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

I recently interviewed Rick Berenson, CEO of Thermalin, a well-known global entrepreneur based in Boston. Thermalin has a potentially breakthrough solution for a non-refrigerated insulin entering clinical trials within the next year. These non-refrigerated insulin products are getting closer to addressing the logistical cold chain issues associated with the most prevalent drug worldwide. In this interview Rick talks about what his tactics and strategies are in raising Thermalin’s series B round. Here is a minute-long clip that nets out his message,

Rick Berenson CEO, Thermalin Interview

Or click here to see one minute preview

This interview highlights what a well versed competent CEO sounds like telling the story of his company, team and product…this is great stuff! I encourage all fundraising CEOs and scientist/entrepreneurs to listen and  learn from Rick and how he positions his company to the marketplace.

In my recent series the Entrepreneur Elucidated, I have been writing about finding your entrepreneurial voice, making your story cogent and coming across as authentic. All of this makes for a compelling pitch, which leads to a dialogue that fosters a relationship on the road to capital allocations. Getting your Story Straight, Finding Your Voice, and The Battle of Balancing Authenticity.

By Claire Jeong, Director of Research, Asia BD, LSN

RESI Philadelphia is less than 3 weeks away, and as with all of our previous conferences we will be featuring the “Medical Device Investors” panel. Out of the 4 main sectors represented at RESI (therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health), medical devices are the second most dominant. The types of technologies can range from novel biomaterials for various applications including drug delivery systems and tissue engineering, surgical devices with high potential to disrupt currently available procedures and standards of care, home-use devices that can be used by patients outside a professional care facility, etc.

The investors who will be at RESI bring forth various perspectives and strategies on investing in and partnering with medtech companies. Given the early-stage focus of RESI, we even see investors and strategic partners who welcome partnering meetings with those as early as pre-prototype. Here are the 5 panelists who will be joining the Medical Device Investors Panel at RESI Philadelphia:

• Ibraheem Badejo, Sr. Director, New Ventures, Johnson & Johnson Innovation
• Matthew Cohen, Director of Technology, Pangaea Ventures
• Ronald Dorenbos, Head, Innovation Management & Scouting, Takeda Pharmaceuticals
• Bryan Grulke, Partner, Volcano Capital
• Shahram Hezaji, Partner, BioAdvance

The panel will run from 2:00 – 2:50 pm on the day of RESI Philadelphia, Monday, June 3^rd, 2019. We look forward to seeing you all there!

Ibraheem Badejo, Sr. Director, New Ventures, Johnson & Johnson Innovation

Ibraheem (Ib) leverages his expertise in smart materials and biomaterials to support the medical device sector of Johnson & Johnson. From 2010 to 2013, Ib was a Research Fellow at Global Surgery Group of Johnson & Johnson, where he was responsible for external and front-end innovations and intellectual property for Ethicon Biosurgery. Previously, he was the Chief Scientist of Closure Medical Corp, and has held positions at Bayer, North Carolina State University, and the College of Charleston. He currently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Drexel University.

Ibraheem has led teams in the development of biomaterials-based products and new technology / products licensed or acquired. Ib received his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Toledo. Ib received the Science Alumni Award, Avila University in 2014.  Ib is also the recipient of 24 US patents, and is well published in many peer reviewed journals.

Matthew Cohen, Director of Technology, Pangaea Ventures

Matthew Cohen brings experience and a passion for working with advanced materials and medical devices in both industry and academia. Prior to joining Pangaea Ventures, Matthew worked in established and startup companies involved in printed electronics utilizing nanotechnology, biotechnology, and environmental bioremediation. He performed various functions that included R&D, business development, product development, customer technical support, and international launch strategy creation while gaining valuable start-up understanding.

Matt holds an MPhil in Micro- & Nanotechnology Enterprise from the University of Cambridge and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a BSE in Materials Science & Engineering.

Ronald Dorenbos, Head, Innovation Management & Scouting, Takeda Pharmaceuticals

Ronald is Head of Innovation Management & Scouting at Takeda as well as Associate Director at Takeda’s Materials & Innovation team, a group that scouts for new technologies related to drug delivery and biomaterials. During his appointment at the Life Science division of PA Consulting Group, a British Consulting firm, Ronald led projects for some of the world’s top 10 pharmaceutical companies around strategy, commercialization and digital health. At his company BioFrontline he provides management, strategy and commercial advice to life science companies around the world. Ronald received MAs in Biotechnology and Molecular Biology and after obtaining a PhD in Pharmaceutical Biology spent six years at Harvard to study Parkinson’s, Schizophrenia and the genetics of aggressive behavior before making the transition to industry. Ronald is a keen follower of developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and regularly invited as speaker to present on topics related to pharma, healthcare and AI.

Bryan Grulke, Partner, Volcano Capital

Bryan Grulke is a Partner at Volcano Capital, an early stage health care venture capital firm based in New York City.  Volcano Capital focuses on the medical device sector and has made 15+ investments to date.  Prior to joining Volcano Capital, Mr. Grulke worked as a strategy consultant at Bain & Company and in the corporate strategy group at Philips International. Mr. Grulke graduated from Harvard Business School and Duke University, summa cum laude with a BS degree in Economics.

Shahram Hezaji, Partner, BioAdvance

Shahram Hejazi, Ph.D., is a life science investor & entrepreneur. Over his 25+ year career, Shahram has invested and/or directed more than two dozen startups.  Since 2008, he has been a Partner with BioAdvance, where he serves on the Boards of 6 portfolio companies and is responsible for leading investments in medical devices, diagnostics, digital health. Shahram has also been on the faculty of Princeton University, since 2014. Previously, Shahram was the president of Kodak’s life science division, and before that, he was the founding CEO of Zargis Medical Corporation (a Siemens’ spin off). Prior to that, Shahram was the Global Head of the Strategic Business Development at Siemens Medical. Shahram is also the Chairman of the advisory board of Integral Molecular Inc., and the Chairman of PPDC at CHOP. Shahram has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and an executive business education.

By Jessica Yang, Investor Research Analyst, LSN

The 2019 Taiwan Bio Forum is coming up on June 2^nd! The forum will include some of the leading minds in innovative emerging biotechnologies within medical AI, regenerative medicine and the microbiome.

This event will feature more than 20 speakers, including experts from the biologics giant Regeneron, leading seed stage capital provider Ben Franklin Technology Partners, and next-generation AI solution builder Graphen. Join leading professionals in Philadelphia for business insights into the latest wave of advanced technology shaping the face of modern-day therapy.

Take a look at the agenda and the speaker spotlight:

Dr. Andrew E. Mulberg, Head, Senior Vice President, Global Regulatory Affairs of Amicus Therapeutics, Inc.

Andrew E. Mulberg is currently the Head, Senior Vice President, Global Regulatory Affairs of Amicus Therapeutics, Inc. which focuses on rare disease drug development. He is the former Division Deputy Director of Gastroenterology and Inborn Errors Products, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) since 2010.

Andrew is Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine ,Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Associate Professor of Pharmacy at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.

Dr. George Yancopoulos, Founding Scientist, President & Chief Scientific Officer, Regeneron

George D. Yancopoulos, MD, PhD, has built and managed Regeneron alongside Dr. Schleifer since 1989. Dr. Yancopoulos is currently President and Chief Scientific Officer and has served on the board since 2001.

Dr. Yancopoulos, along with key members of his team, is the principal inventor of Regeneron’s six FDA-approved drugs and foundational technologies, including the TRAP technology, VelociGene® and VelocImmune®. He has been named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

By Lucy Parkinson, VP of Investor Research, LSN

Ever since Life Science Nation (LSN) first launched the Redefining Early Stage Investments Conference Series (RESI), we focused on bringing investors from beyond venture capital to meet face to face with entrepreneurs.  Angels and family offices are two of these alternative sources of early stage capital. These investor types are distinct from each other in many ways, and at RESI Philadelphia, the Angels & Family Offices panel will introduce RESI’s entrepreneurs to these distinctions and also the ways in which these private capital pools are working together to fund healthcare innovation.

This discussion will be led by Chuck Stetson (CEO, Stetson Family Office), and the panelists are:

• Loretta McCarthy (Managing Partner, Golden Seeds)
• Deanna Belsky (Associate, Dolby Family Ventures)
• Yaniv Sneor (Founding Member, Mid Atlantic Bio Angels)
• Richard Anders (Managing Director, Mass Medical Angels)

Chuck Stetson, CEO, Stetson Family Office

Eugene W. Stetson started the Stetson Family Office shortly after he personally led the buyout of The Coca-Cola Company through a public offering in August 1919 by the Guaranty Trust Company of New York, where he subsequently served as Chairman and just before he died and organized, he organize with the much smaller J.P. Morgan. At his death, Eugene was Coca-Cola’s longest serving member of the Board and of the Executive Committee. Chuck Stetson, the third generation running the family office, is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philanthropist. The Stetson Family Office started Healthcare Impact Foundation, a 501-c-3 organization, in 2017 to bring capital and management expertise to local life science companies and to build and maintain an efficient life science eco-system composed of R&D facilities, incubation facilities, venture capital investors, angel investors, family office investors, and networks of experts in science, management, industry, reimbursement and public policy. Stetson Family Office has set up a unique Global Family Office BioForum with family offices around the globe working closely with their local healthcare innovation. Family Offices are responding with excitement.

Loretta McCarthy, Managing Partner, Golden Seeds

Loretta McCarthy is a Managing Partner and Founding Member of Golden Seeds, an investment organization that invests in early-stage, women-led companies in the United States.  Golden Seeds is one of the largest and most active angel investment networks in the country.  It was founded nearly 15 years ago and is recognized for its advocacy of women entrepreneurs, gender diversity and a commitment to education.   Since 2005, Golden Seeds has had over 800 investors who have  invested nearly $120 million in over 150 companies.   Loretta manages the national Golden Seeds angel network.  Previously, she was on Wall Street for over 20 years, at both American Express and OppenheimerFunds.

Deanna Belsky, Associate, Dolby Family Ventures

Deanna currently works at Dolby Family Ventures as an Associate where she is responsible for diligence efforts and portfolio management across the life sciences sector with a focus on neuroscience. Dolby Family Ventures invests in accelerating the path to a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. The portfolio includes novel disease-modifying therapeutics, diagnostics, and technologies that facilitate better science in clinical trials and basic research.

Prior to joining the Dolby Family Ventures team, Deanna worked at both a biotech hedge fund and a life sciences consulting firm where she conducted scientific, clinical, and commercial diligence around novel therapeutics. Before that, she served as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University where she studied molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration. Deanna received her PhD from Rockefeller University studying underlying cell death mechanisms in a mouse model of ALS. She received her BS in Biochemistry and BA in Asian Studies from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Yaniv Sneor, Founding Member, Mid Atlantic Bio Angels

Yaniv Sneor is a (reformed) physicist, who made the transition into the business world after being bitten by the entrepreneurial bug.

Yaniv has been involved in founding, growing, managing and re-engineering companies for the past 25+ years, in multiple industries. He ran companies of different sizes and at different life-stages, led re-structuring activities, purchased and sold multiple companies, and negotiated and integrated joint ventures and strategic relationships.

Yaniv is one of the founders of MABA – Mid Atlantic Bio Angels (bioangels.net) a life science angel investor group.  He is president of Blue Cactus Consulting (bluecactusconsulting.com), and CEO of Native State Therapeutics, a recently-formed biotechnology company, in the neurodegenerative space.

Richard Anders, Managing Director, Mass Medical Angels

Richard Anders is is an investor and long-time entrepreneur. He founded the legal software publishing company Jurisoft, which he sold to Lexis/Nexis, published newspapers including Boston Digital Industry and New York Digital Industry and currently serves as managing director of Rubin/Anders Scientific, which places scientists as consultants in patent projects. He has invested in approximately two dozen early-stage startups.

Richard is a long-time trustee of the Museum of Science in Boston, where he is a member of the food committee, exploring science education around the issues of food and its preparation, a trustee of the Forsyth Institute and an overseer at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital and the Gardner Museum. Richard founded and currently runs MA Medical Angels (MA2), one of the country’s leading angel groups focused exclusively on life sciences. He has founded the angel group Launchpad, the nationally renowned Science on Screen event at the Coolidge Corner Cinema and was a founding trustee of the Massachusetts Interactive Media Council. He served for many years as a member of the Dana Farber Cancer Center Institutional Review Board. He is a board observer at Avaxia Biologics and Siamab. Richard teaches medical device entrepreneurship at the Harvard/MIT HST program. He is a graduate Summa Cum Laude in Mathematics from Harvard and holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

By Gregory Mannix, Vice President International Business Development, LSN

The Redefining Early-Stage Investments (RESI) conference has become the point of reference in the global early-stage funding space. In fact, RESI has grown from one conference in 2013 to five conferences around North America in 2018, with a steady growth in the number of attendees. In 2019, RESI is expanding to both Europe and Asia.

Although everybody agrees that the quality of the Investor Panels and Workshops at RESI is excellent, and the Innovation and Pitch Challenges attract a fantastic turnout of some of the hottest new companies from seed to series B, the true draw of the RESI conference is the one-on-one partnering powered by RESI’s proprietary Partnering Platform.

What immediately comes to mind is the opportunity for fundraising CEOs to meet with potential investors to secure funding for the progress of their projects. And while this is the core of the conference, there are many other valuable connections going on that are equally necessary and beneficial to move the needle in the industry:  investors meeting with other investors to discuss collaboration and investment syndicates; service providers discussing novel and unique services to aid companies in their development; regional organizations, tech hubs, research institutions and others who play a key role to better the life science ecosystem. RESI is a meeting spot for all of this activity.

Breakdown of meeting types at RESI:

Most would imagine that it is always the fundraising companies who reach out in the most compelling way possible to the investors and strategic partners with whom they hope to land a meeting. So, you might be surprised to know that, in many cases, the investors and strategics take the initiative to meet with the companies developing technologies that fit with their investment mandate.

The power of partnering, in all its diversity, is what has made RESI the most efficient forum for moving the needle in early-stage funding in the life science arena. We hope to see you in Philadelphia on June 3^rd!

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

As a writer, I have my colloquial style (informal and conversation) – it just falls out of my fingers. My voice has naturally surfaced through lots of practice communicating: through speaking and writing, which is seminal to my work in the world of business development. If you do a half-decent job at the crafts of speaking and writing, then the listening/reading public can hear your voice.  It is a combination of speaking through words, to your audience, translating and surfacing your knowledge feelings, and passion, and mostly, feeling like you have something important to share. This should be communicated in the way that you want and that feels natural.  Most importantly, the voice that you decide to develop and use has to be understood by the target reader/listener.  For me, It is very natural to communicate informally, conversationally, telling stories to make things easy to comprehend, using easily understood metaphors that help net out a point I want to make. It works for me and it can work for you. So you, dear reader, have to spend the time to see what works for you, and this is called practice, practice, practice. Practice your pitch, practice your writing, learn as you go, pivot, recalibrate and repeat the process on and on until you find your true voice or you collapse and die. C’est la vie.

When you find your authentic voice it will resonate with who you are speaking to. How will you know? You will know because you can see it and you can feel it.  When you resonate with your audience, you become engaged in dialogue. This dynamic is the holy grail of voice because it fosters relationships.

If you think about it, you will see the gravitational impact of finding your voice. Drum roll please…you voice will resonate with the subject and the audience.  Later in the series we will talk about your brand and your message, but what we will be really building on is your authentic voice.  Entrepreneurs pay big money to professionals to get help developing their brand and their message and what these consultants will do is sit in a room with you to try and listen for your voice. It ain’t easy to hear and find.

The entrepreneurial voice that you need to develop is a hybrid of your authentic voice and the potential validation of your product and market.  The entrepreneur has to first believe in him or herself, and second, but just as important, is the integrity of the product they are creating for a market.  Your entrepreneurial voice is your message to your marketplace.