Category Archives: Capital efficiency

“May you live in interesting times” – or so goes the phrase. In 1966, RFK Jr’s father famously used that quote to capture the turbulence of the times, and continued: “Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They

Today’s market likes products. Platforms aren’t in vogue anymore. Investors, especially in the public markets, only want late stage de-risked assets. Pharma only seems to be buying these kinds of asset. VCs need to focus on clinical stage companies. Or

Today IFM Therapeutics announced the acquisition of IFM Due, one of its subsidiaries, by Novartis. Back in Sept 2019, IFM granted Novartis the right to acquire IFM Due as part of an “option to buy” collaboration around cGAS-STING antagonists for

By Robert Clarke, CEO and founder of Kinaset Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC 2022 has been a hallmark year for Kinaset Therapeutics as we’ve continued to advance our P1b trial with our lead asset.

M&A is an omnipresent reality in the biopharma industry, from Big Pharma mega-mergers to smaller acquisitions of emerging startups. We’ve recently witnessed several large M&A transactions get closed or announced, including BMS-Celgene, Takeda-Shire, and AbbVie-Allergan; according to BMO Capital Markets

The startup paradigm for the creation and funding of new biotech companies has evolved enormously over the past two decades. Recently there’s been a pair of articles from Tech VCs about applying alternative models of company creation (here, here) to

This blog was written by Jeb Keiper, CBO of Nimbus Therapeutics LLC, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. Walking the streets of Union Square in mid-January torrential rain, we had the good fortune of sharing the

The equity markets have softened tremendously in recent weeks and the NASDAQ Biotech Index has swooned to levels last held in late 2014, in line with other equity indices like the S&P500.  Triggered by significant and negative macro forces, this

This blog was written by Mike Gilman, CEO of Padlock Therapeutics, as part of the “From the Trenches” feature of LifeSciVC. I stumbled into a bit of a mess a few weeks ago. It was with the best of intentions, of course.

Amidst lofty public markets and robust fund flows, it’s easy to forget the importance of equity capital efficiency in building new biotech companies. But like gravity, it’s a fundamental principle and rests at the heart of generating quality returns in

Capital efficiency has become a mantra at Atlas, one shared by a number of other early stage biotech investors. It’s a term often repeated in discussions about building young companies, and yet it has become clear that there’s no consistent

Last week Y Combinator, the well-known and very successful technology startup incubator, announced that it was going to begin experimenting with biotech startups.  This announcement came as a surprise to many.  Several good posts on the subject appeared after a

The translation of cutting-edge science into new clinically-relevant therapeutics is the ultimate goal of many academic investigators, industry researchers, and investors.  This stage of R&D is the most challenging, and typically frought with scientific and technical risks: taking a new

Many venture-backed companies assume they can escape the gravity of historic valuation ranges, and an anecdotal few may accomplish the feat.  But figuring out how to live within its probabilistic reality is an important element of successful venture portfolio construction. A thesis

Not a biotech conference goes by these days without a discussion about new models for financing or exiting companies, and BioPharm America in Boston this week is no different.  I’m on a panel discussing the topic on Wednesday afternoon. New

“Raise all the money you can whenever you can, and then raise some more”.  “The more a company raises, the more successful it is”.  Resumes boasting about how much an executive has raised in their prior companies.  These sentiments are

Debating the merits of various biotech business models is in vogue today, in part as a response to the proliferation of experiments around the right form and function of the companies themselves.  An often asked question: are we supporting CEOs

Biotech’s high risks have led to the conventional wisdom that it’s valuable to construct a diversified portfolio of products at the company level.  Reinforced by the “show me multiple shots on goal” mantra of the capital markets, many product-focused biotech

Virtual research-stage biotechs seem to be all the rage these days.  And they do offer interesting investment theses in some settings and with particular assets.  But there are a bunch of myths about going virtual that deserve attention. But before

Malaise and despair seem to have taken over the biotech venture and startup community of late. “Venture’s stress” is the cover story of BioCentury.  Biotech VCs are so distraught they are taking the case to Washington DC to lament the fate

With lots of venture investors fleeing early stage biotech over the past few years, many have questioned where the next vintage of great startup companies will come from.  This theme was touched on a few weeks ago in my post

Earlier this week the Startup Genome project released a report on the DNA of internet startups.  Essentially what attributes lead to success or failure.  One of the things they found was that 74% of startups failed because of “premature scaling”.

Todd Zion, the founder of the adjustable insulin company, SmartCells, has done wonders for the Boston Life Science angel community – and reinvigorated their interest in funding therapeutics companies.  It’s a great story and Todd deserves the attention he’s been

Understanding the impact of different venture capital deal terms is not well appreciated by most Life Science entrepreneurs, especially in the early stage ecosystem.  Moreover, knowing what the “market rate” for these terms are is rarely data-driven and often more

Everyone in biotech talks about capital efficiency these days. Doing more with less financing, more disciplined tranching of rounds, leaner organizations, lower expenses, etc.  But paradoxically, as a sector, there’s universal praise and admiration for those individuals and companies who