PROFESSIONAL TIPS FROM BIOSTART
Tips on what investors are looking for:
- Well thought through & fully optimized 'investor-orientated' business plan & executive summary.
- An energized and fully co-operative management team that can deliver on its commitments.
- Strong IP protection.
- Groundbreaking, 'first in class' technology in areas of high unmet medical need.
- Well understood target and mechanism of action.
- Companion diagnostic(s) for patient selection, monitoring and follow up.
- Digital health products
- Drugs and devices that increase ‘at home’ patient management & empowerment, reducing hospitalizations & healthcare costs.
- Product portfolio rather than a single product.
- Associated technology platform that will continue to fill the pipeline.
Tips on creating the business plan:
- Put yourself in the investor’s position; forget being a scientist for a moment.
- Keep the layout and the language simple and easy to understand.
- Draw the reader’s attention to the unmet need upfront, before answering the need with your unique solution – your ‘secret sauce’.
- Write the executive summary last, once the BP has been completed and fully refined.
- Make the presentation and BP work for you, remembering that the reviewer sees hundreds of BP’s per year and, on average, allocates the following time to each:
- 85% of BPs: 1-5 minutes (executive summary only).
- 10% of BPs: 5-30 minutes (executive summary plus BP).
- 4% of BPs: 30-120 minutes (BP plus additional requested information).
- <1% of opportunities reach due diligence stage.
- Only a handful of opportunities (<1%) are selected for investment.
Tips on staffing a business:
- A start up company
only gets one chance to get things right. Using the most experienced team is essential, whether fulltime or part-time.
- Limited resources can usually be stretched, by out-sourcing work to part-time specialists. They may cost slightly more per hour, but will reduce overall time-to-market, risk and cost.
- Splitting responsibilities into permanent and part-time can be simplified, when asking your self the questions:
- Which tasks (usually technology-related) need to be completed by uniquely experienced individuals, (usually full-time) in >2 years?
- Which tasks will be completed in 0.5-2 years and can be done by external specialists?
- Which tasks only need a few hours a day or per month and can be performed by external specialists.
- Sometimes ‘founders’ can be of more value retaining their university positions, supporting the new company on a part-time basis.
Needing specialist support or just a second opinion?
Call BIOSTART today!
