Life Science Nation invites all eligible early stage life science companies to apply to Innovation Challenge to showcase their technologies.
Companies from all categories of life science are encouraged to apply to Innovation Challenge for RESI Healthtech Week. Eligible companies can apply to Day 1, the First Coast Innovator’s Gathering, Day 2 RESI Global Partnering or both. Applicants will have the opportunity for excellent visibility among investors and strategic partners.
For the first time this fall, Life Science Nation will have two days of Innovation Challenge competition as part of the RESI Healthtech Week (September 5-7, 2018). The Innovation Challenge offers selected companies the chance to gain more visibility from the early-stage investors in attendance.
Day 2 Redefining Early Stage Investments
All early-stage life science companies are eligible to apply. Finalists will be highlighted in multiple outlets:
Your country and technology highlighted at the conference
All conference attendees will have the chance to “invest” RESI Cash in their favorite technologies
LSN Newsletter Announcement to a readership of 20,000+
Featured on RESI Conference website Featured in the printed and online program guide
Winners will be announced during the cocktail reception
It is FREE to apply, click here.
Day 1, First Coast Innovation Challenge
All early-stage life science companies from DC through Boston are eligible to apply. Applicants will be highlighted in multiple outlets:
10 finalists will be selected to pitch to a panel of investors
Applicants present a poster of their technology
All featured in the printed and online program guide
Attendees have access to partnering platform
Attendees have access to early-stage investor panels
Attendance on Day 1 for companies is $300, click here.
9 Hamilton Place, Suite 2B, Boston, MA 02108 +1 617-600-0668 | resi@lifesciencenation.com
The first half of 2018 has brought to the surface many debated topics not only for the United States but also the world—universal healthcare, innovation, and leadership. This year, headlines continue to arise almost daily detailing reforms to the healthcare system, while other countries continue to make advances in their universal healthcare programs. One of the biggest corporations in the world, Amazon, is accelerating their involvement in the healthcare industry with big-name partnerships, leadership appointments, and strategic acquisitions. They’ve also recently purchased office space in Boston, MA, one of the biggest life science hubs in the world—where Life Science Nation (LSN) began its focus on helping early-stage life science companies seeking capital.
The urgency in healthcare.
Life Science Nation was founded with the intention to move life science innovation forward for a real impact on the global development of healthcare, which has only become more urgent. Throughout LSN’s experience supporting life science companies, lack of access to capital is holding back the advancement of many life science companies. LSN dedicates itself to helping early-stage companies navigate the funding ‘Valley of Death’, which is why LSN created a new three-day event called RESI Healthtech Week. Today, LSN will discuss the benefit of attending Day 1, the First Coast Innovator’s Gathering, for tech hubs across the northeast with technologies or companies looking to change the future of healthcare.
What is the First Coast?
The First Coast, as LSN has deemed it, is the location identified as the premier hub for life science innovation, similar to how Silicon Valley is viewed as the premier (and original) tech hub. Over the years the First, Second, and Third Coast have been identified as hubs across the country made up of different states including Houston and New York City. All have been vying to be central locations for massive innovation in the life sciences. However, Life Science Nation takes the First Coast to include the entire northeast corridor, from DC to MA, including all the premier universities and research institutions in the region.
RESI Healthtech Week’s new First Coast Innovator’s Gathering is focused on expanding the traditional Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) Conference to include more nascent technologies and companies in the life science space. By bringing together innovators from the entire northeast corridor with global investors and strategic partners, LSN promotes a one-of-a-kind opportunity for the advancement of healthcare innovation.
Who are the best-fit attendees?
Day 1 will feature the next generation of healthcare innovation and their earliest stage companies from the northeast region: DC, MD, PA, NJ, NY, RI, CT, and MA—now known as First Coast, who are invited to participate in a day of partnering and networking.
Qualifying First Coast Day 1 registrants are the northeast corridor incubators, accelerators, tech transfer offices, university translation initiatives, hospitals, research labs and their constituents as well as the investors and partners that seek them.
Ideal candidates include those seeing funding anywhere from $15k to $2M from grants, seed, and angel funding.
Affordability
LSN created an affordable registration price that will facilitate more startups attending the three-day event. Tickets start at only $500 for tech hubs (includes two tickets) and $300 for each additional constituent member. The pricing structure and benefits are presented in the chart below.
Showcase Your Technologies.
The conference will include ample opportunities for you to represent and showcase your technologies to global investors and strategic partners. This includes exhibiting, online features and placements, as well as a competition for a spot to pitch investors during the First Coast Innovation Challenge.
The exhibit hall has limited space for one exhibit table per tech hub (as space allows). Each organization can have up to 5 poster boards for their table to showcase their tech hub members and constituents.
In addition, all tech hubs will be featured in the RESI Healthtech Week Program Guide. Their technologies represented by their constituents and tech hub members will be featured on the newsletter and website with a datasheet.
All qualifying First Coast registrants are eligible to apply for the First Coast Innovation Challenge where the top 5 finalists will give 10-minute pitches to an elite panel of investor judges from 3:00-5:00 during the First Coast Innovator’s Gathering. This will be a rewarding opportunity to pitch your technologies and receive valuable feedback.
Access to global investors.
LSN’s network of early-stage global investors will be able to see all the key players in one place and learn about the innovative technologies coming out of the First Coast.
A day of partnering and networking.
Day 1 of the RESI Healthtech Week will feature the First Coast Innovator’s Gathering; partnering and networking opportunities, just like it’s traditional RESI.
The RESI Partnering Platform helps you find nontraditional partners from the newest sources of capital, including family offices, foundations, academic institutions, and philanthropic organizations that will be a fit for your technology and stage of development. Attendees can schedule up to 16 meetings using the Partnering Platform. It will open one month before the conference, so companies, global investors, and strategic partners can request and book meetings in advance. Some key highlights of the Partnering Platform include:
Review profiles of other RESI Conference participants.
Schedule one-on-one and/or group meetings.
Build your customized RESI Conference schedule, from panels to presentations to partnering meetings.
The system will be available one month before and one month after the conference for ease of use.
Launches August 6th for RESI Healthtech Week (September 5-6th) partnering.
In addition to the Partnering Platform, attendees can also participate in ad hoc meetings at exhibit tables and poster boards throughout the day.
Venue Information
The First Coast Innovator’s Gathering will take place at the Boston Marriott Copley Place, 110 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02116, on September 5th, 2018 followed by the traditional Redefining Early Stage Investments Conference on September 6th, and the Entrepreneur’s Academy Workshop Series on September 7th.
Registration starts at 7 AM. Exhibit halls and meetings are available from 8 AM to 5 PM.
In conclusion…
Life Science Nation will continue to connect early-stage companies with global investors and strategic partners through RESI Conferences and first-in-class data platforms, in the hope that downstream we can help bring treatments to the patients that need them. As the landscape for healthcare and healthcare policy changes, so too will LSN in order to meet the needs of the early-stage players.
It can be challenging to perfect your fundraising strategy in order to accelerate your work. As a past marketing and business development focused entrepreneur I’ve been exposed to the fundraising environment outside of the life science and healthcare industry. It may be counter-intuitive, but fundraising processes (as well as constructing partnerships) are similar across different industries except for their smaller nuances. Scientist-entrepreneurs and fundraising CEOs need to know that a clear value proposition made up of your tagline, executive summary and more will be the differentiating factor in progressing your discussions with investors past the initial conversation. The ones who can share their value proposition with the most clarity, are the ones investors will move forward with for fundraising opportunities. Here are some fundamentals everyone needs to know.
Entrepreneurs know it takes a lot of hard work, dedication, and funds to make a company successful. If you’re new to the fundraising sphere within the life science and healthcare industry, you may be unsure what to prioritize and where to start. Life Science Nation (LSN) is a company focused on providing resources and conferences focused on initiating new opportunities for strategic partnerships and fundraising activities. LSN makes it as straightforward and simple as possible so you can maximize your success. That means having a solid understanding of the fundraising process and knowing what steps to take in order to execute a deal or partnership.
Define Your Value Proposition
At the foundation, it’s imperative to understand your own branding and communicate it clearly to your constituents. If you don’t understand your product, services, and goals, they won’t either. This includes clearly defining your addressable market and growth potential to global investors and strategic partners. Otherwise, it will be an upward battle to convince them to support you as a partner or financially. If you then consider that it takes 6-18 months to fundraise (always longer than hoped or expected), clarity for your mission becomes crucial to speeding up the fundraising or partnership process.
LSN wants companies to be ready for the initial conversations so they can get to the next phase sooner. The next conversations are where you work through the deals and partnerships, and not stumbling over the value proposition for too long. Know your product set, it’s development stage, and how it fits into investors mandates and requirements. Make sure you have these to share verbally as well as through marketing materials: an executive summary, pitch deck, etc.
Create and Curate an Investor Database
Now that you’ve defined your company, goals, and growth potential, it’s time to create a target list of investors or strategic partners. This can be a daunting task and normally starts by networking with current, established relationships. This is a great starting point to expand your network, and will usually provide hot leads for best matches. LSN expands upon this by opening up companies and investors to their network of constituents. It is a real advantage, where other industries have to rely solely on their personal connections.
Match Your Company Product Set with Investor Mandates
If you can match you and your company with the right fit people for you, then it’s a lot easier to start having those initial conversations that lead up to deals and strategic partnerships. Since this is a challenge, LSN chose to specialize and develop its company to connect products, services, and capital to support individual efforts to target an investor audience and network with potential matches.
LSN created a two-sided platform: ‘For Company’ side and a ‘For Investors’ side. It’s intuitive search functions make it easy to use for sourcing information for deals and partnerships. At its core, it saves potential strategic partners, investors, and fundraising CEOs time on research, so they can instead focus on the important tasks of engaging in conversations that match their interests–filling the pipeline for new opportunities which in turn accelerate businesses, technology, and deals.
The LSN Company Platform (for investors and strategic partners) is the premier life science company database, covering over 50,000 companies from around the world, with a particular focus on the earliest stage companies who have been missed by traditional data providers.
The LSN Investor Platform (for companies) includes present and future-looking investor data collected and curated by LSN’s Investor Research team through ongoing dialogue with LSN’s 5,000 life science investors from around the world. The team updates the database to only include active investors who are currently allocating funds to projects and companies that fit their mandate requirements.
The Investor Platform:
Includes investors from 10 categories: Angels, Corporate Venture Capital, Endowments/Foundations, Family Offices, Government Organizations, Hedge Funds, Institutional Alternative Investor, Large Pharma/Biotech, PE, and Venture Captial.
Track goals and requirements over the next year for investors
Facilitates targeted deal flow so investors are a fit for you
The LSN Platforms include:
Portal with filters to identify potential leads for you: location, investor types, product sets, investment interest section, phases, etc.
LSN’s Investor Platform includes mandates, differentiating them from other databases
By mentioning your connection to LSN, it facilitates your connections and provides credibility
After completing your target list, you’ll realize warm introductions mean a lot in propelling the conversations forward, past the initial talks. That’s why Life Science Nation created the Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) conference. LSN knew entrepreneurs and fundraising CEO’s needed a central location with access to potential global investors and strategic partners. With limited time and much to do as a startup, they need tools and resources to work efficiently. While networking is crucial to any company’s success in sourcing new opportunities, RESI is the best within the life science industry in providing such a venue.
The Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) Conference is an ongoing conference series that provides an international venue for early-stage life science companies to connect with global investors and strategic partners for new opportunities, all in one place. This includes interests across Biotech, Medtech, Diagnostics and Digital Health in order to create new relationships in these areas as well as the potential to secure funding. RESI is unique and the leading conference in partnerships due to its global network presence, unmatched by other conferences in the healthcare industry. It provides constituents with the best venue for partnering and networking.
The RESI Conference:
Occurs 5x per year
Includes ad hoc meeting opportunities
Partnering Forum for up to 16 scheduled meetings
Panels by investors, sponsors, partners discussing all things healthcare and fundraising
LSN 5,000 Investor network is always invited to attend
Now that you’ve learned the fundamentals for your fundraising strategies and partnership opportunities, you can start defining your value proposition, creating a target audience, and network with the right people.
Life Science Nation Connects Products, Services, and Capital
Our corporate structure is made up of a few different business models with the same mission to accelerate therapeutics, biotech, medtech, diagnostics, and digital health within the healthcare industry. LSN started out developing a database of investors because the company felt there was not enough accessibility for investors to discover scientists-entrepreneurs and fundraising CEOs within the life sciences. Further down the line, LSN created a conference series to further accelerate and support initial conversations between these groups so progress could be made in leaps and bounds. As we continue to develop in our current political environment, it has become more important than ever to continue supporting and facilitating advances in healthcare.
Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) and Independent Venture Capital are two totally separate beasts with different tactics and strategies – especially regarding early stage investments. Learn from the experts in Corporate Venture Capital why there is a growing interest in early stage life science. As CVC funds continue to grow, it is increasingly important for entrepreneurs to understand these entities as a viable source of potential investment.
The RESI Conference session will feature representatives from some major players in the industry. This is a must attend, one-of-a-kind panel that will provide tremendous insight for the scientist entrepreneur.
Moderated by Vikas Goyal of SR One, the audience will hear from:
Panelists will answer the question regarding independent VCs being friend or foe, and how they are different than independent venture capital. The session will also focus on the individual investment preferences of each representative on the panel. What does their portfolio look like today? What is the best way for early stage entrepreneurs to get on their radar screens?
The firm is focused on therapeutics companies and does not invest in medical devices, diagnostics, or digital health. The firm is open to considering assets of very early stages, even those as early as lead optimization phase. The firm considers various modalities, including antibodies, small molecules, and cell therapy. Currently, the firm is not interested in gene therapy. Indication-wise, the firm is most interested in oncology and autoimmune diseases but has recently looked at fibrotic diseases and certain rare diseases as well.
The firm is opportunistic across all subsectors of healthcare. Within MedTech, the firm is most interested in medical devices, artificial intelligence, robotics, and mobile health. The firm is seeking post-prototype innovations that are FDA cleared or are close to receiving clearance. Within therapeutics, the firm is interested in therapeutics for large disease markets such as oncology, neurology, and metabolic diseases. The firm is open to all modalities with a special interest in immunotherapy and cell therapy.
A strategic investment firm of a large global pharmaceutical makes investments ranging from $5 million to $30 million, acting either as a sole investor or within a syndicate. The firm is open to considering therapeutic opportunities globally, but only if the company is pursuing a market opportunity in the USA and is in dialogue with the US FDA.
The firm is currently looking for new investment opportunities in enterprise software, medical devices, and the healthcare IT space. The firm will invest in 510k devices and healthcare IT companies, and it is very opportunistic in terms of indications. In the past, the firm was active in medical device companies developing dental devices, endovascular innovation devices, and women’s health devices.
A venture capital firm founded in 2005 has multiple offices throughout Asia, New York, and San Diego. The firm has closed its fifth fund in 2017 and is currently raising a sixth fund, which the firm is targeting to be the largest fund to date. The firm continues to actively seek investment opportunities across a […]