Hot Life Science Investor Mandate 2: Southeast VC with New Fund Seeks Preclinical Drugs & Prototyped Med Devices

January 28, 2016January 28, 2016 ~ Next Phase Admin ~ Leave a comment

A Venture Capital firm founded in 2000 and based in the US Southeast has $250 million in assets under management. The firm recently had a first close on its new fund, with up to 20% of the committed capital going to seed and early stage companies and projects. The firm typically invests between $2 and $4 million initially and $6M to $10M over the lifetime of the investment. Investments are generally in the form of milestone based equity tranches, however the firm also has experience in working with convertible notes. The firm is looking to make 4-6 allocation in the next 6-9 months throughout the United States, focused on companies in the Southeast.

The firm is currently looking for early stage companies in the Therapeutics, Diagnostics, Medical Technology and HealthCare IT spaces. In the Therapeutics space the firm is opportunistic in terms of subsector but is most interested in indications of Ophthalmology, Cardiovascular, Pulmonary, Anti-Infectives, Metabolic Disorders, Renal Diseases, Oncology, Immunology, Dermatology, and Orphan Diseases. For companies developing therapeutics the firm is looking for companies primarily with a lead product in preclinical trials although they will consider companies with products having recently entered Phase I. The firm also has generally stayed away from and is not currently seeking companies working in Wound Care. In the Medical Technology space the firm strongly prefers that the company have at least have an early prototype of their product and the firm is opportunistic in terms of medical device subsector. The firm looks for companies in the healthcare IT space to be revenue generating.

For Healthcare IT investments, the firm looks only at post-revenue companies; however, for drug and device deals, the firm only invests in pre-revenue companies, often working with spinouts directly from universities.

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

Hot Life Science Investor Mandate 3: Hedge Fund Seeks Commercial-Stage Medtech & Diagnostics in Oncology, Cardio and Surgery

January 28, 2016January 28, 2016 ~ Next Phase Admin ~ Leave a comment

An East Coast-based hedge fund is seeking to make 3-4 new equity investments into companies at the Series C stage or later, with commercial sales (at least Series C) in North America, or Europe with plans to enter the U.S. market. The firm is open to companies headquartered anywhere, but requires that products are approved and sold in Europe and/or the US. For companies with enterprise values of $20m – $200m, the firm commits $5m – $20m and is willing to lead rounds or join syndicates as long as the investment gives a meaningful stake in the company for the purposes of being able to add value.

The firm is interested in commercial-stage medical devices and diagnostics, and focuses on products that help fill a large unmet need and have a strong health economic value proposition. The firm prefers the technology to be commercial-stage or at least past FDA-approval and close to generating revenue. Within medical devices, the firm prefers devices with strong IP protection, generally with PMA or 510(k) approval. Within diagnostics, the firm is very opportunistic though their recent experience has focused on cancer genomic testing. The firm is open to all indication areas but historically has focused on cardiovascular, oncology and minimally invasive surgery.

The firm looks for seasoned management teams that have relevant experience in the sector the company is involved in. The firm likes to see this across the C-suite, particularly in the CEO and sales and marketing leadership. The firm takes a board seat when making investments and looks to add value through active involvement.

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

Hot Life Science Investor Mandate 4: Private Wealth Fund Seeks Digital Health, Informatics and Novel Therapeutic Opportunities

January 28, 2016January 28, 2016 ~ Next Phase Admin ~ Leave a comment

A California-based private investment firm funded by a single LP invests in seed and early-stage health technology companies. The typical investment size for seed investment ranges from $250K to $1M (usually in equity or convertible notes). For early-stage companies, the firm typically co-invests with other VC firms in Seed and Series A financing and the investment size will depend on the company’s financial needs. The firm is geographically agnostic but prefers start-ups to be based on the West Coast. The firm is actively seeking new investment opportunities.

The firm has a focus on the digital health and informatics space, but also invests in novel therapeutics. The firm is agnostic in terms of subsectors and indications, including orphan indications. The firm will only consider technologies with proof of concept. Historically, the firm has invested in therapeutics that address oncology, infectious diseases, cardiovascular, and metabolic disorders; drug delivery; orthopedic devices; genomics.

The firm takes a board seat in some cases, and prefers to syndicate on opportunities.

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

RESI@TMCx Take 2: LSN, JLABS and TMCx Team-up Again for Early Stage Investor Event

January 21, 2016June 26, 2018 ~ Next Phase Admin ~ Leave a comment

By Michael Quigley, VP of Market Research, LSN

On April 11th, Life Science Nation will be bringing together hundreds of senior level executives from investment firms, corporate strategics, and emerging biotech, medtech and digital health companies to the TMCx accelerator space at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. The recent RESI Conference in San Francisco had nearly 800 registrants and a full partnering floor. The event drew so much interest that registration was shut down a week prior to the event – and we received many regretful notes from those who wished they’d signed up sooner!

In addition to the firepower that LSN brings to the table, TMCx will be showcasing their second class of digital health and medical device technologies which will be announced later this month, and JLABS will be bringing senior executives from Johnson & Johnson and a number of entrepreneurs from the JLABS incubators.

RESI@TMCx will be a venue for entrepreneurs to meet with all 10 categories of investors LSN tracks including Family offices, Corporate Venture Funds, Angel Groups, Venture Philanthropy, Venture Capital and more. The RESI Partnering Forum will allow fundraising executives to identify and book up to 16 meetings with those diverse life science investors who fit their company’s technology sector and stage of development. Through an expansive series of investor panels, RESI @ TMCx will present current topics covering investment mandates and procedures for identifying and qualifying candidates. Additionally, RESI’s workshops will provide more in-depth advice on every aspect of the fundraising process.

RESI@JPM Innovation Challenge – Winners Announced

January 21, 2016June 26, 2018 ~ Next Phase Admin ~ Leave a comment

By Nono Hu, Director of Marketing, LSN

Last week, LSN’s Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) Conference brought together approximately 350 early stage investors and 300 biotech, medtech and healthcare IT entrepreneurs, our largest crowd to date. The RESI Innovation Challenge received a record number of applicants last fall. The 30 most innovative applicants were hand selected by Life Science Nation’s internal scientific review board and presented their technologies in an exhibition-style format throughout the full-day conference. Here are the top 3 winners!

First Prize Winner: ClearSight

ClearSight LLC is commercializing a novel intraocular lens (IOL), the ClearSight IOL, designed to prevent clouding of the lens known as posterior capsular opacification (PCO). PCO is the most frequent surgical complications from cataract surgery, occurring in 25% of patients and costing the U.S. healthcare system $350 million/year. Animal data demonstrates that the ClearSight IOL reduces PCO by 100% in a rabbit model, due to the patent-protected ClearSight IOL design and the addition of a novel microscopic surface texture to prevent cell migration that leads to clouding of the lens. IOLs represent a $1.1 billion U.S. market and $3.7 billion global market.

George Ayd, Assistant Vice President, MedMarc; Shravanthi Reddy, COO, ClearSight

Second Prize Winner: Eve Medical

Eve Medical is a Toronto-based medical device company dedicated to improving women’s health. Eve’s core product HerSwab™ makes it easy for women to collect their own samples at home or in clinic to test for common infections that cause cervical cancer, pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility. This saves time, provides privacy and minimizes invasiveness. By reduce barriers to screening, and improving compliance, Eve Medical and HerSwab™ can empower under-served women, improve the reach of existing programs, increase test volumes, and reduce costs for healthcare systems.

Michael Quigley, VP of Market Research, LSN; Jessica Ching, CEO, Eve Medical; Dennis Ford, CEO, LSN

Third Prize Winner: Briteseed

The surgeon’s lack of tactile feedback during minimally invasive laparoscopic and robotic surgery leads to difficulty in safely visualizing and manipulating blood vessels, ureters, and bile ducts. Briteseed combats this problem by building smart surgical tools using low-cost optical technology to non-invasively visualize both between and near the jaws of a surgical tool in real time. This combination hardware and software solution is flexible enough to be seamlessly integrated into a spectrum of surgical tools. These smart tools will provide imaging and diagnostic capabilities without interrupting surgical workflow, increasing user adoption. By raising the quality and decreasing overall cost of care, Briteseed provides value to surgeons and the hospital administrations that support them.

Michael Quigley, VP of Market Research, LSN; Mayank Vijay, Head of BD and Operations & Co-founder, Briteseed

RESI@TMCx: Innovators Are Invited To Apply

January 21, 2016June 26, 2018 ~ Next Phase Admin ~ Leave a comment

By Lucy Parkinson, Director of Research, LSN

Congratulations to Clearsight, Eve Medical, and Briteseed for their success in the RESI Innovation Challenge last week; at LSN, we hope that the success of these companies in RESI’s virtual fundraising challenge translates into real investor dollars!

If you’re interested in seeing your company’s name up there on the winner’s list, you can now apply to the RESI@TMCx Innovation Challenge for the conference on April 11, 2016. Successful applicants will be provided with a spot in the RESI Exhibitor Hall, and the challenge provides entrepreneurs with a way to engage with RESI’s audience of active life science investors throughout the event. All RESI attendees are provided with “RESI Cash” tokens that they can allocate to the entrepreneurs whose technologies they expect will be most successful. At the end of the day, the capital invested will be tallied up and the top 3 participants will be announced.

This exhibition-style, interaction-focused format was developed by LSN because we’ve found more traditional “pitch contests” to be of poor value for startups. If there are any active life science investors viewing a pitch session (and we’ve found that many investors just aren’t interested in this format), they don’t have a direct way to interact with the pitcher and offer their feedback. RESI therefore focuses on providing startups with the opportunity to meet investors face to face, both through one-on-one meetings and informal networking, and the RESI Innovation Challenge provides entrepreneurs with an eye-catching way to make those in-depth conversations happen.

Previous RESI Innovation Challenge winners include:

Clearsight (Aurora, CO)

Rna Diagnostics (Toronto, ON)

Redox (Madison, WI)

Empiriko (Newton, MA)

ORIG3N (Boston, MA)

Kineta (Seattle, WA)

If you’re developing a cutting-edge biotech or medtech product, apply to the RESI Innovation Challenge to put your technology into the spotlight. We’ll look forward to seeing you at RESI@TMCx.

Hot Life Science Investor Mandate 1: Quebec VC Seeks Pre-Revenue Medtech, Diagnostics & Healthcare IT

January 21, 2016January 21, 2016 ~ Next Phase Admin ~ Leave a comment

A venture capital fund created in 2013 and based in Canada with connections to the European market is looking for companies located in Canada and the United States. The firm makes equity investments in progressive stages, ranging between 500k – $5m and typically leads the round – although the firm is open to co-investing. The firm is interested in pre-revenue companies within one year of generating revenue, all the way up to expansion stage.

The firm is interested in anything with a technology aspect – including medical devices, diagnostics, healthcare IT, industrial & telecom. The firm is not interested in drug discovery and is open to all indication areas. The firm will consider regulatory devices and looks for technologies with a strong competitive advantage.

The firm looks for companies led by strong, experienced and capable teams as the firm makes minority stake investments. The firm looks for management teams who understand the regulatory and competitive landscape and are familiar with their chosen subsector and indication area. Although the firm looks for companies backed by strong technology, the firm puts more emphasis on management team capabilities and will not invest in a company unless this requirement is met. The firm takes a board seat on all investments.

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