Reinventing Investment: The Funding Landscape Of Life Science Shifts For Good

Nicole Fisher | Forbes.com | March 31, 2014

The legal landscape and requirements for a life sciences company to fundraise in the US are a nightmare, to put it gently. Guidelines changed recently with the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, and the sheer number of investment strategies for a life science startup executive to understand and pursue are staggering. Add in outdated tactics and dried up bank accounts of traditional venture capitalists (VCs), and many in the life sciences field are left jaded and skeptical about fundraising completely.  Or, as Life Science Nation (LSN) Founder Dennis Ford puts it, “When I started my company, I spent 18 months traveling around the world going to tons of investor conferences, but real investors were nowhere to be found. The VCs in this space just couldn’t get any returns and no longer have the money we need.”

Using that premise, he set out on a mission to reinvent the way investors and entrepreneurs share information, negotiate, and now, how the markets themselves work. The premise is based on fit. Changing the preexisting shotgun approach for raising capital to a more efficient model.  He has created a match.com like environment for life science investors and entrepreneurs based on targeting investors that have declared an interest in a particular sector or subsector.

According to those in the field, the future of life science investment is not the phase two and three ventures of the past. Translational and early-stage funding are the places where real value is found, and where the US investment world is headed whether investors are ready or not....