Event Summary

As part of the Diversifying Funding Series, CU Innovations and the new Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship hosted an interactive panel discussion focused on funding for therapeutics and drug development.

Investors from Atlas Venture, Jupiter Bioventures, and Osage University Partners explored their models for supporting early-stage companies, shared the critical questions they ask when evaluating investment opportunities, and provided strategies to avoid the common pitfalls in faculty-VC interactions.

Investor Panelists

Dave Grayzel, MD, Partner, Atlas Venture
Leigh Hunnicutt, MBA, Principal & Chief Operating Officer, Jupiter Bioventures
Mitra Miri, PhD, Principal, Osage University Partners

Speaker

Tom Utley, PhD, MBA, Assistant Director of Licensing, CU Innovations 

Key Takeaways

Evaluating university technologies:

• The focus at the earliest stages is on the quality of the science & its potential to be a therapy.
• They explore cultural fit in areas where the founder wants to stay on in an operational or advisory role.

Investment Preferences:

• Stage of investment, amounts invested, and post-investment involvement for companies in their portfolio vary between investment firms.
• Investment amounts vary across the lifecycle of a company from single millions at the early stage to tens of millions in later stages.
• Some firms will classify themselves as venture creators and work with scientists to co-create ventures with sector experts, other firms may be less hands-on with a broader investment thesis.
• Do your diligence and understand investors’ focus areas and investment strategy on their website. Look at portfolio companies for the types of technologies they’ve previously invested in.

Challenges and solutions:

• Robustness & reproducibility of the data is a key concern with university technologies. Investors will often want third-party validation.
• Certain opportunities may be more capital intensive or require complex manufacturing approaches. Have a clear product thesis and a well-defined development plan.

Industry Interest Lists:

• Investors will have an awareness of the industry preferences and areas of interest to help guide their decision making.
• These lists are important indicators of what industry wants, but they change often, so email us to discuss the latest: cuinnovations@cuanschutz.edu.

Importance of Relationship Building:

• Deals are short and careers are long. Think about longitudinal relationships, seeking mentorship, and being open to pharma partnerships are earlier stages.

• Discussions with investors are not just about capital but can also help vet the science or craft the next set of critical experiments.

Check out Science2Startup and Equalize Startups for additional resources.

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