Biomedicine: Riding and Surviving the Biotech Funding Roller-Coaster

Biotech venture capital interest has been running hot and cold in the last few years, much to the discomfort of entrepreneurs and early stage investors in the sector trying to manage the hard slog through new venture rounds.

After proceeding from strength to strength through 2007, national biotech funding nose-dived in 2008, and is only now bouncing back from 2009 lows. 2010 has seen modest and wobbly increases in interest in the sector, with Thompson Financial reporting $3.7 billion going into 460 deals. Even so, 4Q10 Biotechnology investing declined 24% in dollars and fell 15% in the number of deals from the third quarter with $685 million going into 94 rounds. Given this volatility, what’s a biotech CEO or early stage investor to do, given the huge capital requirements of the sector to deliver a product?

The March 15th EntreTech Forum panel brings together local experts on the subject who have lived through the ups and downs of the recent funding environment. The panel will be focused on providing the audience with their experiences and perspectives on how biotech leaders can thrive (or at least survive!) in the present and near future.

Moderator:

Hemmie Chang - Partner - Foley Hoag

Panelists:
Philip Thomas – CEO – LaserHeart and Owner – Boston Business Group
Dr. William Li, M.D. – President and Medical Director – The Angiogenesis Foundation
Eric Evans – Angel Investor with Launchpad Venture Group and Mass Medical Angels – Former CEO Targeted Cell Therapies

Meeting Organizers:
Andrew Fairbairn – Managing Principal – Fairbairn Ventures
Larry Grumer – Managing Director – TAA Corp.

Moderator Bio:

Hemmie Chang – Partner, Foley Hoag

Hemmie Chang is a partner in the firm’s Business and Intellectual Property Departments where she focuses her efforts on the Life Sciences and in addition, Energy Technology & Renewables practices. She has over two decades of experience supporting companies through their entire life cycle: raising angel and venture capital funding, advising on collaboration and licensing transactions, going public or being sold, including acquisition and disposition of complex assets in bankruptcy. She works with both established and emerging companies, and has served as faculty at the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council and Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education.

Hemmie earned her B.A from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs, and J.D from Harvard Law School. She is admitted to the bar in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Panel Bios:

Dr. William W. Li, M.D. – President and Medical Director – The Angiogenesis Foundation
www.angio.org

William W. Li is President, Medical Director, and Co-founder of the Angiogenesis Foundation. Will trained in the lab of Dr. Judah Folkman, pioneer of the angiogenesis field, and has been actively engaged in angiogenesis research and clinical development for 22 years.

Under Will’s leadership, the Foundation has developed a unique social enterprise model based on international collaborations with leading medical academic centers, biopharmaceutical companies, and government agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, and the Food and Drug Administration. As President, Will has testified and presented before congressional and other government panels on the impact of angiogenesis in healthcare, and lectures widely on angiogenesis-related topics in front of clinical, government, and industry audiences. He is involved in national and international efforts to advance the applications of angiogenesis-based therapeutics across diverse medical fields, including oncology/hematology, cardiology, ophthalmology, vascular surgery, dermatology, and wound care.

Will received his A.B. with honors from Harvard College, and his M.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pennsylvania. He completed his internship, residency, and fellowship training in General Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Will has held appointments on the clinical faculties of Harvard Medical School, Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. He is an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Wound Care Specialists, and has served as advisor and consultant to leading global public and private companies. Will has been published in Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and other leading peer-reviewed medical journals.

Phillip Thomas – CEO – LaserHeart; and Founder/CEO – Boston Business Group
www.bostonbusinessgroup.com

As CEO of LaserHeart and Founder/CEO of the Boston Business Group, LLC, Phillip Thomas brings 25 years of business experience including 20 years as the CEO and Founder of several high tech firms. This experience as an entrepreneur and professional manager have fostered his deep understanding of the needs of small to mid-sized businesses.
His leadership, combined with hands-on involvement in business development, finance, marketing, and sales, have earned him and several companies he has led to such awards as one of the top 100 best managed companies in the state of California. As a savvy business partner, he understands the mission, strategy, and goals of the companies he leads which have included medical device firms, high tech manufacturing companies, software and security products, marine products, and others.

Having lived abroad and traveled throughout the world, Phillip is a high technology oriented senior executive with broad corporate leadership and management credentials representing an ideal combination of 21st century business leadership. Prior to commencing his business career, Mr. Thomas served with distinction for eight years as a Naval Intelligence Officer earning consistent top 1% performance reports and early promotion.

Phillip is a graduate of Brigham Young University, has completed executive education programs at Harvard Business School and Stanford Business School, and has completed the DoD sponsored MS-Strategic Intelligence. He is a past member of the Turnaround Management Association, the Exit Planning Exchange, and the Young Presidents Organization.

Eric Evans – Biotech Entrepreneur and Angel Investor

Eric J. Evans has nearly thirty years of experience in the biopharmaceuticals industry. Most recently, from 2007 to 2010, he was Chief Executive Officer of Targeted Cell Therapies, a Worcester-based biotechnology company developing gene therapies for various inherited disorders. While there, he was responsible for overseeing drug discovery and development, business intelligence, business development & licensing, competitive analysis, strategy development, corporate financing, staffing and administration, and alliances with other pharmaceutical companies. He took the company from founding by its scientists through several key milestones, culminating in a successful exit to a big international pharma company.

Previously, Mr. Evans had advised nearly all of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies on issues of growth, strategy, market assessment and business development, while with the Boston Consulting Group and then for nearly fifteen years as president of Growth Analytics Inc., a strategy boutique based in the U.S. and Europe. He has also worked extensively in the related industries of medical devices and diagnostics.

He began his career at Procter & Gamble, in brand management, an experience that continues to inform his work in consumer health. He has been a policy adviser to various candidates for public office, and has taught as an adjunct professor on the faculty of County College of Morris.

Mr. Evans holds a B.S. in biomedical Physics from Brown University and an M.B.A. in Finance and Public Policy (double major) from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Meeting Organizers:

Andrew Fairbairn – Fairbairn Ventures – Managing Principal
(http://fairbairnventures.com)

Andrew is a Cambridge-based investor, entrepreneur and advisor who partners with driven entrepreneurs to rapidly prove out value propositions and to build solid businesses. He has worked with many executive teams over the course of his career to launch, build, expand, transition and/or retool their businesses.
Prior to establishing Fairbairn Ventures, Andrew was a founding partner of JVKellyGroup, Inc. (JVKG), a New York-based management consulting, performance management and software development firm recently sold to D&B. He has also served as Vice President of Deutsche Bank, focused on corporate venturing in financial technology companies and strategic planning roles in New York and London. Andrew began his career with UBS Securities in New York, where he worked on global networking and telecommunications industry financings, across a range of geographies and investment banking product disciplines.

Andrew earned his B.A. in Economics and M.A. in International Development Policy from Stanford University.

Lawrence C. Grumer – Managing Director – TAA Corp., iVEST, LLC
(http://www.taacorp.com/, http://ivest.us)

Larry is an expert in the commercialization of technology. He has partnered to launch ten companies, across wireless internet, web 3.0, mobile power sources, propulsion systems, software defined test and measurement, corporate marketing, and a 30-person engineering consultancy. He is a Phase 2 proposal Grant Reviewer for the National Science Foundation.

TAA is the management advisory and investment firm Larry formed in 1994 that commercializes and capitalizes technology for early-stage technology ventures and corporate spin-outs. He is Managing Partner of iVEST Partners LLC providing corporate development, finance advisory and investment banking affiliation. Larry is Chairman of the EntreTech Forum and Chairman Emeritus of the Boston Entrepreneur’s Network and. He has held management positions at Arthur D. Little, Textron and Foster-Miller, led a US-CDN joint venture and managed business restarts, turnarounds and restructures. Larry received a BSME and an MBA from Northeastern University. He has held a Top Secret clearance.