Investors, whether angel investors or venture capital firms, often voice the same complaint about entrepreneurs seeking funding. They feel entrepreneurs are not sufficiently prepared when presented with the opportunity to pitch their venture to their long-sought right investor. Not surprisingly, real opportunities are often lost.
On November 1st Mid-Atlantic Bio Angels, aka MABA, rotated its 1st Pitch Life Science competition to New Jersey, hosted at the Institute for Life Science Entrepreneurship (ILSE) at Kean University in Union, NJ. 1st Pitch offers life science entrepreneurs the opportunity to practice their funding pitch to a live audience of industry executives, researchers and entrepreneurs, while a panel of investors critiques their presentation offering them insight for improvement.
“Practice” is the operative word as those accepted to pitch are able to try out their presentation in a supportive environment, as structured by MABA at events around the Mid-Atlantic region. In the words of Yaniv Sneor, co-founder of MABA, the meeting provides “insights into the investment process and what happens after you leave the room”.
In addition to obtaining important feedback, the pitching entrepreneurs vie to be the evening’s winner as “Best in Show”, chosen by a live audience vote. The winner is eligible for the final pitch off in December in New York City that brings together the regional finalists. The evening’s first place winner also receives a polo shirt and paid-for press release announcing their win.
The three presenting ventures were Visikol, Lynkogen and Dina Pharmaceuticals. Each gave 15-minute investment presentations followed by a 15-minute Q&A with the audience leading to the panelist critique.
First up was Michael Johnson, Co-founder and CEO of Visikol, Inc. located in North Brunswick, NJ. Founded in 2012 Visikol is a biotech company focused on bio-imaging. According to Johnson, Visikol’s immediate goal is to obtain funding to commercialize their Visikol histo-technology for 3-d histology. He sought to participate in the event to find people to test their technology and to learn how to better position their venture and products for potential investors.
To date Visikol has benefited from non-dilutive funding via a $500K grant from the Foundation Venture Capital Group and $275K from the National Science Foundation.
Arun Swaminathan representing Lynkogen Inc, a biotech company located in East Windsor, New Jersey, focuses on a way to “develop protein therapeutics for prevention of rare metabolic diseases”. Similar to Visikol he hopes to “get feedback from the people here in order to improve our pitch process”. The ultimate goal for Lynkogen is to raise money that will help them take their lead molecule through the IND (investigative new drug) process.
Evu Versey, founder of Dina Pharmaceuticals in Gladstone, NJ, launched a “development company for new drugs and the lead asset is for Parkinson’s disease”. Dina has received $1.5 million in non-dilutive funding from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, but they have not yet sought diluted funding. They decided that the pitch venue would help them begin the process of finding dilutive funding. Additional funding would allow Versey to move to proof of concept for humans.
Following the audience vote Dina Pharmaceuticals and Lynkogen tied for first place and only one vote separated Visikol for second place.
The panelists for the evening were Denis Segota, a partner at Morgan Lewis Law Firm in Princeton, NJ, Stephen M. Goodman, a partner at Pryor Cashman Law Firm in Manhattan, Dr. Kenneth Kashkin, the COO of Chromocell, and Yaniv Sneor, one of the founders of MABA.
Those interested in pitching at future events may apply by emailing: for New York City at info@1stpitchlifescience.com; for Pennsylvania at PAinfo@1stpitchlifescience.com and for New Jersey at njinfo@1stpitchlifescience.com.
