Next Phase Newsletter

By Claire Jeong, Chief Conference Officer, Vice President of Investor Research, Asia BD, LSN

RESI Boston September is now just 4 days away!

In this conference cycle, we will be showcasing over 50 Innovator’s Pitch Challenge (IPC) Finalists across therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, digital health, R&D / life science tools, and more. These companies will be pitching in a live session with a panel of investor and industry expert judges and engage in Q&A. We are thankful for all of the judges who will be participating and providing valuable feedback and questions to the IPC finalist companies. The judges collectively represent over 40 unique firms, including some of the most active investors in the life science industry.

Whether you are an actively fundraising early-stage company, or an active investor/strategic partner looking for targeted dealflow, it is still not too late to register and engage with over 700 attendees in-person or virtually, as well as listen in on our robust program of panels, pitch sessions, and workshops throughout the whole day on Monday, September 18, at the Boston Park Plaza.

Below are the participating judges. See you all next week!

Yoola Adeniji Associate LRVHealth	Christopher Aleong Managing Director, North America BioEngine Capital	Paula Andrea Lengerke Diaz Advisor Desert Angels
Jenna Aronson Principal Two Bear Capital	Jay Batchu Entrepreneur in Residence Xontogeny	Rick Berenson Director – Executive Board Mass Medical Angels
Tara Bishop Founder Black Opal Ventures	Eric Boutin Venture Chair Redesign Health	Gennady Bratslavsky Co-Founder Avicella Ventures
James Carroll Managing Director for Life Science Investments Wharton Alumni Angels	Asmi Chakraborty Fellow Breakout Ventures	Benjamin Chen Venture Partner Panacea Ventures
Bruce Cohen Venture Partner Xeraya Capital	Lise Courtney D’Amico Senior Associate LRVHealth	Travis D’Cruz Associate Director, Early Innovation Partnering Johnson & Johnson Innovation
Ronald Dorenbos Principal BioFrontline Ltd.	David Fogel Member of Screening & Due Diligence Committees Mass Medical Angels	Gabriella Garcia Investor Two Sigma Ventures
Martin Gershon Managing Partner Endeavor Venture Fund & Venture Studio	Joe Graham Vice President Danaher Corporation	Jasmine Gruia-Gray CEO JGG Consulting
Michael Hansen Innovation Scouting Director – North America Eppendorf	Z Haroon Chairman and General Partner Julz Co LLC	Travis Hughes Research Analyst Digitalis Ventures
Daniyal Hussain Executive Director, Technology Business Development GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)	Kristin King Member Boston Harbor Angels	Merom Klein Entrepreneur Mentor Keiretsu Forum
Adam Kundzewicz Executive Director Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund	Nicola La Monica Sr. Director, Infectious Diseases and Vaccines Scientific Innovation, Janssen Johnson & Johnson Innovation	Seo Lee Director SV Investment
Mark Legare Senior Associate Innospark Ventures	Alan Lucas Founder NE Healthcare Executive Network	Greg McKee Managing Partner Bonaventure Equity, LLC (BVE)
Peter Mintun Associate ARCH Venture Partners	Paul Papi Corporate Communications DiaMedica Therapeutics	John Pennett Angel Investor Mid Atlantic Bio Angels
Jack Resnick Inception Program Specialist NVIDIA VC Alliance	Colin Sheehan Associate Director, Ventures Orange Grove Bio	Prithviraj Singha Roy Senior Associate RA Capital
Mariola Szenk Senior Associate BlueYard Capital	Wei Tao Board Director & Chair, Bio/Genomics Life Science Angels	Justin Williams Senior Associate Seae Ventures
Rosanna Zhang Partner Coho Deeptech	Yuan Zhang Senior Director, Scientific Operations & Strategy Portal Innovations	Tingting Zhang-Kharas Head, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JLABS US Northeast Johnson & Johnson Innovation

Martin Gershon

Interview with Martin Gershon, Managing Partner and CIO at Endeavor Venture Fund & Venture Studio By Love Chung, Investor Research Analyst, LSN

Love Chung

Love Chung (LC): Thank you for meeting with me this morning, Martin. Before we get started on asking you some specific questions, could you give us a brief introduction of Endeavor Venture Fund and Venture Studio?

Martin Gershon (MG): Thank you very much for having me here today. I am Dr. Martin Gershon. I’m the managing partner and the Chief Investment Officer for Endeavor Life Sciences Venture Fund and the Venture Studio. The Venture Fund was formed in 2009 and we are in our third fund. Now, the second one being Endeavor II and the third being the Venture Studio. Endeavor II has $1B of assets under management and the Venture Studio has $570M. We focus primarily on digital health, which includes drug discovery, drug development, precision medicine, personalized medicine, telemedicine, but we also do a lot of biotech. In fact, Endeavor I was a biotech firm including investments in Moderna.

We also look at mental health, women’s health and most recently in gene therapies and rare diseases. Typically, our check sizes for Endeavor II are $5-25M. For the Venture Studio, $100,000 to $500,000, up to a total of $5M for Pre-seed to Series A companies.

LC: Thank you for that introduction. I want to ask, as this is your first time attending RESI, what are you looking most forward to?

MG: Well, I’m very excited about moderating the panel on AI in Healthcare. It is a tremendous opportunity to be really close at hand with leading CEOs and entrepreneurs who are driving incredible new discoveries in AI and machine learning and the digital healthcare space. I look forward to speaking with incredible and seasoned industry leaders, investors, and it’s going to be a very dynamic process and I’m also excited about being a judge in two sessions, oncology and therapeutics.

LC: It’s your first time, but you’re already so involved! What kinds of companies or startups are you hoping to connect with?

MG: Well, that’s just a fantastic question because right now it’s really a floodgate of incredible companies, entrepreneurship is alive and well, even though we have a liquidity crisis, so the types of companies that we’re really interested in meeting first and foremost are in the digital space, but really, it’s about leadership and it’s about the CEOs that really drive the connection between us as investors and the technology.

So very important to us is the CEO perspective, the mission and the vision of the CEO, the ability for the CEO to be a leader, adapt, pivot, and grow. The Venture Studio looks for CEOs who have those qualities because very important to us are companies within the digital space, within the biotech space, and the other areas of investment, that we partner really from the get-go to strategics to look for exit strategies.

So, for us, the company is a combination of technology and management and the ability to be a good communicator, a good partner, and a good collaborator with those people that we want to come early in the process to look for involvement with.

LC: Thank you so much for all the details. How do you intend to evaluate investment opportunities that you come across at the conference?

MG: Another great question. Investment opportunities are really for us a four-part diamond shape approach. The first is, we really want CEOs who know how to collaborate and partner, who know how to adapt pivot and grow, who are coachable and who understand that it is an iterative process between the technology, the company’s vision, the investors, and most importantly, the strategics who are going to come in and be acquirers.

The second part is we want companies that know that it’s very important to be between the high demand and high liquidity corridors. What that means for us is that we are very, very interested in understanding where the drivers are to be able to move that product to commercialize an event and eventually to an exit. High demand means that industry wants that product, consumers want that product, patients want that product. High liquidity means that there’s already investment in that sector and growing.

And so, we put all the pieces together to look for companies and bring those in an iterative fashion in our workshops in our symposiums and in our BetterHealth webinar. Each week, two strategics, two industry leaders to be able to showcase these companies and say, how can we do a better job? What is it that we can do for you to create a customized package that you are interested in investing in or acquiring? Those are the types of companies that really prick up our ears.

LC: Thank you. As we’ve been talking about how you intend to evaluate investment opportunities and what kind of companies that you’re looking for at RESI, can you share a successful investment story and what made it successful?

MG: Absolutely. So early on in the process, we look for companies that have outstanding potential, which means great management, great leadership, and great technology. One of those early companies was Moderna. We did not know that there was a pandemic coming like anybody else. But we knew that there were tremendous, tremendous technological innovation, leadership and people like Bob Langer who have years and years of experience creating startups.

I do a lot of work with MIT and Harvard. I’m a visiting teacher and lecturer there and coach many of the companies. For many years, I am on the inside of understanding what’s happening in the labs, what’s happening with great professors who are entrepreneurs. And Moderna is one of those clearly, clearly above everybody else, head and shoulders, a real leader, a real understander of what is necessary in terms of new, platform technology.

And so Moderna really is a story that we approached early on because of its ability to grow, its ability to use its technology in multiple platforms. I think that we are going to see more and more of the technology that is embedded in Moderna come out over the next decade and longer to make it one of the preeminent BioPharma companies in the world.

LC: Thank you! And I just wanted to ask you one last question. What advice would you give to startups or companies attending RESI who are seeking investments from someone with your expertise?

MG: Such a fantastic question. So, I write articles, I teach about leadership I teach about entrepreneurship and about the new wave of CEOs and C-suite executives that are necessary for early stage companies. As new leaders, you have to have certain skill sets that you didn’t have 10 years ago.

Now, in 2023, it’s especially important to understand that investors want a risk adjusted investment. What does that mean? It means that it’s very, very important to understand that even though you have incredible innovation, you have to present yourself to investors as they see themselves. So that means that every investment has a risk adjustment to it. You must mitigate that risk.

We mitigate that risk in Endeavor by creating opportunities to generate revenue. So, my advice to investors is find those CEOs that understand this process. And my advice to CEOs is understand the investor perspective, mitigate risk, be adaptable, be customizable, find different ways to use your product in a platform technology and most importantly generate revenue.

LC: Thank you for all the insightful responses.

By Dennis Ford, Founder and CEO of Life Science Nation, Creator of the RESI Conference Series

I am thrilled to present Life Science Nation (LSN)’s Program Guide for RESI Boston, September 18-20 at the Boston Park Plaza, Back Bay, Boston. This will be a hybrid RESI event, face2face September 18, followed by virtual partnering September 19-20. The Program Guide takes you through our investor panels, sponsor workshops, exhibitors, and 50+ Innovator’s Pitch Challenge companies participating in this RESI. RESI Boston attendees represent the leaders, innovators, and who’s-who of early-stage drugs, devices, diagnostics, and digital health (the 4 Ds).

(Click Here to View the Digital Copy of Program Guide)

Early this week, I met with Daniel Levine for a Big4Bio podcast. We talked about what makes the RESI conference series unique, the critical role of conferences in today’s environment, and how early-stage founders and CEOs can make the most of their time at these events.

It is not too late to attend if you are seeking capital investment or licensing opportunities. We hope to see you next week! Register today.

By Dennis Ford, Founder and CEO of Life Science Nation, Creator of the RESI Conference Series

Life Science Nation (LSN)’s Redefining Early Stage Investment (RESI) conference stands out from the average partnering conference.  LSN, from the start, wanted RESI to be a dedicated partnering-centric event.  RESI content is centered on startups and the information they need to succeed in their fundraising endeavors, comprising of investor and licensing partner panels and service provider workshops (see program guides below).  There are two main parts to the equation, the 10,000+ early-stage capital investors and licensing partners in the LSN ecosystem, and the 10,000+ startups that are a fit for RESI. This includes those seeking up to 2M in seed funding, $2-10M series A funding, and $10M to 50M series B funding.

The LSN BD staff are not just selling RESI tickets or the LSN investor database but spend a lot of time assessing and making sure that RESI attendees are ready for a global fundraise and understand what it takes to go from the regional stage to the global arena.  LSN really cares about the ROI for our clients.  It is because of this challenge I have put a bunch of useful links and info that we send along to our RESI and Data leads so that they know what to expect when designing and launching a global roadshow.

At first glance, there are a lot of links/info, but we have found that startups who really want to understand what LSN and RESI are all about typically take the time to explore the subtlety and nuances of going from a regional to a global roadshow mindset.

• Watch the Introduction to Life Science Nation (LSN)

• Big4Bio Interview

Listen to the podcast from LSN’s CEO, Dennis Ford, about the journey and challenges life sciences entrepreneurs make when they set out to raise money, what investors care about, and what steps they can take to ensure their success best.

• New LSN Executive Summary
• It All Starts With The Story Watch the Recording (28-min)

The most successful entrepreneurs are always the best storytellers. Finding a way to formulate your company’s unique story naturally and portraying this through multiple modalities, whether it be a 1-minute elevator pitch or a 12-slide pitch deck, is one of the most effective ways to get potential investors and partners on board with your value proposition. This video will cover the importance of entrepreneurial agency, finding your voice and developing a compelling narrative for the players that will emerge along a deal chain, and language tools to refine your hook.

• Best Practices for Launching Your Startup Watch the Recording (28-min)

Launching a startup begins with commitment. Commitment to your startup initiative, your executive team, and your partners. Learn how to sustain this commitment by creating a proof of concept or prototype and create market traction initially, considerations to your corporate structure, simplifying finances in the beginning, and what tools to utilize. This video takes you through an honest look at best practices for launching a life science startup.

• RESI Program Guide

• RESI JPM January 2023
• RESI Boston June 2023
• RESI Boston September 2023
• All Program Guides Webpage from past RESIs.

• The Fundraising Manifesto Download e-book, written by LSN’s CEO, Dennis Ford.
• Entrepreneurial Education Courses Download Brochure

Life Science Nation (LSN) has developed a curriculum on the fundamentals of launching a global partnering campaign. 3 different options are available for early-stage life science startups looking to improve their skill set in fundraising, business development, sales, and marketing.

• Download Tear sheet template (Word doc)

By Momo Yamamoto, Investor Research Analyst, LSN

Life Science Nation is getting ready for RESI Boston September, just weeks away! RESI Boston September will be taking place in person on Monday, September 18 at the Park Plaza Hotel followed by virtual partnering on September 19-20.

To highlight our Global Family Office BioForum, we are excited to announce our Family Office investor panel, along with the panelists. We hope to create a space that will allow more connections between family offices and startups with investment opportunities in the life sciences. In addition to the Family Office panel, we will have six more investor panels including AI in Healthcare, Diagnostics, Oncology Innovation, Strategic Partners, Synthetic Biology, and Women’s Health. Our selected and seasoned panelists will give audiences the latest scoop on trends, risks, interests, and more.

Please look below for our panelists:

Irene Blat Sr. Dir. Search & Evaluation, Oncology Servier	Jay Campbell Managing Director, CRI Clinical Accelerator and Venture Fund Cancer Research Institute Venture Fund	Rima Chakrabarti Partner KdT Ventures
Jeffrey Champagne Screening Committee Boston Harbor Angels	Bruce Cohen Venture Partner Xeraya Capital	Steve Curtis Director, New Ventures BrightEdge
Alex de Winter Vice President of New Ventures Danaher Corporation	Jessica Federer Managing Partner Supernode Ventures	David Fogel Member of Screening & Due Diligence Committees Mass Medical Angels
Ben Freeberg Founder & Managing Partner Oncology Ventures	Ser-Chen Fu Partner Pacific 8 Ventures	Gabriella Garcia Investor Two Sigma Ventures
Martin Gershon Managing Partner Endeavor Venture Fund & Venture Studio	Shahram Hejazi Partner BioAdvance	Robert Higginson Partner & Gatekeeper Par Equity
Ian Johnston Senior Investment Associate The Engine	Jennifer Jordan Venture Partner iGlobe Partners	Hewmun Lau Principal Broadview Ventures
Pengpeng Li Senior Investment Manager Lilly Asia Ventures	Fiona Mack Vice President, Head, Cell and Gene Therapy Co.Lab Cambridge Bayer	Andy Merken Partner, Corporate and Securities Co-Chair, Life Sciences Burns & Levinson
James Murray Partner ExSight Ventures	Parasvil Patel Partner Radical Ventures	Akhilesh Pathipati Partner MVM Life Science Partners
Rami Rahal Investment Team MPM Capital	Alyssa Reisner Director & Principal CVS Health Ventures	Jayson Rieger Managing Partner PBM Capital
Abigail Risse Investor Hyperplane Venture Capital	Muneer Satter Founder Satter Investment Management	Dov Shamir Founding Head of Elementa Labs & Senior Manager, Entrepreneurship Mount Sinai Innovation Partners
Paula Soteropoulos Venture Partner 5AM Ventures	Kristin Thompson VP, Chief Business Officer eureKARE	Anthony Viscogliosi Principal and Founder Viscogliosi Brothers
	Tingting Zhang-Kharas Head, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JLABS US Northeast Johnson & Johnson Innovation

Big4Bio Will Distribute 30 RESI Audience Access Passes as a Promotion

By Caitlin Dolegowski, Marketing Manager, LSN

Life Science Nation (LSN) is excited to announce LifeSci Startup, a daily newsletter from LSN and Big4Bio. This is a daily newsletter recapping the latest developments of life sciences startups. From life-saving drugs to economic impact, the life science industry and community need constant coverage and supporting resources. Earlier-stage companies are key to advancing this industry, providing job creation, capital formation, and entrepreneurial inspiration. A dedicated daily digest is needed to support these efforts, and LifeSci Startup does that by providing key news, events, jobs, investor mandates, and more.