Hot Mandate: China-Based VC Interested in Global Opportunities with China Angle

23 Mar

Founded in 2017, a venture capital firm is headquartered in Shanghai and has an office in San Francisco, managing a venture capital fund in RMB with a total of 500 MM RMB (~70MM USD). The firm is currently focusing on early-stage (from angel to series B) investments, with each investment ranging from 3MM RMB (400,000 USD) to 5MM RMB (700,000 USD). The management team of the firm has decades of experience in both the U.S. and China and is open to investing globally.

The firm has a general interest in early-stage life science technology assets, especially therapeutics and medical devices. The fund is also interested to diagnostics and healthcare IT, with the proven record of investing in the hospital AI service platform.

The firm prefers companies with China angle, especially companies who are willing to register an entity/branch/joint venture in China.

If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email 4dmeetsai@lifesciencenation.com.

 

Keep the Conversations Going

18 Mar

By Rory McCann, Marketing Manager & Conference Producer, LSN

Healthtech Partnering Week is off to the races! Digital RESI March has wrapped up with 1,000+ meetings in 3 days and leads into a triple-threat partnering experience consisting of 4D Meets AI, Access China Spring Forum (free), and Longevity, Health & Innovation taking place consecutively March 18-19.

It’s not too late to sign up and get involved in any of these three events! To learn more, visit the Healthtech Partnering Week website. Each conference offers unique opportunities suited for specific technology assets and market solutions. We hope you’ll join us and round out your RESI partnering with the full Healthtech Partnering Week experience!





Announcing the Digital RESI March Innovator’s Pitch Challenge (IPC) Winners

18 Mar

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

claireWe have successfully finished off our 3-Day Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) March Conference. As with our previous events, we had the pleasure of featuring over 30 innovative startup companies across therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health sectors through the Innovator’s Pitch Challenge (IPC).

I am very excited to announce to Top 3 winners of this IPC. Conference attendees were able to vote for their favorite companies based on the information on their dedicated page on the Digital RESI March Live Agenda, featuring a short pitch video, slide deck, executive summary, and other materials available for conference attendees to view. This Top 3 win is indicative of not only their innovative technology, but also their ability to present this in a cogent manner. The Top 3 winners will receive free tickets to future RESI conferences to help with their fundraising efforts.

The RESI Team would like to thank every IPC company for their hard work in preparing for these virtual presentations. We hope to continue the IPC as a unique platform for innovators and investors to connect, and we look forward to meeting and highlighting other innovative companies at future conferences, like Digital RESI, June 8-10.

Please check out the Top 3 Winners below!

First Place: Thrive Bioscience

Thrive is commercializing a family of instruments and software that provide previously unavailable data, imaging, analytics, and automation for cell culture, stem cell culture, and tissue culture for use in biomedical research and cell therapeutics. Thrive has recently started selling the first two instruments in the family, the CellAssist and the CellAssist 50. Both collect 1,000’s of images of live cells in culture, analyzes them, provides guidance and builds a significant database. The CellAssist 50 enables researchers to automatically and remotely image 50 plates of cells on an ongoing basis, generating large amounts of data for live cell biology. Sites include Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Center for Genomic Medicine (Massachusetts General Hospital), Stanford Stem Cell Core, University of Texas Medical Branch, as well as large and small pharma/biotech companies.

Second Place: modality.ai

Modality addresses the urgent need for objective and accurate biomarkers in the development of therapies for neurological and psychiatric disorders (such as autism, Parkinson’s, depression, etc.) Modality uses multimodal conversational AI extracting speech and facial measures to quantify the progression of such disorders in drug trials remotely – leading to faster completion, lowering failure rates, and increasing the ROI of drug development. In another market, Modality is used for Remote Patient Monitoring providing accurate, repeated metrics about the disease state of a physician’s patient base.

Third Place: SleepSpace

Proactive Life Inc (DBA SleepSpace) is a NYC based company using a universal experience — sleeping — to optimize health and wellness.
A few bullet points below:

  • $73B annual spending on sleep aids (1 in 3 American’s have a sleep disorder)
  • SleepSpace™ goes beyond tracking to actually help people sleep better
  • $3.4M booked revenues from NIH grants | $2.5M awarded in July 2020
  • D2C freemium model: 2,000+ paid subscribers (78% at $29.99 annually)
  • B2B paid contracts with Google & LIFX to build smart light sleep journeys
  • FDA Approval underway to change how doctors do remote patient care
  • Barriers to entry include AI algorithms and 4 utility patents (2 granted)
  • All-star team of sleep scientists, technologists, and exited entrepreneurs
  • $1M prior Angel round with Bascom Ventures, Lightspeed, Quake & UpVentures
  • Opening $2M Seed round with 87% allocated to scale proven acquisition funnel

Digital RESI March – A Most Impressive 3 Days

18 Mar

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

Digital RESI March wrapped up yesterday after three days with 1,000+ face-to-face digital meetings. The who’s-who in early-stage global partnering came together virtually to source elite assets in life science and healthcare. The impressive lineup of global partners proves life science investing is thriving during the pandemic. With such an influx of promising technology and capital, we may truly be experiencing the golden age of life science. The message from the international partners who are seeking the fundraising executives to the scientist-entrepreneurs was clear, the game is afoot and opportunities for partnering abound!

The panels were diverse, informative and insightful with the current state of the state of early-stage global partnering. We look forward to sharing these insights with our audience!

If you missed this RESI, don’t worry. Digital RESI returns June 8-10 with an all-new lineup of investor panels, educational workshops, and of course, premier partnering with investors and strategic partners who are a fit for your product and stage of development.

If you’re an early-stage fundraising executive, you don’t want to miss out on the needle-moving conversations that take place at RESI. Our partnering platform assists founders to find investors and strategic partners that are a fit for their unique needs, and our many resources help entrepreneurs stand out with branding and messaging that showcase their team and technology.

Digital RESI June participants can sign up at the super early bird rate until April 9. Save $100 on registration and get partnering!

Hot Mandate: Investment Arm of Hospital System Interested In Novel Applications in Digital Health

15 Mar

A investment arm of a non-profit hospital system manages a $15M fund and usually writes checks in the $1 million range. The firm will participate mostly in Series A and B rounds but is open to considering earlier stage, non-revenue generating companies with highly disruptive technologies. Currently, the firm is focused only on USA-based investment opportunities.

The firm is seeking digital health companies with technologies that can provide significant value to their hospital system. The firm is most interested in those that address their key organization priorities, which include (1) virtualization of care (i.e. telehealth), (2) operational efficiency, (3) patient and clinician experience of care. The organization is also interested in novel applications of technologies such as AI that may not impact healthcare in the short term, but may have disruptive potentials in the future. The organization is not interested in therapeutics, medical devices, or diagnostics companies.

The firm is looking to work with companies with experienced management teams. The firm does not act as a lead investor and only seeks to co-invest.

If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email 4dmeetsai@lifesciencenation.com.

Hot Mandate: China-Based VC Strongly Interested In Growth-Stage Healthcare IT and AI & Big Data Applications in Life Sciences

15 Mar

Founded in 2012 and based in Shenzhen, China, a venture capital backed by 79 local corporations manages 150 million CNY fund (~21 million in USD). The firm typically takes exit in 5 to 7 years after investing. While the allocation size can largely vary, the firm mainly focuses on growth-stage companies that already have clinical data or got FDA/CFDA approved.

The firm has strong interests in novel diagnostics technologies, especially IVD, and they pay close attention to healthcare IT, and AI & big data applications in life science. The third hot spot for the frim is medical devices, especially surgical robots. The novel service platform with the technologies of cell or gene area. The firm has a strong focus on companies that can provide solutions on cardiovascular disease, oncology, orthopedics, central nervous system disorders, and Endocrine system disorders.

The firm invests globally but prefers companies with a Chinese angle and the series entrepreneurs.

If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email 4dmeetsai@lifesciencenation.com.

Hot Mandate: Corporate Venture Capital Invests in Customer-Centered Health Strategies, Including AI Applications in Healthcare

15 Mar

A venture capital arm of a multination corporation has several offices in the USA including Boston, MA and Menlo Park, CA. The firm has approximately $2B AUM and has invested $200M in 40 companies in 2016. The investment size varies, depending on the opportunity. The firm is actively seeking new investment opportunities in the life sciences and will look globally.

The firm invests in customer-centered health strategies, which may include mobile health IT, digital health, and artificial intelligence applied to healthcare. The firm is also interested in therapeutics, particularly synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and gene therapy. The firm is opportunistic in terms of stage of development.

The firm primarily invests in life science companies with a strong and experienced management team. The firm usually takes a board seat.

If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email 4dmeetsai@lifesciencenation.com.