had many good meetings on the day of the conference. In addition, we ended up scheduling meetings outside of RESI, either during JPM week or a conference call at a later date with investors who had full schedules. We are following up with quite a few investors, including an investor that I met by chance during the cocktail hour – a lot of people have, or know someone who has, personal experience with the challenges of speech impediments, and they are very interested in our technology and how much of a difference we can make in these people’s lives.

KD: What was your strategy for the Innovation Challenge – how were you so successful?

ZB: We made it a challenge! If we were not in meetings, we were at our poster. We would go out to the area with refreshments and bring people back to our poster to showcase our technology. We would then ask them to invest their ‘RESI Cash,’ pointing out how our technology peaked their interest.

KD: That sounds like a great strategy. Thanks, Zohar!

About Novotalk

Imagine if you could go online and get the best voice, speech, and language therapy, at any time, from any place, and on any device, receiving quality and dependable care at an affordable price.

Presenting Novotalk, the speech clinic of the future, and the future is what Novotalk is delivering now.

Novotalk eliminates the peripheral burden of care and allows patients to concentrate on the most important thing – a successful outcome of the therapy.

Novotalk is a platform that is introducing validated speech and language therapeutic protocols to the online world, available 24/7 for people to sign up and undergo therapy. No more standing in traffic and parking, spending endless time scheduling, losing work days. All of this at a more affordable out-of-pocket cost. A Novotalk virtual clinician takes users through the learning and training process, enabling the supervising “real” clinicians to focus on measurable and accurate outcomes, work more efficiently, and help more people in less time.

Novotalk removes the main barriers to superior and reliable therapy: accessibility, availability, and affordability.

Novotalk provides the only known end to end asynchronous solution which is not dependent on the availability, accessibility or affordability of a clinician to provide a complete therapy experience.

It is the ONLY solution built completely as a SOLUTION for the patients and not as a TOOL for clinicians.