By Maximilian Klietmann, VP of Marketing, LSN

The Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) Conference is poised to launch on Monday. Getting this 400 person event together was no small feat: The RESI team relied heavily on a strict strategy on delivering quality content that was current, relevant, and compelling. The main tactic was to focus on early stage investment and really understand how that impacts emerging life science startups. When LSN embarked on the RESI Conference, there was a single mantra that drove the entire event organization process: Content is king. So many conferences recycle dry outdated content, and it’s the same old speakers with the same old content. This is precisely what LSN sought to change.

A brief glance at the RESI agenda shows that we succeeded: There are 16 panels covering topics such as family offices investing directly, non-profits adopting for-profit models, CROs investing into startups, the latest big pharma in-licensing activities, and other emerging trends in early stage life science investing. On top of that, there are workshops covering how to conduct a fundraising campaign, the legal landscape, and valuation.

So how exactly was LSN able to compile all of this content? Quite simply, it comes down to the fact that LSN’s primary business is working together with early stage companies raising capital, and profiling the investor landscape. LSN tracks over 5,000 active biotech and medtech investors around the world, and the LSN research team maintains an ongoing dialogue with them on a 90-day rolling basis. This gives LSN unequaled insight into the latest investor trends, but also fosters a relationship that allows for a higher ratio of active investors than any other major life science conference in the world.

The insights that LSN research compiles allow the RESI conference content to stay abreast of the industry. The RESI event’s content is designed to give perspectives on what’s happening now, who’s active, what’s hot, and what the future looks like on a tactical level. Moreover, because of LSN’s relationship with the senior staff at each of these investor entities, the content is delivered by the very people who are redefining early stage investments in the life science arena.

If you’re already a part of the RESI tribe, we look forward to seeing you all on March 24^th in Boston. If you’re not part of the tribe yet, it’s not too late, but time is running short. Come see what everyone’s talking about!

By Tom Crosby, RESI Conference Manager, LSN

Next Monday, March 24^th will mark the date for Life Science Nation’s second Redefining Early Stage Investments Conference in Boston’s State Room. Nearly 400 active early stage life science investors, biotech and medtech innovators, and senior executives from all segments of the industry will converge 33 floors above the city for a full day.

LSN’s motivation to create the RESI conference is based on a simple concept: while the world of early stage life science investments has fundamentally changed, many fundraising executives are still operating under the assumption that the old process for raising capital is still applicable. In light of this, LSN conceived the concept of a forum of entrepreneurs and active early stage investors not only to discuss the new marketplace, but also to initiate dialogues that would eventually lead to allocations. This is accomplished by a combination of top-tier investor panels, workshops, and a full-day partnering pavilion.

Ultimately, the key differentiator for RESI is that it is a targeted event seeking to connecting early stage technologies with investors – therapeutics, diagnostics, medtech, healthcare IT, and investors from 10 categories are all represented. It’s not indication specific, it’s not just for biotech, and it’s not just for medtech; it is the only conference that focuses on bridging the funding void that traditional investors have left.

So, what does RESI look like this time around? Let’s take a look at the numbers:

·         Total Attendees: 390 attendees from 377 organizations

·         Countries Represented:  12 different countries, and representation from across the US

Moreover, the ratio of investors to companies seeking capital is close to 1:1, which outperforms any other meeting on this scale of which LSN is aware. As a company – and as an conference – LSN and the RESI Conference continue to fill gaps in the market, create disruptive events, and ultimately, be an advocate for early stage companies seeking to move science forward.

By Dennis Ford, Founder & CEO, LSN

I created the RESI conference as a result of canvassing all the “investor” conferences worldwide and finding few actual investors participating. The Redefining Early Stage Investments Conference is a full day conference targeted at moving early stage biotech and medtech companies forward by fostering dialogue between innovators and active investors from around the world. With more than 400 attendees and over 500 partnering meetings already scheduled for next Monday, March 24th, the RESI conference is poised to be “the” investor partnering conference this year. Moreover, there is nearly a 1:1 ratio of early stage fundraising companies and active investors at RESI, suggesting that it will be unparalleled in terms of fundraising opportunity.

RESI has partnered with Meeting Mojo, an emerging partnering portal based in the UK. Together RESI and Meeting Mojo have created a customized solution based on providing in depth, meta tagged, profiles that can be searched by conference attendees for a specific fit for their firm and product. In addition, by leveraging LSN’s Investor Platform we were able to provide added depth by importing current investment mandate data directly into the investor profiles. This has provided the foundation for a great partnering experience based on current investor mandates matching up with emerging biotech and medtech startups that fit the investment criteria.

One of the most compelling facts is that more than half the meetings already scheduled are between biotech/medtech companies and investors. This equates to 263 discussions taking place in under 10 hours. LSN’s analysis shows interesting trends in the charts provided. For example, the third biggest category of meetings is among investors meeting with other investors. This makes sense, as a good amount of investors are looking for co-investors and partners for their portfolio companies. Another emerging trend is that service providers are eager to meet with investors. One explanation for this is that service providers are now funding promising startups and seeking to partner with investors as part of the new paradigm thus becoming a new deal sourcing channel.

The Redefining Early Stage Investment conference continues to evolve as partnering takes on a life of its own. There are 700 potential meetings at RESI, and there are bound to be some fascinating results.

RESI MEETINGS	PERCENTAGE
Investor & Biotech/Medtech	54%
Biotech/Medtech & Service Provider/Consultant	20%
Investor & Investor	7%
Investor & Service Provider/Consultant	7%
Miscellaneous	6%
Biotech/Medtech & Government Organization	2%
Service Provider/Consultant & Service Provider/Consultant	2%
Investor & Government Organizations	1%
Biotech/Medtech & Biotech/Medtech	1%
Government Organization & Service Provider/Consultant	1%

By Dennis Ford, CEO, LSN

After the launch of an outbound fundraising campaign, sooner or later a number of dialogues begin to take for with various investors. Meetings take place and relationships form. This is one of the most exciting parts of the fundraising process, and everything seems to be off to a great start.  Unfortunately, this is also where many life science funding executives lead themselves astray.

Let’s face it; life science fundraising executives are beholden to a board, and they often feel pressure to put something on their forecast.  Because they are anxious to turn a target into a prospect, they often begin to see things that aren’t there, try to force a fit, or use every skill they have to push along a relationship that isn’t going anywhere.  It’s an easy trap to fall into, and can lead to a lot of unnecessary churn, eventually slowing down the fundraising process. You need to be equally focused on getting prospects on the plate and getting them off the plate. So how do you avoid being caught in this situation? Two easy rules can help you significantly.

Be direct: This is often a very hard thing for a fundraising executive to do, but it is a fundamental requirement in getting non-fits off the plate. Many entrepreneurs are so excited at the prospect of someone being interested in them that they are afraid to ask a question that could stop the dialogue. However, the alternative is wasting time on a non-fit. Always check in to see if the investor is actually interested in making an allocation, and ask what would prevent them from doing so. This will get every question answered faster and will get non-fits out of the conversation faster. This saves everyone time.

Listen to your gut.  Opportunities can change direction, be postponed, stumble and fall off a cliff, and flat-out die.  They are very tricky creatures. They prey upon your optimistic nature. They can get you in a fix. The importance of listening to your gut cannot be overstated. When in doubt, your gut will tell you what to do.

It’s imperative to concentrate on the good prospects and move on from investors who aren’t, pronto! It is also the reason to set everyone’s expectations at the outset of the process.  Let those in your company know that a potential investor is ready for the forecast list only when you’ve made it halfway through the allocation process with them.  A forecast list is composed of investors you have qualified who have also qualified your firm, and who may give you money. Stay focused, direct, and honest (with yourself). These are the key elements to efficiently navigating your way to an allocation.

By Lucy Parkinson, Research Manager, LSN

Every day at LSN, our research team is confronted with a vast amount of information about investment activity in the life science sector; this comes in the form of investor interviews, analysis of headline news, as well as conversations with partners and clients. LSN spends a lot of time in dialogue with the marketplace, and parsing this overwhelming amount of data is what we do for a living.

News stories often focus on the big names in the sector on both sides of the table – revolutionary disruptive technologies and the early-stage investors who were backing them in their seed rounds.  But these are the superstars of the industry; they’re not representative of the tens of thousands of biotech and medtech startups out there, or of the thousands of active investors in the sector. We’ve touched on the principle of parsing technology before, and how important it is to understand where you fit in terms of disruptive, breakthrough and iterative technology. However, rarely do companies follow through and select the right investors that fit their technologies.

When you’re looking for investors to support your emerging life science company, you need to turn over every stone.  It’s possible to start your fundraising campaign by working your own network, exploring local options such as your region’s government programs or angel groups, and sending proposals to big-name VCs – but where do you turn once those options have been exhausted? This strategy tends to waste time, and results in unproductive meetings that don’t move forward. The key is identifying fits and creating a global target list that is targeted with an institutional style outbound campaign. This should be done from the onset, to maximize campaign efficiency and win an allocation as quickly as possible.

There are a lot of investors out there who don’t have top-flight, headline-making funds.  They might even be deliberately flying under the radar, or maybe they’re across the world from you.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t actively looking for opportunities in your field, in your location.  Indeed, it’s in this long tail of potential investors – including investors that weren’t formerly known for backing startups, such as family offices and big pharma – where the equally long tail of biotech startups will find the investors who are a perfect fit for what they’re offering.  What we’ve found at LSN Research is that the only way to know for sure if an investor is currently actively seeking new life science opportunities is to make a phone call or write an email, and ask them.

By Phubes Asavasatitporn, Research Analyst, LSN

At LSN, we talk a lot about having an “up-to-date roadmap” when it comes to navigating the changing life science investment landscape. This means not only understanding who the new entities in the space are, but also how their investment strategies have changed, what type of technology each is interested in, how their investment timelines have been reconfigured in the churn, and so on. One topic that is less frequently taken into account, however, is the idea of actually mapping out an individual investment firm before a big meeting.

Fundraising executives will handle the process of mapping out a company in different ways based on a variety of variables – not the least of which is personality type. Some like to approach the problem much like a case study, spending weeks doing research on the prospect (and their peers’) management team, portfolio companies, investment interests and past deals. Others may prefer to simply go in with a general idea of a firm’s investment category, and then gather the rest of the relevant information first hand. Either tactic has its advantages, and more than likely, your actual efforts to plan for an initial meeting with an investor will be some combination of the two.

While the investigative angle helps you to align your perception with prospective investors as prepared and informed, and may lend itself to stronger long-term relationships, it does have its drawbacks. For one, a fundraising executive’s primary goal should always be towards creating as many qualified investor relationships as possible. For this reason, spending too much time researching targets – and therefore not enough time making calls or knocking on doors – is taking away from the main task at hand. Incremental to this is the fact that too much research can lead the focus of a meeting towards verifying data and away from actually talking with the prospect. The key is striking an effective balance.

None of this is to say that data shouldn’t be verified, because it must. On the other hand, one of the worst mistakes an executive engaged in the fundraising process can make is to assume that their initial research on an investor entity was 100% correct. Information – especially regarding corporate structure and hierarchy – is constantly in flux. Indeed, it is hard to gauge how much time you should allocate to researching your prospects, but some general rules are to not mistake “less” for “none,” and try to find a happy balance between “too much” and “not enough.”

Whatever approaches you do take to investor meetings, keep in mind that the most important piece of any meeting is to lay the groundwork for a good relationship. Too many entrepreneurs make the mistake of believing that technology is not only the most important part of a deal, but the only piece that really matters. On the contrary, it is real conversations that lead to real relationships, and real relationships that lead to allocations. Do – but don’t overdo – your due diligence on your prospective investors, and approach each situation with a confident and friendly demeanor, and with enough attempts, the correct fit will eventually come along.

By Michael Quigley, Research Manager, LSN

Having personally scheduled and held several hundred interviews with Life Science investors over the past year, I have developed and refined a formula for getting “in the door” with an introductory email. As anyone who has embarked on a fundraising campaign knows, initiating the dialogue is often the hardest part of the process. Few introductory emails ever get opened, and even fewer earn a reply at all. However, there are a few concepts and tactics that can increase your efficacy substantially when it comes to initiating a dialogue and locking in that first meeting. This article will share some insights from my personal experience that may be helpful in your email outreach.

The first thing that you need to understand when drafting an introductory email is that the entire purpose of the email is just that, an introduction. You will not close a deal with one email and this should not be your target. The ability to concisely introduce your technology in a professional and compelling way is what you should be aiming for. Drowning the investor with blocks of text and attachments may as well be a wasted effort. Investors are busy, and they don’t have the time to read through stacks of data. From the subject line to the signature, the email needs to be short, sweet, and to the point. A good rule of thumb is that if your email requires that the investor start scrolling to read all of it, then it may already be too long.

The subject line is crucial. The subject should be clear, and include information about your company that is relevant to the investor. For example, “Meeting Request: Novel Cancer Therapy Preparing to Enter Phase I Trials” is a great subject line for an investor with a declared interest in early stage cancer therapeutic development. Now assuming you are reaching out to investors in a targeted manner based on fit, they will naturally be attracted to this subject. Moreover, it shows you aren’t spamming and that you understand their interests. All of these factors increase your odds of getting opens and hopefully a positive reply. With larger investment firms, make sure you are targeting members of the team with backgrounds in areas similar to that of your technology. A little research can go a long way in terms of increasing email efficacy.

The body of the email should be a boiled down paragraph or two encompassing your team, a high level explanation of your technology and recent milestones, and your interest in having an introductory conversation. Keeping a few simple concepts in mind secure your greatest change of earning a positive response:

• Your email should show you are knowledgeable, trustworthy and thereby credible. This can be done through a brief description (one or two sentences) of your personal background as well as a reference to the investor’s interests. Also, by keeping your email concise and targeted, you increase your credibility by demonstrating to the investor professionalism and respect for their time.

• Your email should make further communication a logical choice for the investor. This should be achieved by demonstrating that your investment is a fit for the investor’s mandate. Research your targets well and explain why you are the ideal fit for what they are seeking.

• Personal touches enhance your chances of getting a response. You need to demonstrate that you have put as much if not more effort into this email than the investor is taking to read it. Some ways to do this are mentioning something that recently happened with the investor that is relatable to your proposal. For example, “I noticed your firm has recently raised a new life science fund this spring” or “I recently read an interview you gave on the potential of personalized medicine.” This shows that you have done some research into the firm, and this is not a blanket email you are sending to every investor you can find. By showing the investor you took some care in your outreach and are already in context will greatly increase your odds of a response. On the opposite end – avoid starting emails with “Dear sir” or “to whom it may concern”- this screams mass-email and can be a big turn-off.

• Calls to action get the ball rolling. You should offer the investor a few clearly laid out suggestions as to how to move forward. These should include the option to send the investor more information via email if they desire as well as some times to set up a potential meeting or call. By laying out options for how to move forward, you are bringing the horse closer to the water than by just saying something arbitrary like “look forward to hearing from you.”

By utilizing these recommendations you will greatly increase your odds of getting positive responses from investors. So develop your target list based on fit, identify the right contacts, and send out some introductory emails!