Problems Worth Solving:

· Biotech & healthcare companies need to raise capital faster and more efficiently.

· Founders could be spending 80% of their time pitching investors for 6 to 12 months.

· On our platform, companies can pay a small amount for advertising to get exposure to a large sector audience. Our platform currently has over 15,000 listings of which over 12,000 are investors from around the world.

· Companies need to increase liquidity between funding rounds. With 8 to 10+ years exit for a return on investment (ROI), this limits many VC funds. To attract more early-stage investors we can introduce digital tokens that reduce friction and make these tokens tradable between milestones from basic research, phase one clinical trial, phase two clinical trial, etc.

· There is a smaller pool of accredited investors that understand biotech and life sciences that invest. They get a higher percentage of equity in companies for risk and less competition.

· US Government grant funding sources including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and SBIR and others are promoting faster Lab-to-Market (L2M) commercialization. The annual budget at NIH for research is $41 billion.

· For early basic research funding, it is mostly limited to grants from NIH or foundations today. These researchers and companies pursue non-dilutive funding from these sources but it is very competitive and takes a considerable amount of time to apply as well as compliance if they did win a grant.

· Another area we can help with is educating biotech “retail investors” about biotech through our community, content, and podcasts we will be starting in the fall. We want people to understand private and public biotech companies without needing a medical degree.

University Technology Transfer Office (TTO),

Ecosystem Potential Disruption

These are the offices at universities and other institutions responsible for securing intellectual property produced by their faculty then commercializing and licensing that technology or data to buyers or supporting university spin out companies.

Universities:

•Limited budgets and staff.

•Pressure to produce results, earn money.

•Statistics show returns do not pay for operations for most universities.

•Hard for staff to be experts in everything.

•Disputes of ownership and royalties internally in universities plus externally

•TTO offices can have their priorities influenced by key alumni or benefactors.

Faculty:

•Faculty complain their inventions move too slowly through approvals to launch or do a university spin out.

•Universities take a high % of patents and royalties from inventors

•Limited support for faculty to launch a startup outside the university.

Big Pharma, VC Firms, Strategic Buyers:

•Strategic M&A buyers frustrated by how long deals take.

•Frustrated about the time they spend on opportunities that are not of interest.

•Big Pharma does not want to pay indirect costs (offices, support staff, etc.)

Government Funding

•NIH annual budget $41 billion

•Pressure on funding agencies to have funded research commercialized.

•Many research grants produce results but then sits on a shelf. Not used.

•Applying for grants and compliance after winning takes a lot of time.

•Bayh-Dole compliance reporting. Any recipient that has received government funding has to report and then the US Government has, "march in rights" in many situations to aquire the technologies or drugs developed. 

Think universities are making lots of money from inventions? Think again.