Next Phase Newsletter

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

In the fast-paced world of startups, success often hinges on securing funding and building critical relationships with investors and licensing partners. To achieve this, a crucial but often underestimated aspect of fundraising is having the right staff dedicated to setting up the meetings, monitoring their outcomes, and documenting key summary and follow-up information.

Most startups do not understand and recognize the significance of dedicating a staff person to the booking investor meeting’s role. The result is startup CEOs doing a poor job at canvassing and follow-up, leading to missed opportunities and insufficient meetings with potential partners. In this article, we will explore why having a designated meeting coordinator is essential for startup success and why fundraising is a numbers game. You must kiss a lot of frogs and socialize the hell out of your company when launching and executing a fundraising campaign.

The Significance of Meetings in Startup Fundraising

Anyone who has read my articles knows that I stress that fundraising is a pure numbers game. Meetings with potential investors are the lifeblood of startup fundraising. These meetings allow entrepreneurs to pitch and highlight their products and build rapport with potential backers. However, it is not just about having these meetings; it is about ensuring they are well-organized, productive, and meticulously tracked.

Meeting Organization

Meeting coordination entails more than simply scheduling appointments. It involves finding the right investors, understanding their preferences, and aligning those with your startup’s goals. A dedicated meeting coordinator can efficiently manage these intricate coordination, ensuring that every interaction is meaningful and strategically planned.

Monitoring and Documentation

After the meetings, monitoring how they went, gathering feedback, and documenting key takeaways is imperative. What were the investor’s reactions? What questions were asked? What commitments or action items were agreed upon? Someone must capture and document this data.

Deliverables and Next Steps

Effective fundraising involves securing a meeting and moving potential investors through a well-defined funnel. This entails establishing product development milestones with clear deliverables and the next steps for your team and the investors. Someone needs to keep track of these commitments, ensuring your startup stays on course and investors remain engaged.

Why Meeting Coordination is Often Overlooked

Raising Money is a numbers game; finding as many investors and licensing partner targets as possible is paramount for a successful fundraise. LSN can usually identify 600-800 global targets we can deliver to startup CEOs through our database. Once you get the global target list, you then need to set up introductory meetings, and this is where most startups fail because the CEO or some other executive tries to book the meetings themselves and does not understand the process of repeated canvasing requests with emails and phone calls for setting up meetings. Many startup CEOs say there is no money for a part-time or full-time admin or entry-level BD staff to set up these meetings, so they slog through the process, which never goes well.   All startups face budget constraints, making hiring dedicated staff challenging. However, failing to recognize the impact of a skilled meeting coordinator can prove more costly in the long run.

Startup founders need to understand the intricacies of the fundraising process fully. They need to pay more attention to efficient meeting coordination, thinking that a good product or idea is enough to attract investors. Fundraising involves a series of meetings, pitches, and follow-ups over 9-18 months. The more investors you engage with, the higher your chances of finding the right match. A dedicated meeting coordinator can significantly amplify your numbers game by maintaining momentum, consistently tracking, and following up with target investors until they get to the first intro meeting and ensuring that every opportunity runs smoothly.

Having a dedicated staff person assigned to setting up meetings, monitoring their outcomes, and documenting key information is essential to success. By recognizing the significance of meeting coordination and embracing the numbers game of fundraising, startups can increase their chances of securing the funding they need to thrive and grow. In a competitive landscape, every edge counts, and a skilled meeting coordinator can be the game-changer your startup needs.

By Yang (Kenny) Zhou, VP of Marketing, LSN

1. Book Your Travel to RESI Early

Life Science Nation (LSN) offers early bird rates for significant savings on your registration. Similarly, planning your trip early will save you money on travel and accommodation. In addition to cost savings, booking early ensures that you will be among the first attendees to access the RESI Partnering system.

2. Complete Your Profile in the RESI Partnering System and Make Sure You Are Ready to Message Investors

Once the RESI partnering login is delivered to your email, first, edit your company profile, fill in details about your company, and upload your marketing materials. Investors will review your profile before accepting meeting requests. An incomplete company profile page will most likely get a decline from the investor. When you have completed the profile page, READ the RESI Survey Guide and Writing Tips 101, to make sure you know how to best reach out to the right investors.  Ask your LSN BD REP for help if you need it.

3. Fill Your RESI Calendar

Now that you are ready to reach out to investors, use the filter function to find investors who fit your company stage, indication, and fundraising size, and then message the investor based on the instructions in the partnering tutorial. Scheduling partnering meetings is the top priority. Review the investor’s mandate in the partnering system and make sure you are reaching out to the right person. The in-person registration gives you 16 face-to-face meeting slots on the first day of RESI, followed by 48-hour non-stop virtual meetings if you are also registered for two-day virtual partnering.  Remember that most investors will not contact you proactively.

4. Skip the Line – Pick Your RESI Badge a Day Before the Conference and Check Out the Venue

You can pick up the RESI badge the day before the conference at the venue. Keep an eye out, Life Science Nation will announce early registration times prior to the event.  While you are picking up your badge, feel free to get a lay of the land and consider your best routes between sessions to maximize your time. LSN staff will be available at early pick-up to help with questions.

5. There Are No Breaks in Fundraising

Socializing over breakfast, lunch, and during the cocktail reception is an important part of the RESI experience. Capitalize on the opportunity to mingle with the who’s who in the industry and be prepared to exchange your contact information and expand your network. You never know who you may meet and what gains can be made.

6. Consider All Meeting Types

At a RESI conference, Life Science Nation hosts dedicated partnering tables, meeting space, and a virtual meeting platform. However, your meetings do not have to be limited to partnering tables or virtual meetings. If the investor turns down a meeting request due to timing issues or if there is a mishap with the initial meeting scheduled, you should follow up. You can always reschedule with them, even if the meeting is outside of RESI. And again, remember the importance of ad hoc meeting opportunities.

7. Plan to attend the Investor Panels, Workshops, and Innovator’s Pitch Challenge (IPC) Sessions

Investor panels will be dedicated to a specific sector in the life science industry. Early-stage investor panelists will discuss the latest industry trends and offer valuable insights to stand out and build relationships with potential partners. Take the time to seek out investor panels that are relevant to you. You can mingle with these panelists at the conference and hearing their presentations is a suitable place to begin a conversation and build a connection. The Workshops are designed to educate leaders of fundraising companies on crucial elements of the early-stage landscape, which can include patents, recruitment, intellectual property, insurance, fiscal management, and more. The Innovator’s Pitch Challenge (IPC) is an opportunity for early-stage life science and healthcare companies to gain additional exposure to conference attendees and pitch directly to a panel of judges, featuring active investors and industry experts. Applications for the IPC are considered on a rolling basis during each conference cycle. IPC participation includes a 3-day standard registration ticket, exhibition space to host a poster, and participation in an in-person, live Q&A session with investor judges.  Being part of the IPC session will give you additional exposure to conference attendees. LSN promotes finalists to the LSN and RESI community through email campaigns and social media. You do not have to be an IPC finalist to benefit from the IPC. Add IPC sessions to your RESI calendar that are of interest to you. You can hear from peers in space, hear the questions from investor judges, and gain takeaways from hearing pitches.

8. Talk to Everyone

RESI is a partnering conference and Life Science Nation strikes a balance of investors and early-stage entrepreneurs as attendees. Everyone wants to talk to investors, but do not forget the value of meeting other founders & CEOs, service providers, and industry experts. Understanding industry trends and obtaining professional service support is important. Feel free to stop by the LSN exhibit table. We can answer your questions regarding RESI or other LSN services, which can help improve your fundraising strategy.

9. Continue Your Conversation After RESI

You can access the partnering system for four weeks after the conference ends. Continue reaching out to investors to prompt new conversations. Also, do not forget to organize your lot – business cards exchanged at RESI and add these new contacts to your professional social network.

10. Fundraising Is a Numbers Game

LSN hosts five RESI conferences a year which provides thousands of partnering meetings for fundraising companies. It is important to have the full-year RESI schedule on your calendar and plan for them as part of your fundraising journey.  LSN also curates an investor and licensing partner database that tracks 10,000+ early-stage life science investors representing several thousand global firms across Angel, Corporate Venture Capital, Endowments/Foundations, Family Office/Private Wealth, Government Organizations, Hedge Funds, Large Pharma, Medtech Strategics, Private Equity, and Venture Capital. In the past decade, LSN has helped 400+ companies raise $5B+ through 45+ RESIs and the LSN investor and licensing partner database. Contact us at RESI@LifeScienceNation.com, the LSN Business Development team would like to help you achieve your goal.

By Caitlin Dolegowski, Marketing Manager, LSN

Life Science Nation (LSN) has been curating a database of global early-stage partners for life science startups, including therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health, for over 10 years and has the best offering in the industry. LSN maintains up-to-date profiles of capital investors and licensing partners, that are present, and future-looking. LSN profiles provide information on the investor and licensing partner’s interests in the sector, modality, indication, stage of development, and geographic preference, allowing startups to identify a target list of partners that are a fit for them. This is an invaluable tool for identifying your best-fit target list, based on the stage of development and product, which aids in launching and executing a successful campaign. The LSN Investor and Licensing Partner Database consists of 10 categories of over 3,000 firms with 10,000 contacts.

LSN’s database is available in two formats, as a standalone database, or integrated into Salesforce via the Salesforce AppExchange as the LSN Global Partnering Campaign (GPC) App. The GPC product is a Salesforce App that must be downloaded off the Salesforce AppExchange and installed into the company’s Salesforce account. This new product is available through Salesforce only. Using a CRM like Salesforce is a crucial tool for managing a fundraising campaign and tracking all your contacts with investors and licensing partners – ensuring no missed opportunities or dropped balls.

If you are not already a Salesforce client, subscribe to Salesforce (Professional license or above required), go to the Salesforce AppExchange, and find and install the Life Science Nation – Global Partnering Campaign (GPC) app. Once you have installed the app, you will need to subscribe to the Essential or Premium plan through this link and contact LSN at gpc@lifesciencenation.com for your onboarding with your BD representative. After the onboarding is complete, LSN staff will activate the GPC app, and you can start identifying your Global Target List of investors and licensing partners and begin your outreach!

LSN will offer several packages of the salesforce and LSN partnering database ranging from $300 and $500 dollars a month. These packages have real-time access to LSN partner data. $500 package also combined with RESI ticket discounts to the 5 international partnering events that LSN put on every year. Clients can choose a monthly fee structure with terms that are a minimum 6-month commitment or elect a one-time annual subscription fee.