Category: Redefining Every Stage Investments (RESI)
The Redefining Every Stage Investments (RESI) Conference is an ongoing conference series that provides an international venue for life science companies across Biotech, Medtech, Diagnostics and Healthcare IT and to source investors from around the globe, create relationships, and eventually, secure funding.
Throughout 2016, Next Phase has brought you updates and advice on early stage life science fundraising. This week, we’d like to take a look back at the highlights of the year, from some hard data on drug development funding to tips on marketing and pitching your company. We hope you enjoy this roundup of our top 10 articles of the year. See you in 2017.
Large technology companies have been expanding their footprint in the healthcare sector through venture investment and partnerships into early stage healthcare companies. Often seeking technology with a significant software component, many of these groups have helped to fuel the massive growth that has been seen in the digital health space in the past few years. From patient monitoring devices to mobile 3D imaging devices the lines between pure tech and healthcare are slowly beginning to blur as healthcare providers continually look to improve care while lowering costs.
Moderated by Michael Greeley, General Partner, Flare Capital Partners, the panelists are:
Iana Dimkova, Senior Associate, Healthcare, GE Ventures
Lucian Iancovici, FACHE, Head of Qualcomm Life Fund, Qualcomm Ventures
Ying Tam, Head, Digital Health Cluster, Venture Services, MaRS
In this session, a number of investors at these large firms will discuss their involvement in healthcare innovation ecosystem. What types of technologies they are interested in? How much data do they like to see pre-investment? What problems in the space are they looking to tackle? These questions and more will be answered at RESI on Jan 10th so if you’re looking to partner with a large tech company for your product this is a panel you don’t want to miss.
As crazy as this may sound, LSN has more early stage investors signed up for Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) conference (423 registered) than we have fundraising CEOs and scientist-entrepreneurs. I mean think about it! Raising capital is first and foremost a numbers game – you need to get in front of as many investors as possible to increase your chance of meeting the right set of players for your companies stage of development and product. RESI on January 10th at the Marines’ Memorial Club & Hotel will provide an unprecedented moment to get you and your firm in front of the two kind of early stage investors that show up at RESI conferences.
The first group typically has a mandate to invest capital in a particular disease, platform or service. This means the money has been appropriated and they are actively seeking firms to fulfill their current investment mandates and allocate funds. The second group of investors are what I call opportunistic. If they see something interesting, they will put some money in; they don’t always need to have a preapproved mandate to invest. Many of both are attending the upcoming RESI event, and having these two kind of prominent investor types in abundance is a boon for companies looking for capital.
Historically, the last two weeks is when a lot of attendees register and start to plan out their activities in the conference arena. This tactical plan usually works well; however, being JPM, the biggest mega life science show on the planet, the old rules don’t apply. We sent out an alert last week that we fear we may have to close down registrations because we have a limit on the number of people the venue can hold. Now we actually think we may have more investors than capital raisers. January 10th is an unprecedented opportunity to meet investors, start a dialogue that leads to a relationship and hopefully an allocation in the future. The capital will not come and find you. You need to do whatever you can to get in front of investors. This is the 11th RESI conference in 3 years, it’s working, and I hope we can move the needle in early stage life science investing. We are calling all capital raising CEOs take advantage of this opportunity. Click here to register for RESI @ JPM
Shaoyu Chang, MD, MPH, Director of Research & Asia Business Development Liaison
Capital from Asian countries has become a significant force behind life science innovations in North America. On October 10 2016, Zymergen, a Bay Area biotech startup, announced that it closed a massive $130 million Series B round led by the Japanese telecom giant Softbank. The infusion of cash aims to help the three-year-old company build a robot workforce to produce industrial chemicals through genetically altered microbes.
In our previous article, we analyzed US-Asia cross-border investments in life sciences. As we look back on year 2016, the trend seems even clearer. The LSN database recorded 204 pre-IPO equity financing deals in life sciences in North America this year. Interestingly, one out of every four pre-IPO equity financing deals has participation of at least one Asian investment organization (Figure 1), including Softbank’s mega deal.
Figure 1. Life Sciences Private Equity Financing Rounds in North America 2016 (total: 204)
Although cross-border deals are considered challenging at times, a good number of Asian investors are willing to take a leading role, such as Shenzhen, China-based DiNovA Capital. Just this week, the healthcare-focused firm led a $35 million equity financing round into Laguna Hills, CA-based Sonendo, Inc. The new capital aims to advance the commercialization of its dentistry technology platform on a global scale.
For Asian investors, syndicating with co-investors helps diversify portfolio and gain exposure to a wider range of innovations. WuXi Healthcare Ventures, the corporate VC arm of WuXi AppTec, is one of the most active cross-border investors, having participated in three biomedical deals including Avelas Biosciences, Twist Bioscience Corp., and Ideaya Biosciences. Asian co-investors provide not only capital injection but often strategic value in a syndicated round.
Despite recent financial uncertainty, Asian country governments are promoting their biomedical industry with stronger-than-ever urgency. State-owned enterprises and private corporations alike are encouraged to look abroad for innovative technologies that address healthcare problems at home. For example, Japan is seeking geriatric medicine and home care sectors, and China is more interested in lung and liver diseases.
At the upcoming RESI San Francisco conference, you can expect to meet investors from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and India. We are pleased to announce the Asia panel track, composing of Asia Investors Landscape Workshop, Asia Pharma Partners Panel, Asia Medtech Partners Panel, and Asia Pacific Investors Panel. This track will cover both breadth and depth of US-Asia cross-border investments in healthcare. Speakers are as follows:
RESI has always aimed to represent the diversity of capital sources for early stage life science companies; alongside sessions featuring VCs, pharma, angels, and other traditional sources of capital, LSN is proud to feature two sessions devoted to Family Offices that invest in new healthcare ventures. The Biotech Family Office sesssion features investors from five different firms who will cover the wide-ranging interests of family offices in the early stage drug development sector.
Moderated by Jayson Rieger (SVP of Business Development & Portfolio Management,PBM Capital), the panelists are:
If you’d be interested in hearing how these family offices source and assess biotech opportunities, and what you need to do to align your company with their investment ethos, you can register for RESI now.
A year ago, we were delighted by the demand for RESI San Francisco, and to our surprise we had to close registrations two weeks early as we’d reached capacity. We have increased space over last year – however, RESI @ JPM at the Marines’ Memorial Club is fast approaching sellout at 75% of capacity, and is expecting to host over 2000 scheduled and ad hoc meetings in one high energy day. This is a record-setting pace for Life Science Nation and the RESI Conference. We expect to close registration well before January 10th, perhaps even before New Year’s Day!
The growth of RESI into a must-go-to event during JPMorgan week, is owed to our near-equal ratio of investors to fundraising executives paired with our unique partnering platform rich with investor data – an amazing feat that is only possible due to the strength of LSN’s investor network. Considering how hard it is to get in front of investors that are a fit for your stage of development and product, the opportunity to meet with this many investors who are mandated to find early stage firms in your space is one that serious entrepreneurs cannot afford to miss. The success of the RESI conference series is proof of that.
Carpe diem, register today, and do not miss this great opportunity to find the right investor at the right time for your technology!
With RESI partnering having launched this week we wanted to provide a quick video tutorial on how to use the platform most effectively. The video below shows a step by step demonstration of the platform and how it can be used to parse through and identify the hundreds of companies and investors that will be in attendance on January 10th. By using this platform, you can identity relevant groups and book up to 16 meetings throughout the day.
With full investor and company profiles capturing data including the stage and sector that of a company’s technology as well as where investors are looking to allocate, this system is extremely powerful in helping to identify matches on the basis of a mutual fit. The sooner you log in and start requesting meetings the better. If you have yet to register and receive your RESI Partnering access info, time is of the essence as schedules will fill up quickly. I hope to see you in San Fran – good luck in partnering!
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