Last month, IFNY co-hosted the “Fundraising for Life Science Startups” workshop in association with Biolabs@NYU Langone. The event was led by Dennis Ford, Founder & CEO of Life Science Nation (LSN), as well as creator of the Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) conference series. Dennis and LSN have a successful track record of helping life science entrepreneurs get funding. The purpose of this workshop was to help early stage life science companies understand basic principles to match with the investors who represent the best for their technology.

During the workshop, Dennis presented the timeline in fundraising for early start-up companies and compared the investor landscape between the past and present. He also gave audience members copies of his book, “The Life Science Executive’s Fundraising Manifesto” which details his insights into fundraising that are specific to life sciences entrepreneurship.  Furthermore, he debunked the top 10 myths in fundraising and introduced various ways of meeting global investors. To this end, Dennis and his team provided a demo of the database by LSN for matching early-stage buyers and sellers across the domains of drugs, devices, diagnostics and digital health which includes over 5,000 global early-stage investors and 50,000 global technology assets.

This workshop catered to the earliest stage startups, those seeking grants, seed and angel capital for useful strategies and platforms. To close out the workshop, one of the attendees volunteered to share some information about his company, which Dennis used to help him craft a one-sentence pitch utilizing some of the principles covered in the workshop. It was a fun demonstration which provided actionable recommendations not only for the volunteer entrepreneur, but for all of the audience members. This is exactly what we at IFNY hoped to achieve with the workshop, as we further our mission to ultimate goal is to establish strong networks among academia, industry, entrepreneurs and investors in the New York life science space.