By Cole Bunn, Senior Research Analyst, LSN
The world of early stage biotech/medtech investment is far less than straightforward, and entrepreneurs who have been through the arduous, frustrating process of raising money will second that. Adding to this challenge, other than a personal network, fundraising CEOs have limited resources for learning which investors are in their universe and how to get in touch with them – LSN was founded to address this exact problem.
When raising a seed or series A financing, most people’s mind goes straight to a few brand name VCs and angel groups in their backyard, and mistakenly think this is going to get the job done. The reality is that fundraising is a numbers game, and there are thousands of groups across the world that are not well known and don’t necessarily fall into one of these investor buckets, but may be a great fit for your venture. The problem is that you have no efficient way of identifying who these groups are, if they are a fit and most importantly, a way to reach them.
Over the past 5 years, the LSN research team of Research Analysts has been dedicated to uncovering these groups, building a relationship with the associates and partners of the firm and capturing critical data points on their interests and investment criteria, and most importantly, building out a custom profile that details the firm’s specific interests, how they structure their investments and how much money they put into companies. In the LSN Investor Platform, we have amassed just over 5,000 profiles of investment firms (over 2,000 of which are actively investing), across the globe including angel groups, venture capital firms, corporate VCs, big pharma and other corporate strategics, family offices, venture philanthropy groups, endowments/foundations, hedge funds, private equity firms, government organizations and institutional alternative investors who are investing in the early stage life science space. The functionality of the LSN investor platform allows you to easily apply filters to generate a list of these firms who are a fit for your specific company and financing, which usually leaves about 300-400 firms as initial targets to begin parsing.
The personal connection between the LSN research team and an investment firm allows LSN to capture and utilize a unique flow of information and provides an unmatched tool for fundraising CEOs to understand the players in their space, their nuanced preferences/strategies and a way to begin a dialogue with them. No other service or data provider comes close to the focused, high touch, relationship-oriented nature of data collection and maintenance. It’s clear that no CEO or startup management team would possibly be able to identify 300-400 relevant investor targets, much less capture a detailed understanding of their mandate and a way to contact them, regardless of the amount of time they have to research investors. Additionally, the LSN Investor Platform includes an export function that provides startup CEOs with data that can be imported into a CRM system to manage outreach and track the progress of every investor relationship.
The LSN Investor Platform serves as the core of everything LSN does. The RESI Conference, an early-stage investment/partnering event that allows entrepreneurs to meet face-to-face with up to 16 relevant investors in one day, is powered by the LSN Investor Platform. The RESI conference allows entrepreneurs to meet these investors in person and begin to develop a personal relationship with them. Subscribers of the LSN Investor Platform have a powerful tool that allows them dig into the investors profile prior to the meeting to understand the investor’s interests and preferences, greatly increasing the quality of an intro discussion and making the best use of their facetime with the investor. Using the LSN Investor Platform and RESI conference in parallel creates a tremendous value for any fundraising CEO in the early stage life science space who is looking to find relevant investors, understand their mandate and begin a dialogue in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
