Investing for the Long-Haul: Supporting Companies and Aligning Investors Across Stages | LSI USA ‘24

Allan May  0:05  
Welcome, everyone, appreciate you all attending and coming. We decided we're going to completely riff on the title of this thing. Anyway, and just talk about where's the money? And how do you get finance? Good, I think that's maybe a little bit more of interest. We will passingly touch the the title we've got here. Let's so let's start with we've got a real mix family office, late stage, early stage, Angel corporate venture. So we've got a mix of places where the money comes from. So so let's start with where the money comes from, what's their perspective? What are they looking for in companies they invest in? So let's just kind of start randomly down the hall. Tom, why don't you take that

Tom Vogelsong  0:48  
one? All right, great. Thank you, Alan. And also like Thanks, Scott, Pentel and LSI. And I'm with Ketu. X technology and life science, formerly called keto. And I will also say this Scott    Pantel is one of our investor shareholders. And that's the idea is to find really amazing people, experts in their field, and we all joined together, we've all become part of Ketu x, we're all shareholders, we have our own money, our own skin in the game, we pull that money together, and then we invest it. And rather than trying to pick out one or two rocket ships that are taken off, we'll invest in a lot of ones that are on the launchpad getting it in the seed stage, finding the company's working with people like Alan like science, angels and other groups, because we don't have enough money to do it ourselves. So we want to partner we want to syndicate. And once you've got a concept to take it to the next level, where you can go and get your FDA approval and then go after venture capitalists, which is a whole different world.

Allan May  1:50  
You rob, you're on the other end of the scale here. How about from you?

Shubhra Jain  1:54  
Yeah, absolutely. You can send all those companies after they get their FDA approval to me. So I'm leading the health tech practice at a family office called Tarsadia. Investments, we actually have an office here in Newport Beach. So if you don't want to leave the location, I, we manage about $2.9 billion in invested assets today, we typically invest series A to growth stages. In the medical device and diagnostics world that would mean post FDA clearance, essentially, and close to commercialization if not already in commercialization. And, yeah, we'd like to partner with companies across different stages, as long as the regulatory risk has been de risked. And cheque sizes vary broadly ranging from five to 50 million. everything in between. Yeah, delighted to be here. Thank you for having me.

Allan May  2:52  
Tyler would have family offices do.

Tyler Wanke  2:56  
I'm still figuring it out myself. No. We're a small family office, wonky family, we say our single family office. So we're investing our own money, not unlike angel groups as well, we tend to be pretty flexible in terms of what we can do, which is sort of a neat thing about family offices, we can get in really early. And actually, we can really do get in pretty early. So we'll be early money. And unlike a seed round and follow a company through series A Series B, a lot of our ventures when we get in early take a long time. So it is the long haul. And we're prepared to do that. Sort of Interestingly though, we're also willing to go for really short turnarounds and search for companies where we're coming in and, and exits as expected really shortly. And it may not be the type of return that a venture group might be interested in. But from an IRR perspective, it's really interesting to us. So we did an investment that sold last year and we were just in that series B round for like a year. And then it was a 3x and maybe to some groups that wouldn't have been as as interesting to us. It was pretty interesting. So we invest across the spectrum, usually up to about a million dollars per company.

Allan May  4:05  
And Katarina corporate venture, which was a big Lifesaver here in the last five, eight years as they've really stepped in as particularly in med tech, as a lot of the traditional med tech VCs fell along the side of the road corporate VC really leaned in and Philips is a good example. Yeah,

Katerina Fialkovskaya  4:22  
so as a corporate VC, we are strategic we only do strategic investments and which grants equation of course what is strategic for Philips? And now that they I was asked, do we represent as Ventris Philips healthcare or the other parts of Philips. So this is this one is easy. Philips is only healthcare, so I know there is different knowledge of Philips in the group in the audience here. So yes, Philips isn't healthcare. But if you go a level deeper, what is in healthcare that we found, then Think of our customer, our customer is hospitals and clinicians. So what do they need? And if you think of their today's needs, it's it's not only devices, it's not only instruments, it's imaging, it's predictive analytics, it's software solutions, it's services, in healthcare. So it's quite a broad spectrum. And I, of course, can go deeper. So, you know, don't peel this onion and talk about six different businesses that Philips has in healthcare, and what our needs in remote patient monitoring what our needs in artificial intelligence, but I will probably go beyond two minute limit from when and then fro from Ireland. So I probably will stop here. And then maybe we can unravel during the conversation.

Allan May  5:56  
Great. So everyone knows the importance of a lead, right? You're raising money, and and you're trying to get around put together? And the first thing everybody wants to know is Who's In Who's leading? How's it priced? And that's the linchpin for whether or not you're going to be able to raise around or not raise around. So let's drill down on that. Do you lead? Will you price a deal? What size round Are you looking for? And how much of that round? Will you put in Catrina? Let's start with you. Yes,

Katerina Fialkovskaya  6:26  
so we invest across all stages. And round sizes also differ a lot. So we invested in convertible notes, 1 million size as well as 100 million Series B Series C rounds. So it's really across the spectrum. And we really invest in to something that is strategically relevant for Philips. And besides that, I should say that we also are looking at the every investment we do for it to stand on its own ground as a sound financial investment. So it needs to be will you lead. In some cases we will lead, but mostly we call it we do take board seats, we do take absorber seats, but very rarely we price around were rarely relieved, usually call it and we feel like working as a syndicate. Alright,

Allan May  7:20  
let's let's let's let's answer the questions here. Now a dialer, really?

Tyler Wanke  7:26  
Yes, no, we, we will. But most likely we, we won't price around. We feel pretty comfortable. Helping structure. Convertibles like save some convertible notes for a precede for a bridge round. And we feel more comfortable doing that do that a lot of the time, less likely to actually lead a formal price round, just because we don't have a bunch of full time people working for us.

Allan May  7:48  
Terrific. Shubra.

Shubhra Jain  7:50  
Yeah, we are on the other end of the spectrum, we typically only like to lead. We insist on pricing the round, or at least being part of the conversation, we want to set the terms we always want to take a board seat. And part of the reason is that we have a full vertical health tech team. And we only invest in were very dramatically driven, invest in spaces that we feel we have a differentiated insight on and have done some work on and feel pretty confident in our ability to press

Allan May  8:21  
Great.

Tom Vogelsong  8:22  
Yeah, this is great to see the contrast here because we never lead it's our policy, never to lead. We invest early when it's high risk. We always want somebody else like these guys to go out do the homework, dig in deep find out where your flaws are, document them. And then we will come along and we have 200 shareholders 100 experts in different fields we call that our second round of vetting and so we wait until somebody's set the deal terms how's the due diligence sometimes We'll cooperate on due diligence if there's things that we like as well or point people to people we partner with we always partner with other angel groups other investors and then we will decide whether we join the round or not.

Allan May  9:08  
So I think the the other guys he was referring to his life science angels so I'm, I'm also the chairman and co founder of Life Science angels. Obviously we only invest in life science companies, we will lead we will follow and we do do extensive due diligence we will price rounds and we're more than happy to go into other people's price rounds as well being first money in is is for the not for the faint of heart. Everybody wants to be the last million and nobody wants to be the first million in so you've got to kind of deal with that. But let's let's take hit on the whole concept of long haul and what exactly does long haul mean so in it for the long haul. What does long haul mean to you, Tom? Well,

Tom Vogelsong  9:55  
again, since we're early stage, we know it's going to be a while but we do To avoid things like drug development, that's going to go through three phase clinical trials and take 10 years to get to an exit. Ideally, we target three to five years to an exit, I don't think we've ever hit three years. But we will be in the seed, we try and help the companies then we do have partners that we syndicate with. And that's something may, we'll come back to more depth of how much syndication is going on sharing deals. When a deal goes forward, we will invest in follow on rounds. And our theory is put a little money in early. That's best due diligence, being part of the team, getting the communication watching for a year. And then if they're doing well, well, that's more and more and more as it goes on, and gets to that long term where these guides will come in boost with the rest of the way. And we'll go along for the ride,

Allan May  10:45  
spray and pray. Just curious. All right. So what do you think long haul is? Yeah, we

Shubhra Jain  10:54  
really are in it for the long haul. Because we commend with pretty deep pockets, it is in our interest, actually to deploy a lot of capital. And every investment that we make, we don't do a ton of deals, we make very few high conviction bets. And we plan and hope to be lifelong partners with those businesses, essentially. And we've done this in reality, we did a series B for a company called que health, which was a COVID diagnostics business kept doubling down because the business grew so fast so quickly, during COVID, kept doubling down every round, put significant amount of capital behind it, and then handed it over to our public team to take them public. So we really are a full full spectrum investor all the way from early stage to a company going public and holding on to the investment even after the company has been public for a while.

Tyler Wanke  11:46  
You we usually are in it for the long haul as well, usually because we're getting in at like a pre seed or seed round. So we love it when companies exit in less than five years, but we're very prepared to take it much longer. Part of our investment thesis is that if it does go longer, though, we look for other mechanisms to help make it makes sense. Like for example, many times we can do investments that qualify for 1202 qualified, you know, business doc, and essentially, you know, avoid capital gains tax if it's over five years. So there's a little bit of a hedging thing there. So, but a lot of our investments, we're you know, we're the first money in early on, and it will take significantly over five years, many times even closer to 10 years to get liquidity

Katerina Fialkovskaya  12:30  
Drina Yeah, we have probably the longest in this loan hole. As you know, corporate VC, we don't have those restrictions as a fund life cycle seven was to ascend into one company, so we really don't have those restrictions. So a lot of times we are with the companies for a very long time. So think of it could be like seven years, it can be more. So healthcare is really an industry where it takes it takes time to get to this milestone and traction, regulatory and go pass all those cycles, Flasco commercial, so yarby Being sometimes invest very early, and we are with the company for a very long time. And it's good to have different types of investors in the Syndicate, some of them can go as long as we can do, some of them join later. So they can also ride along the way at the later stage. But here, I think a lot of other VCs can be very constricted, and in terms of how long they go, and especially if you think of those tourist VCs, as they call them that went into healthcare when it was hot. And then they realize how long it takes in this industry on them, they are rushed away. So yeah, it's kind of not the type of investor you want to see on the cap table. So

Allan May  13:51  
I disagree with most of that. And my own personal experience is, the longer you're in the deal as a founder or early stage investor, the more likely it is you'll get capped off the cap table. Right? The most likely experience of early stage investors and founders is the last money in will be in the shortest period of time take the least amount of risk and take the largest amount of profit off the investment. So certainly you shouldn't build companies to flip. And and that doesn't work either. But you should build companies to achieve optionality as soon as you can. So that you have some way of shielding yourself from being crammed down later on. So we look for companies that at least have a plausible investment hypothesis, that in three years, they could partner or do a build to buy or otherwise have an exit scenario. That might make sense, but at least they have something other than just raising dilutive capital to go forward.

Shubhra Jain  14:57  
I disagree with part of that though. Alan right. Read, in terms of yes, the last money in is taking the least amount of risk and getting out as the quickest, but not necessarily that they're making the most profit, because by that time, if everything has been de risked, and it's common knowledge, the alpha is gone. The opportunity to discover gems and be able to get in at a good price often exists much earlier. And that's, that's really the true skill and differentiation of being an investor, when you're able to spot those get access to those price them well and in a disciplined fashion, before they become the talk of the town, and now everyone's running after them. And you may not even be able to get into that deal, at that point, leave aside overpaying for it even if you're able to get in. And so you may not be the most profitable investor, the one who made the most money if you look at, I don't know, a good really case study in the med tech world, but at least in the tech world, like the most money is being made by series investors, right

Allan May  16:07  
tech and med tech couldn't be more different. Sure. And sure. And let me tell you in med tech, no matter what we think, as you all said, you miss an FDA endpoint, you have to redo a clinical trial, you can't get reimbursement, it takes another two to three years to get reimbursement. And on and on and on. We don't have straight shots out. So but it's this is the point of the panel. So let's let's disagree as much as we can. Will you do a safe? No. We do. Sometimes

Tom Vogelsong  16:37  
we do. But we really hate it. The pre money safe is a definite no, because we get no protection, post money safes for starting to hear but many times we'll go back and demand pretty much all the added features you can add to save to make it look like a convertible note. But it's a convertible note. Right? Yeah, that turns out to be a convertible note. So will you do a safe? We

Shubhra Jain  17:00  
never said never we have done it. But we really don't like to we like to price the rounds. And that prevents us from doing that. So not not really not often.

Tyler Wanke  17:11  
Yeah, we do say is actually like them. We invested a lot of companies early, but companies that are really innovative technologies that are typically getting grants like SBIR grants. So we run into it with portfolio companies where they have SEC convertible a convertible note. That's, you know, that they've invested in, and then they'll get this big grant, they'll get audited as like a phase two SBIR, for example. And, and typically, you know, NIH, and these organizations will look at that as debt. So if you don't have enough cash to the bank, your ratio will be off, and you can't take the grant money, and that's a killer. So we've found that those granting organizations accept the safe as something different. We've seen the same thing for like, interesting alternative financings from the state and another governments where they'll they'll consider their convertible that you know, as more data and and will consider safe more like equity. So we like to do them, especially for those ventures where it can make or break significant grant funding. Katarina

Allan May  18:08  
saves. We do, all right. We won't. They don't represent the risk we're taking as investors, we're not lenders, we're investors, and we don't have a fund. We're writing checks out of our own checkbook. We're not writing checks out of somebody else's checkbook, it's a lot easier to write checks out of somebody else's checkbook, but if if it's your own, you're gonna want a return on your money. It's simple as that.

Shubhra Jain  18:37  
I disagree with that, too. I see it shaping up, I think I think it's, it's a lot harder to write checks from somebody else's checks, but a checkbook if you want to be in this business. Now, if you want to be in this business long term, if you want to go bid be able to go raise your next fund. No one's gonna give you an allocation if you didn't give them my return, right? Like, oh, over time, chickens will come home to roost.

Allan May  19:06  
Alright, well, let's start with you then. So when you invest in this kind of a climate, do you insist on more than a one time preferred? Exit? No, any other financial rights?

Shubhra Jain  19:19  
We will always insist on governance, so we always want to be in the boardroom dividends, not necessarily. Rest of it is so that there are two things that we want to be a part of one is we want to be part of setting the price and we think we have a pretty valuation discipline. So we don't like to overpay or bid up the price. And second, we want to be in the boardroom. But everything else is negotiable. And in my experience, most with most firms that is the case anyone who's trying to sell you something as this is the standard that we do. They'll they'll negotiate for the right people. So um, I think most most things are negotiable.

Allan May  20:03  
Tyler, what? Do you guys take any special rights? or, or? Or is it just straight Vin all the term sheets?

Tyler Wanke  20:09  
As with many family offices, we're very opportunistic. So totally depends. We've done all sorts of stuff across the spectrum. Totally depends. But again, we're not usually setting the terms.

Allan May  20:23  
The so we all know it's, it's a pretty bad investing climate, there's been a lot of speculation. There's a lot of hard mate, there's a lot of hope that it's going to bottom out. But But what is your opinion are is are we are we going to see a buoyant second half and and 2025 goes back to being a real year that startups can raise capital in a normal way? Are you saying something else?

Tom Vogelsong  20:50  
I think that question has been asked every panel I've been to for the last two years. But we'll give our answer here is, as we're talking preparing for this panel, I feel that two things are a little better in the early stage med tech world. First of all, we didn't go through the hype cycle as much as like pharma did during 2021 2022. And then they fell off the cliff and 2023 also IPOs dried up, that made Series C really terrible. So be pretty bad series a not too bad. I just went to an event last week, where they talked about the statistics. And again, seed stage series A didn't get beat down as much than last year, and is a little bit more flat. And but just in general, I think people are optimistic about this year, maybe it's hopeful thinking, but I hope it's realistic. And there's a lot of money sitting on the sidelines, that has to be deployed. But venture capitalists have a timeframe, we don't. So they got to be spending it sometime in the next 1218 months. If they're investing in CEREC, that I'll give access to the Serebii. And it trickles down to us at the beginning. So we're hoping now's the time to get in early. And by next year when they get to the BC. There'll be a big step up for us. And when there won't be down rounds, and we go more get crammed down.

Allan May  22:16  
Shubhra    Jain. What about what about how you guys view it?

Shubhra Jain  22:20  
Yeah, I think it's actually much better than last year, the valuation expectations, the bid ask gap that existed between founders expectations and investors has closed a little bit. People are coming back to the market for more proper price rounds, which is where we play. So it's important to us last year, we saw a lot of bridges and extensions and safes and convertible notes happening, which was kind of not not where we play. So hopefully it will be more active this year. As you mentioned, med tech is less cyclical than some of these other sectors. And hopefully, in this year, and the next that will be in our favor. On the med tech side.

Allan May  23:01  
Tyler Yeah,

Tyler Wanke  23:03  
I'm cautiously optimistic. We've, again, like a lot of others have been reinvesting in current portfolio companies. But we did, you know, start to do some new companies. And I've seen that really taking off earlier this year, so optimistic that it's going to be a much better year than last year.

Katerina Fialkovskaya  23:20  
You know, we have a few dozen companies in our portfolio, existing portfolio, and they find divided into two groups. So we have med tech companies, and we have digital have health companies. There are some commonalities, and there are some differences in one that do in their fundraising needs. And among the metrics that are being used to evaluate and write checks for them. So commonalities are, the 2023 was, for us, it was the year of bridges and extensions. And there are probably two outliers, where we close the new price round with our colleagues, but with new investors, but other than that few dozen extensions, to the existing portfolio companies. So it's been very challenging, but at least it was a resource for the companies who had good investors on their cap table to go and get this financing. Unfortunately, what they see for 2024 I think human resources getting exhausted by now because we sit on the board with different types of syndicates give different type of funds, and a lot of them as I probably already mentioned, they are at the end of their lifecycle or they invested their 10% of the one company so they no longer can support this company with underwriting, even extension internal raises for them. So what what do we want to see from the companies is even us as as CVC all the way. Although we don't have those restrictions. We are becoming much more selective. What companies we are going to support in 2024 B don't want to see leadership from our CEOs will do want to see a plan. And so it's no longer right in the chat just to kick the can down the road. It's not like waiting for the time to turn to for better times to be on the horizon. So we do want to see that they have a plan to reach the next milestone, have a plan to get to this inflection point when, when they will be better positioned for the next price round. Great. Thank

Allan May  25:30  
you. So that raises a good point. Let's let's follow up a bit on that. So it is a tough time out there now whether it's going to be better later in the year or not. It's tough. Now, what does that mean, in terms of milestones and deliverables that you're looking for? What what do you want founders and entrepreneurs to do with the money you give them?

Tom Vogelsong  25:51  
Well, first part is to survive this knuckle under, it's a little tougher these days than it used to be because getting the round after us is, is probably the most critical piece, even if they're a good company, if they can't get that $10 million series, a lot of are coming back and doing the bridges. And you know, the story is stay alive to 25. Hear that. So we want them to, ideally, to go up in value for the next round, we don't want to get crammed down. So if they can get their clinical results that hit their sensitivity and specificity goals, they can get their FDA 510 k or a de novo 510 K, that's a big step up in their valuation. And

Allan May  26:35  
that's what you want them to increase. Let me just add to that, so you can all kind of pick up on it? Do you want them to increase their cash burn, keep their cash burn the way it is? Or decrease their cash burn?

Katerina Fialkovskaya  26:47  
Hubris is the question. She'll be on

Tyler Wanke  26:50  
her channel at time. After that, I think you're skipping over that one.

Shubhra Jain  26:55  
I think it depends on the business and depends on the market dynamics. If they're in a very competitive place, if they need to need to spend money to complete some critical end points that will take them to the next inflection point and enable them to raise then they need to do that, right. Like the there is also I agree with the survive, survive survive is the first thing but then there is also speed to market and time to market is a real competitive edge in the startup world. And there are real examples of companies that had started with great technology, but got taken over by plenty of other folks in this space who just moved faster. For a variety of reasons, one of them obviously being capital, but not limited to that. So it's a fine balance. And in my opinion, it's a case by case judgment call for both the founders and the investors. Can't really say one size fits all for this one.

Tyler Wanke  28:01  
I think I agree with the it depends. idea. I mean, I invested in a fast follower type company recently. And for them, it's all about like, it is largely about just speed and getting to market as fast as possible, feels like that at least. So that one feels like ramp up, burn it all costs, we have other companies that again, will we've really leaned into heavy alternative financing, like certain grants and stuff like that, where sometimes it's strategic to kind of stay low burn, for example, hit these milestones, and we got to hit milestones, but you know, do things in a certain way, because you might have a multi million dollar grant coming through, and maybe it makes sense to kind of stretch it out a little bit and get to that point. So we've gotten, we've been creative and seeing things there. And of course, in general, the biggest thing is just to make sure companies can survive so we've with a lot of our companies work to make sure that like it's an appropriate amount of burn but maybe not hired that one extra person are done that one extra thing or whatnot that maybe is of questionable or marginal value, marginal value, given the market.

Allan May  29:01  
Let's let's let's follow up with family offices a bit. That's probably the biggest enigma to most entrepreneurs. helots the biggest enigma to me and and I've been trying for a long time to figure out how to find family offices and and and how to get them to co invest with angels and early stage investor small venture funds. How do you syndicate Where do you look for your fellow family offices? Or who do you syndicate with?

Tyler Wanke  29:28  
Yeah, I agree. I think family offices has been really even mysterious to me. We're relatively new family office. And back when I was more an entrepreneur, like we didn't know as much about what was out there. I think the landscape is really changing. Maybe it's partly been because of the market over the last few years, but we've seen a lot of family office groups and together work together, come out of the shadows to do deals together. And there's more infrastructure happening in terms of conferences and such for that and connectors and kind of like Maven type people that are helping connect family offices that have similar values, we would consider ourselves to some extent kind of impact investors, but kind of not really. So when we find other family offices and high net worth angels, Angel groups that have similar values, similar investment methodologies, we build the network and we do deals together, and then we do more deals together. So I don't have a, you know, a silver bullet answer. But I will say it's becoming more sophisticated in terms of family offices, investing together, going to certain conferences, different communities to find other family offices that invest together and sometimes cutting out institutional investors for rounds that may maybe make sense for a family office office, you know, family office, or angel that don't make sense for an institutional investor. So we've seen a lot more sophistication on that side of things. Any

Allan May  30:48  
advice for the people in the audience about how to approach family offices or find them or, or be able to access them? Yeah,

Tyler Wanke  30:56  
it's, you know, again, no silver bullet answer. But I will say, you know, there are some conferences out there, we're kind of part of the DC finance community, there's others. And, you know, you can go to these conferences and and, you know, find some family offices that may invest in what in what you do. I know, Good Growth Capital, Amy salzhauer has been like we were on a panel together at a family office conference. And it was amazing, because it was like, Oh, you guys are what we've heard of you. We've heard of that deal. We're looking at that deal. But we've never met. So there are some families out there that that do things and like I said, sometimes there's families that are passionate about certain area. Some of them you may you may notice, it's cardiovascular or pediatrics, or cancer or whatever. And if you have a company, that's one of those spaces, sometimes you can find these family offices that are passionate about that space. And that can be really about valuable for your company.

Allan May  31:49  
How do you syndicate Tom, you, you guys, don't take the lead amount of money in a deal. You participate in a lot of deals, all of our deals, all med tech deals need a couple million, maybe three to hit any reasonable milestone. How do you syndicate Who do you syndicate with?

Tom Vogelsong  32:06  
That's a very key point a very key contrast, I think family offices are probably five to 10 years behind angels, Angel groups, credible angel groups, as far as finding each other, we know we can't do it alone. No angel group can really fill out even a seed round. So we've gotten much better sharing deals going to events like this last week as a med tech innovator, LA, finding each other sharing deal back and forth openly. We're not competing with each other. We've even gotten much better at sharing a platform. You don't want 10 Different groups coming to you asking you the same question for different format. So pretty much consolidated on DLM or gust as the platform you upload one, we can share it across like science angels, or new fund or desert angels. Also the angel capital Association, if you want to find an angel group, Angel Capital Association has what 120 Different angel groups as members were a member, they are now getting much better at syndicating deals, if I like a deal. I can get it posted on a platform or every other those 120 Angel groups can go look at it, contact me contact the CEO, and then co invest much, much better.

Allan May  33:16  
Nonprofit It was created created by the Kauffman Foundation angel capital Association, easily available online, they'll let you know who are the organized angel groups in your state, or in your area or even sector by sector? It's a super valuable source of information for entrepreneurs and early stage companies. Katrina what? What do How about syndication? From your perspective?

Katerina Fialkovskaya  33:42  
Yeah, so we can certainly write bigger size checks than angel investors, we still cannot do it alone. And I think the common misconception is cvcs. Never in the studio, there's usually one CVC on the cap table. Not true. We sometimes see it on the board with, you know, five different cvcs represented in the same company. So we do co invest with both cvcs independent funds, angel investors, family offices, so all types of investors can be in the same room. We absolutely don't mind it and we work together collaboratively. I think we are privileged in terms of building syndicates, because we as Philips, I invested in a few a couple dozen other health care funds. So we take positions and other funds and this is a great resource as we need to build those syndicates Obeah. We can for investors, either early or late stage for a company so

Allan May  34:45  
do you guys take the whole round Shubra when you're doing a later stage deal, or is that is that also as a syndication with other investors?

Shubhra Jain  34:53  
Typically, if it's like super small, we may take the whole round generally we're not taking the whole round. We We're leading with, let's say, anywhere between 40 to 60% of the round. And I wouldn't call it syndicating necessarily, because at that point we have led give, we've given the company a term sheet, we've priced around, and then it's up to them to go rally the other investors to fill out the round. Sometimes we'll make recommendations based on folks in our network, who we have had good experience working with or who we believe can add value to the company. But there is no like one partner that we have done multiple deals where then keep your co investing with, we kind of come in as we like the company, we want to lead, here are the terms if you agree with that, then you take our term sheet, it's up to you to go fill out the rest of the round will be as helpful as we can be. But it's it's really up to them at that point.

Allan May  35:47  
So so we don't know what the IRS this year is going to be. We've got a lot of thoughts and hope. What do you plan to do? How many deals would you estimate your group is going to do? And how much capital do you expect your group to employ?

Tom Vogelsong  36:06  
Well, that's that's a big question for us. Because we are kind of getting the opposite extreme family office, which is one family had a big exit or something that has a ton of money, and will invest in a few deals, we're going the opposite direction, we actually want everybody at this conference, to be able to buy a share of our stock, we're going public ourselves three is more money to invest in startup companies, we like the model. But we're still tiny, we're making tiny bets, we want to make bigger bets, so we can help the companies more. The way we're gonna get money is from all of you buying shares of our stock. So for public on NASDAQ, our goal is to raise 25 to $50 million. We'd like to invest in two to four companies per month, maybe two new ones, to follow ons. And today we're doing up roughly 100,000 per round a little tiny bit. We want to get that up to like quarter million, half a million in the first round and one to 3 million and valance. And the way to do that is go public. Nothing like that exists out there. We'll see how it goes. This

Allan May  37:10  
simple, simple as that. All right. Tyler, how about you?

Tyler Wanke  37:15  
Yeah, just like that going public. Yeah, interesting concept. But yeah, we are kind of we're a little different, I guess, because we do less companies. So we're probably looking at about two to four a month. But maybe that in the whole year. I mean, we've been reinvesting in already this year, I've reinvested in existing companies, but we'd like to be able to do do new, completely new deals this year. So we're hoping to do a couple part of that relies on what we were talking about earlier, breaking the cycle of existing companies doing, you know, bridge, you know, bridge round financings and stuff like that, so that we can have extra capital going into companies globally, hopefully, if you, Katrina,

Allan May  37:52  
number of deals amount of capital.

Katerina Fialkovskaya  37:56  
Yeah, we plan to do deals this year, I can tell you the number, I can only say that it depends on the needs of our business. Some years we do, I don't know, five investments a year. Now, I would probably see more like a couple investments a year at that at this time. But it really depends if if we find something than our businesses interested that it's no, it's a final for external innovation for them. So if we do find something that they really need to innovate, yeah, we will do investments. But think of more like a couple of new investments in the new companies. This year and next year, rather than some years, it was much more than that. So

Allan May  38:36  
life science angels, oui, oui, oui. Last year was our lightest year ever, we typically invest about 5 million a year. And last year, we invested two. And that was a real collapse. And I think it was people feeling it in the public markets. And plus, if you're an early stage investor with a portfolio of whatever 20 companies, you're gonna get 20 bridges, or 20 Pay to plays that you have to deal with. So your appetite for cutting new checks, is definitely affected. I see that. bottoming out so far this year, it will do it looks like more in the five to eight new deals range, and as many as 15 follow on investments. So there does seem to be some hope on the rise. And in our last one minute, any final comments to the audience about where they can where they can look for money or or what the outlook is for being financed?

Shubhra Jain  39:35  
I can get us started. I think it's it. The days of 2020 and 21 are gone. Right? It's going to be harder than that. And I My advice would be that. Just look out for stellar individuals that you want to partner with and then figure out a way to get access to their wallet, their network and their expertise, whether they come in the form of a venture investor, an angel investor or family The Office of healthcare executive or med tech company doesn't really matter much I

Allan May  40:05  
think that's a good note to end on Thank you Thanks Thank you very much Thank you