By Lucy Parkinson, VP of Investor Research, LSN
There’s a common perception that if you’re raising money to finance a life science startup, your best bet is to fundraise from local investors, such as a nearby angel group or a regionally focused VC. While these groups are valuable in supporting innovation, it’s vital to look globally for potential investors for your company, because global investors are increasingly looking for you.
Life Science Nation’s core mission is to bring early stage startups together with early stage investors, strategic players and channel partners, and we are finding increasing traction for these efforts at a global level. LSN’s Investor Research team speaks to investors all over the world about what areas of life science they are focused on investing in and what criteria they have, including geographic restrictions. Of the investors from whom LSN has gathered active mandates, nearly 40% have no geographic restrictions at all; many more invest across continents, such as cross-border investors who focus on both Asia and North America.
It’s no coincidence that LSN is increasingly speaking to these groups; to cite one specific cross-border situation, in 2017 and 2018 investors from China accelerated their allocations to US-based biotech companies, according to Pitchbook.
To serve this increasingly international community, LSN held our first RESI Europe event in March, bringing together hundreds of investors and startups – not just from across Europe, but also from the USA, Asia and beyond. In November, we will be hosting our first RESI Asia events. As LSN’s global ecosystem becomes richer due to these efforts, an increasing number of international investors are coming to all of our RESI partnering events, including the upcoming RESI Philadelphia. This means that startups attending RESI can tap into this vast pool of international capital that’s looking for novel healthcare technologies, and can make global connections face to face in RESI Partnering.
