By Michael Quigley, Director of Research, LSN

On Monday, August 18, LSN’s partnering system for our Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) Conference will go live. The purpose of the system is to help scientist-entrepreneurs and funding executives connect at the conference with potential investors.

Using the LSN’s partnering system is fairly straightforward. Registered scientists and executives enter information about their company’s research—including technology type, indication, and phase of development—and the system identifies registered investors who may be a fit. Then scientists and executives use the system to book meetings—as many as 16 per attendee—with those investors.

What are the interests of these investors? This conference is designed to attract investors looking to allocate to early stage companies. Exhibit 1 shows that that largest number of attending biotech investors are interested in technologies in the preclinical and phase I stages. Exhibit 2 shows that the largest number of attending medtech investors are interested in technologies that are in development and the clinical stage. Keep in mind these are just the confirmed investors are attending thus far, so expect these number to increase come September 17^th.

We are able to attract a large pool of early stage investors because we target ten categories of investors. Many of these investors are relatively new to the space; a lack of capital and a glut of compelling science have attracted newcomers in recent years.

By drilling down into the data set, we are able to determine the indications of interest for registered investors. Exhibit 3 shows the number of investors interested in a given indication.

Neoplasms/Cancer/Oncology leads the pack, garnering the most interest from investors. In what may be surprising to many, diseases of the nervous system comes in at number two. This level of interest in technologies for the central nervous system is in part the result of the many specialized foundations and venture philanthropy organizations that will attend. The interest in numerous indications is another reason why this conference is of tremendous value to fundraising entrepreneurs.

Connecting with investors is only half of the value that the RESI conference offers, though. Scientists and executives also have the opportunity to attend our panels and hear representatives from all ten investor categories have in-depth discussions on a variety of topics. We hope to see you there.

By Alejandro Zamorano, VP of Business Development, LSN

LSN Globally tracks technology platforms and has been able to yield some interesting data by classifying the different platform types and assessing the number of technologies within each classification. As you can see in Exhibit 1 LSN breaks down technology platforms into 26 categories as described below:

One of the most interesting findings was that number of large molecule discovery platforms is fairly abundant in the market place. This makes sense considering the explosion of biotech companies that have emerged over the last several years each claiming their unique mechanism to creating newest and hottest molecules. In addition, the bioinformatics also seem to be a strong platform which also is in line with the advances in computational power and the increasing sophistication of software data feeds that one is able to leverage. It would appear that these technology platforms in the space that have grown to be more abundant than others as a result of a higher level of investment in their respective class at an early stage.

The bottom of the chart is perhaps the most interesting where can see technology platforms that are relatively rare in the marketplace. Controlled release platforms for example appear to be relatively novel with only 14 companies reporting an in house platform. In addition in silicon modeling (of disease physiology or mechanism of action) is also a fairly unexplored field with vast opportunity. These areas could prove highly profitable for savvy investors able to identify leading technologies in a relatively unsaturated marketplace.

Knowing where you stand relative to the marketplace is a significant data point to understand both as entrepreneur positioning yourself or as an investor making a decision.

 

 

By Tom Crosby, RESI Conference Manager, LSN

In today’s fundraising environment, investors are inundated, sometimes seeing hundreds of executive summaries a month. Life science entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are all but obligated to run a calculated outbound sales and marketing campaign. But how do you set yourself apart from the crowd? This panel features successful life science entrepreneurs at various stages of their fundraising campaigns, telling their tales from the road.

Moderated by Rick Berenson, CEO of Thermalin Diabetes, the audience will hear from:

Fred Colen, President & CEO, BeneChill

Richard Gauthier, Head of Business Development, Microbiotix

Gabor Bethlendy, CCO & Founder, Parabase Genomics

Michael Tippie, CEO, TomegaVax

Panelists will share insights and best practices based on their experiences with raising capital in the new investor landscape. The goal of the discussion is to help emerging companies understand what it takes to fund a biotech or medical device company today. What are their best tips for interfacing with different types of investors? How did they structure their campaigns? What types of resources did they use along the way, and how have they found the correct investor in the past? Listen in as these executives share their best anecdotes from tackling the challenges of fundraising first-hand.