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

RESI takes place every few months and is a “rolling” ongoing conference series that provides a vehicle to regularly meet with potential partners. No other conference provider has instituted this kind of format. Most conferences are either annual or bi-annual. At RESI, the two main constituencies – scientist/entrepreneurs and investors/strategic partners – have an ongoing opportunity to connect based on fit (i.e. type of product, stage of company, size of raise and other criteria), create a dialogue that grows into a relationship and eventual partnership. LSN has found that having a conference series where buyer and seller can easily meet and follow up every few months greatly aids the building-a-relationship process.

The state of the partnering-conference model that LSN saw when we launched RESI was mostly content-based informational conferences with a partnering software program you could use to set up meetings.

LSN added a matching module for the pairing-up of profiles of the early stage buy-side and sell-side players. RESI is a relationship-based partnering conference and not a content-based informational conference. There is a huge difference in the two models. I recently wrote an article about the subject.

Partnerships take time to move down the tracks, and the RESI conference provides a one-of-a-kind vehicle: a series of ongoing meetings in various geographic life science hubs that has become an industry-wide vehicle to identify, meet and continue a dialogue with potential partners. For both the sell-side and the buy-side, establishing and consummating partnerships is a full-time job. RESI makes it easier for both sides. Scientist/entrepreneurs find investors/strategic partners and investors/strategic partners source technology assets.

Most life science conferences, even though some have partnering, are still information-centric: paid speakers, panels of industry trends and programming around providing information and education. RESI is relationship-based, so no paid speakers – as a matter of fact, investors vie for speaking spots because of the status that is associated with being on a panel at a RESI conference. Most conferences are silo specific – either drugs, devices, diagnostics or healthcare IT. RESI covers all these silos, and that’s a plus for investors and strategic partners whose mandates cut across several verticals.

RESI is purely partnering-based, and the content and panels revolve around the investors’ and the strategic partners’ existing mandates. RESI’s Workshops are all about helping with various start up issues: from valuations, to negotiating LOIs, to branding and messaging, to fundraising boot camps. No FDA, no BREXIT, no lending or debt, just very focused on connecting and navigating the early-stage arena. It’s all about learning and interacting with investors and strategic partners.

By Lucy Parkinson, Director of Research, LSN

RESI is headed to MaRS in Toronto for the third time. Our annual visits to the city have allowed LSN to take the pulse of Canadian life science, and we have seen Canada go from strength to strength over the years and attract an increasing amount of investment interest. Taking a look at a sample of startup data from the LSN Company Platform, we can examine life science trends in Canada.

While every region of Canada is home to some life science startup activity, the main hubs are in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. Let’s see how the different verticals within life science and health innovation are represented in those three hubs. From our sample, we took a look at early stage therapeutic companies (Preclinical through Phase II), development-stage medical technology companies, and all digital health companies.

While biotech activity is occurring throughout Canada, we see a concentration of digital health and medtech activity in Ontario. The city of Toronto is home to several major research universities and institutions, and innovation has grown up around this research hub.

Looking more closely at those early stage biotech assets, we find that Canada’s drug development startups have developed a strong base of preclinical assets and many of those assets have moved through to Phase I and Phase II.

Much like in other regions, oncology is the dominant area of research, but Canada is also home to a wealth of biotech development in neurology, infectious diseases, dermatology, and other fields.

It’s little wonder that investors are starting to look north of the border for life science deals. Taking a look into the LSN Investor Platform, we find that LSN tracks over 700 investors who will consider an investment opportunity in Canada. Over 80% of those investors are located outside of Canada! We anticipate that from those investment firms, over 300 investment staff will be in attendance at the upcoming RESI on MaRS event. As novel life science technology becomes an increasingly global marketplace, LSN encounters more investors who have a global rather than a regional mindset when it comes to finding high quality assets, and with so much research being generated by top institutions, Canada is well placed to take advantage of that trend.

By Claire Jeong, Research Analyst, LSN

At the 13^th Annual Non-Dilutive Funding Summit on January 10^th during JPM, Life Science Nation (LSN)’s Founder & CEO, Dennis Ford presented to an audience of actively fundraising, early-stage life science entrepreneurs. “The 10 Myths of Fundraising” session helped provide fundamental context on the daunting fundraising process, from proper branding & messaging to creating a Global Target List (GTL) of investors and how to utilize these materials for a successful fundraising campaign. Most importantly, the session walked through the top 10 myths in fundraising, uncovering the truth to these common misconceptions and providing realistic insights that every fundraising CEO should know.

For those who missed out, we are happy to be able to provide a video of this presentation! If you are interested in delving into the topics covered in the video and beyond, be sure to take a look at Dennis’s book, The Life Science Executive’s Fundraising Manifesto.

By Cole Bunn, Senior Research Analyst, LSN

The world of early stage biotech/medtech investment is far less than straightforward, and entrepreneurs who have been through the arduous, frustrating process of raising money will second that. Adding to this challenge, other than a personal network, fundraising CEOs have limited resources for learning which investors are in their universe and how to get in touch with them – LSN was founded to address this exact problem.

When raising a seed or series A financing, most people’s mind goes straight to a few brand name VCs and angel groups in their backyard, and mistakenly think this is going to get the job done. The reality is that fundraising is a numbers game, and there are thousands of groups across the world that are not well known and don’t necessarily fall into one of these investor buckets, but may be a great fit for your venture. The problem is that you have no efficient way of identifying who these groups are, if they are a fit and most importantly, a way to reach them.

Over the past 5 years, the LSN research team of Research Analysts has been dedicated to uncovering these groups, building a relationship with the associates and partners of the firm and capturing critical data points on their interests and investment criteria, and most importantly, building out a custom profile that details the firm’s specific interests, how they structure their investments and how much money they put into companies. In the LSN Investor Platform, we have amassed just over 5,000 profiles of investment firms (over 2,000 of which are actively investing), across the globe including angel groups, venture capital firms, corporate VCs, big pharma and other corporate strategics, family offices, venture philanthropy groups, endowments/foundations, hedge funds, private equity firms, government organizations and institutional alternative investors who are investing in the early stage life science space. The functionality of the LSN investor platform allows you to easily apply filters to generate a list of these firms who are a fit for your specific company and financing, which usually leaves about 300-400 firms as initial targets to begin parsing.

The personal connection between the LSN research team and an investment firm allows LSN to capture and utilize a unique flow of information and provides an unmatched tool for fundraising CEOs to understand the players in their space, their nuanced preferences/strategies and a way to begin a dialogue with them. No other service or data provider comes close to the focused, high touch, relationship-oriented nature of data collection and maintenance. It’s clear that no CEO or startup management team would possibly be able to identify 300-400 relevant investor targets, much less capture a detailed understanding of their mandate and a way to contact them, regardless of the amount of time they have to research investors. Additionally, the LSN Investor Platform includes an export function that provides startup CEOs with data that can be imported into a CRM system to manage outreach and track the progress of every investor relationship.

The LSN Investor Platform serves as the core of everything LSN does. The RESI Conference, an early-stage investment/partnering event that allows entrepreneurs to meet face-to-face with up to 16 relevant investors in one day, is powered by the LSN Investor Platform. The RESI conference allows entrepreneurs to meet these investors in person and begin to develop a personal relationship with them. Subscribers of the LSN Investor Platform have a powerful tool that allows them dig into the investors profile prior to the meeting to understand the investor’s interests and preferences, greatly increasing the quality of an intro discussion and making the best use of their facetime with the investor. Using the LSN Investor Platform and RESI conference in parallel creates a tremendous value for any fundraising CEO in the early stage life science space who is looking to find relevant investors, understand their mandate and begin a dialogue in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

By Claire Jeong, Research Analyst, LSN

In last week’s newsletter, you may have read about LSN’s review of 2017 licensing deals and how licensing deals are happening even earlier. Despite the high risk, pharmaceutical companies all across the globe are aggressively seeking partnership opportunities in hopes of identifying breakthrough therapies.

During RESI San Francisco – our first conference of the year – we invited 5 panelists from the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies to share their insights on early-stage partnerships. How do they assess value? How can companies differentiate themselves, especially those who are in an overcrowded space?

Moderated by Chris Haskell, VP, Head of West Coast Innovation Center, Bayer HealthCare, the Big Pharma panelists were:

• Kevin Lynch, Vice President, Search & Evaluation, AbbVie
• Chris Sheldon, Head, Oncology Search & Evaluation, AstraZeneca
• Lesley Stolz, Head, JLABS California, Johnson & Johnson Innovation
• Chris DeRespino, Director, Transactions, Amgen

Some takeaway points from the panel discussion:

Understand the value that you bring with your technology. Demonstrating strong scientific expertise is key. Knowing how your technology is differentiable and providing a cogent explanation on why your technology might work seem like obvious pointers, but this is particularly important for companies who are in overcrowded indications. Most likely, the potential pharma partners who you will be in conversation with are already familiar with what has succeeded and failed.

Know why you want to work with a certain group and think of this as a long-term relationship. Every pharmaceutical company is different, so it is essential to do research on your potential partners and fully understand how they could benefit your company. When they provide suggestions and feedback on how to improve, make sure that these are fully understood and addressed at the next meeting. After all, large pharmaceuticals aren’t there just to provide you with an excess of capital. They want to work with likeable management teams with whom they can develop a cooperative relationship over many years.

It is better to keep things simple in an introductory discussion. You will not need to provide every single piece of information that is attributed to your company’s work. Eventually, detailed materials (i.e. patents, detailed data on a given asset, etc.) will be reviewed as needed, but the initial conversation should be focused on understanding what your company is doing and what differentiates your technology.

Don’t be afraid to follow up, but understand that the process takes a while. Most pharmaceutical companies are organized into groups based on therapeutic area and expertise. It can take a while for these groups to review the entire portfolio and send promising opportunities up the corporate ladder. In an initial conversation, it is good to ask when you will hear back so that you can act accordingly based on those expectations. Eventually, large pharmaceuticals will make sure you receive a response from them, one way or the other.