Next Phase Newsletter

By Natasha Eldridge, Marketing Manager, Life Science Nation

The RESI Innovation Challenge is taking place in a new home in Houston Texas on June 8th at TMCx and will feature 30 handpicked early stage biotech, medtech, diagnostic and healthcare IT innovators from around the country. These entrepreneurs have been selected by LSN’s scientific validation team to receive a presentation space in the exhibit hall for the full day of the conference to showcase their innovations to investors and fellow entrepreneurs. LSN has found repeatedly that companies presenting in this venue interact with more investors—and with more meaningful dialogues—throughout the course of the day than would be possible in a traditional 15-minute pitch contest.

To add some friendly competition to the mix, the RESI Innovation Challenge invites all attendees to participate in a virtual investment contest. At the start of the day, each attendee will receive “RESI Cash” to allocate to the entrepreneurs whose technologies they expect will be most influential. The capital that was invested will be tallied up and the top three winners will be featured in our RESI newsletter recap that will go out to LSN’s 20,000 newsletter readership.

• First prize winner of the RESI Innovation Challenge will receive complimentary subscription to the LSN Investor Platform for a year.
• Second prize winner will receive two complimentary RESI tickets, to be used within 12 months.
• Third prize winner will receive one complimentary RESI ticket, to be used within 12 months.

Whether you are an investor, an entrepreneur, or a service provider, make sure you check out the exhibit hall to meet with some of the top innovators in the field and invest your “RESI Cash.” We will see you there!

By Michael Quigley, Director of Research, LSN

Developing and commercializing a product in the life science space is notoriously capital intensive and usually involves a high level of risk. To assist with this difficult development process, many organizations have formed that are designing and utilizing new approaches to help move science forward in the early stages of development and clinical research. These include Studios, Incubators, Accelerators, and Funds that aim to create more financially efficient and de-risked models of engagement for companies and investors. The RESI conference will bring together some of the best and brightest of these groups to discuss how they are creating, coaching, and funding life science companies in a more productive manner.

During this panel, moderated by Dennis Ford, CEO & founder of Life Science Nation, the audience will hear from:

• Melinda Richter, Head, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, JLABS
• Bill McKeon, EVP, CSO, & COO, Texas Medical Center
• Lisa Rhoads, Managing Director, Easton Capital
• David Lucchino, Entrepreneur In Residence, Puretech
• Leo Linbeck, III, Chairman & Founder, Fannin Innovation Studio

Although the forming of virtual companies has shown great promise in reducing costs and keeping companies nimble, along the product development pathway, many inefficiencies remain. This panel will discuss what some of the most cutting-edge groups in the space are doing to tackle these challenges. Conference attendees are sure to gain insight from these individuals who are working to make the life science product development process more streamlined.

By Lucy Parkinson, Senior Research Manager, LSN

LSN founded the RESI conference with the goal of providing a venue for life science CEOs to build relationships with potential investors and partners. In addition to the opportunity to book up to 16 back-to-back partnering meetings, RESI offers a full day of panel sessions at which CEOs can hear the latest on tactical fundraising straight from leading life science investors. And since each of the 16 sessions is focused on a different life science sector or investor category, RESI’s panelists can speak to a diverse range of companies, offering relevant experience from throughout the biotech, medtech, diagnostic, and healthcare IT fields.

The RESI @ TMCx morning session will offer separate biotech and medtech panels, featuring angels, family offices, and major healthcare corporations that work with startups in these areas. In the afternoon, RESI’s panels will be more topical, with two sessions devoted to new funding alternatives in life science — venture philanthropy and emerging development models — and six sessions focused on fundraising . Finally, in the Tales from the Road session, the audience will hear from start-up CEOs about their recent experiences in raising money to grow their companies.

Throughout these 16 panels, active life science investors will share their insight and provide tactical advice on outreach, positioning, and building the right relationships to move your product forward. Visit the RESI @ TMCx agenda and click on each panel to view the full speaker lineup.

By Alejandro Zamorano, VP of Business Development, LSN

Tomorrow the partnering platform for RESI @ TMCx goes live, making scheduling a meeting with relevant companies and investors just a few clicks away.

The sheer quantity and diversity of investors attending RESI, paired with the power of the RESI Partnering Platform, makes the RESI conference the place for early stage life science companies to meet investors that are a fit.

LSN has partnered with Meeting Mojo, an emerging partnering portal developer based in the UK to develop the RESI Partnering Platform. RESI attendees can use the system to find other attendees who are a fit for their product, development stage, and other relevant factors.  This highly customized solution uses metatagged profiles populated by LSNs propitiatory investor data that can be searched by the  entrepreneurs to pinpoint a specific fit for an investment mandate by one of the investment firms present at RESI. The RESI Partnering Platform provides the foundation for a one-of-a-kind partnering experience based on current investor mandates that can be easily matched to the emerging biotech and medtech startups that fit the investment criteria.

In short RESI partnering provides an opportunity for life science companies and investors to meet the right people, create compelling dialogues, and foster long-term relationships.

The list below represents the investors who are currently confirmed to attend the RESI @ TMCx conference this June 8th in Houston. This number can be expected to double during the final month leading up to the event. Whether you are just thinking of raising capital in the life science space or have actively begun the process, the RESI conference offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity to get some feedback and build relationships with the investors in your market.

As of April 28, 2015 | Click the image to learn more about the investors

The ROI from attending the RESI conference is pretty dramatic. A fundraising CEO can book up to 16 one-on-one meetings for the day through our partnering software, and more by taking advantage of the networking opportunities that are offered before and during the event. No matter where you are in the fundraising process, RESI @ TMCx is the place to start a dialogue that will hopefully evolve into a compelling relationship and ultimately an allocation.

What makes RESI such a uniquely valuable event for life science entrepreneurs is not only the number of active investors we bring to the table, but also their diversity. RESI has unigue value in that its primary focus is the bringing together 10 categories of investors, including family offices, corporate venture capital, large pharma and biotech, venture capital, and more as depicted in the chart below. This breadth of diverse early stage investor participation makes RESI a great fit for a life science fundraiser seeking any kind of investment, from seed money to series A or B capital to strategic partnership.

Data as of April 28, 2015

Whether your company was just formed or you are looking for capital to fund your next clinical trial, it is never too early to start a relationship with an investor, and the RESI conference will have a strong showing of those with serious interest in the life science space. All of these investors will be profiled in our partnering software, which goes live next week and helps you schedule a meeting based on mutual fit with just a few clicks. Start the fundraising dialogue now. Register here.

Still have questions? Feel free to email or call our conference manager Natasha Eldridge at n.eldridge@lifesciencenation.com or 617-580-5001; she will be happy to address any concerns you have.

By Lucy Parkinson, Senior Research Manager, LSN

It’s been an exciting Q1 for the biotech industry, with the PwC MoneyTree Report recording 193 biotech and medtech venture financing deals. The LSN Company Platform tracks life science financing events more broadly than the MoneyTree Report; in addition to venture financing rounds, the platform also records other forms of financing secured by the 30,000 biotech and medtech companies tracked, including debt financing, research grants, IPOs, and post-IPO offerings. This is useful information if you’re providing services in the life science sector and need to know your customers’ capital landscape. The platform also records the lead investor and any co-investors in each financing event.

It may be months before all the deals that took place in Q1 are formally announced and accounted for, but at present the LSN Company Platform has recorded 229 life science financing events that took place in Q1 2015. These financings raised a total of almost $10 billion, buoyed by huge late stage private rounds and follow-on public offerings. Among the financing events LSN tracked, the median amount raised was $15 million. Figure 1 provides a complete breakdown of the amount raised by the financing events recorded in Q1:

Figure 1 | Source: LSN Company Platform, Data as of March 31, 2015

Q1 saw a healthy crop of small, sub-$5 million rounds, which are typically raised by early stage companies, but also many significantly larger raises, including post-IPO financings in which companies that went public in 2013 and 2014 tapped the markets for additional capital.

While the bulk of the tracked financing events occurred in the U.S., the LSN Company Platform also recorded deals in Canada and throughout Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania (see Figure 2).

Figure 2 | Source: LSN Company Platform, Data as of March 31, 2015

In 157 cases, the LSN Company Platform recorded the indication areas in which the companies are developing assets (in many cases, the companies were targeting more than one indication area). Figure 3 shows that oncology was the leading field for financing, with 62 oncology companies raising money in Q1; companies in diseases of the nervous system and metabolic diseases rounded out the top 3 indications for life science financing.

Figure 3 | Source: LSN Company Platform, Data as of March 31, 2015

In 125 of the 229 records, the LSN Company Platform was able to track the phase of development of a company’s lead asset. (The rest include companies for which this isn’t relevant or doesn’t fit on the biotech development pathway, such as life science service providers and many medtech or healthcare IT companies, and cases in which the phase of the lead asset is unknown). As Figure 4 shows, the largest number of raises involved companies with a lead asset in Phase II, but LSN tracked financing events for companies as early in the pipeline as the discovery stage:

Figure 4 | Source: LSN Company Platform, Data as of March 31, 2015

This chart demonstrates that it’s never too early to think about financing, even if your company is still at the discovery stage of development. In addition to giving you some vital runway time, talking to investors now can help you plan out your future fundraising path; financing rounds generally take 9 to 18 months to close, and the more interested investors you can be in touch with at the early stage, the easier it will be to bring those later rounds together.

By Natasha Eldridge, Marketing Manager, Life Science Nation

The healthcare IT sector is booming, with $6.5 billion invested in healthcare IT companies in 2014. As the Texas Medical Center taking a lead on supporting healthcare IT companies in the Southwest, RESI @ TMCx will feature a panel session exploring investment in the sector.

LSN has gathered a group of experienced healthcare IT investors to share their expertise and advice with entrepreneurs. These investors focus on the information technology opportunities that underlie healthcare innovation, from the possibilities created by big data to the digitization of healthcare providers and research labs. Panelists will discuss issues related to funding in healthcare IT, such as: How do you make your company stand out in this crowded marketplace? What do investors see as the most high-potential fields of innovation in healthcare IT? How do you demonstrate to an investor that your product has the potential to succeed?

• Eugene Zhang, Founding Partner, TEEC Angel Fund
• Michael Peck, Venture Partner, Flyover Capital
• Momei Qu, Senior Associate, Baird Capital
• Tom Hawes, Managing Director, Sandbox Industries