Welcome to October - I hope you are having a great start to the Fall and as always, thank you for being a valuable part of the network. In this newsletter, we will tell you a bit about our newest connections, our latest match, highlight some great news like The Founder Dating Playbook shared by First Round Capital this week + OUP's latest Research Realized episodes, and give you some news and events from around the network.
As a reminder, you can see all AVX opportunities here at the Feed.
Conversation Statistics: We are up to 3854 total connections and conversations on the AVX network - 140 more over the last month. We are currently tracking 12 potential match negotiations and another 64 with multi-month long discussions heading toward possible matches. We have one match still in stealth, so please bear with us on an upcoming announcement. :) Please see the attached AVX Data for more information.
Latest Match: We are thrilled to announce that Gary Wakeford has joined Nanochon from GWU in September! Gary brings a wealth of management, sales and marketing experience having a handful of ortho-focused venture-funded teams, including Syncro Medical Innovations. Congratulations!
NEWS
The Founder Dating Playbook from First Round: “Finding a co-founder can feel like a more intense version of dating. One key difference though is that most people have at least some experience with real-life dating. And there’s certainly tons of self-help books for tips as well as apps that make it easier to meet people. But when it comes to figuring out how to find a co-founder, it’s hard to know where to begin,” says Gloria Lin in an extensive interview with First Round Review. You can find a Google Doc here of the Co-Founder Dating Questionnaire that Gloria Lin developed when looking to build her team. A great long form article to check out for the AVX community!
New Episodes of Research Realized by Osage University Partners: Kirsten Leute has released two new interviews in the past month, one with Helge Seetzen of TandemLaunch and another with Nichole Mercier of WUSTL and AVX Board Member. Please check it out for some great insights on building start-ups and fostering better and stronger entrepreneurial communities!
MATTER Expanding to New York City: MATTER recently announced their partnership with Deerfield Management and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) to develop a new location in New York City. We’re excited to see a new member of the NYC Life Science community!
EVENTS
SOUTH CEO (Oct 8, New Orleans, LA): This is an exclusive event for the C-Suite, Senior Business Officers, and Investors to gather, network and brainstorm at the intersection of Biotech, Healthcare and Technology in New Orleans, where they can easily mix with new, untapped corporate, academic and investment connections. Tulane has graciously extended a $200 discount on registration with a special code – Just apply VIP Code “JAMES200”.
Pitch to Build Your Venture (Oct 15, Branford, CT): Pitch to Build Your Venture is a unique recruiting event for Connecticut bioscience start-ups to ‘pitch’ their business and job opportunities. Join us to meet Sema4, Ancera, LifestyleCX Free Think and RevMedica with over 30 job openings.
MRUN Venture Pitch Night (Oct 17, Chicago): mHUB is hosting MRUN along with industry partners, investors and experts to curate the top five pre-Series A therapeutic startups from Midwest universities. Each startup will pitch for five minutes followed by a grilling from our elite panel of VC’s. After all the pitches, the audience will get to 'invest' to select a winner.
MedTech2019 (Oct 22-23, Rochester, NY): New York’s premier bio/med conference is more refined and targeted to connect you to our members as we share strategies to bring innovations to market, tackle our shared workforce challenges, and super-charge New York's Bio/Med economy.
SEBIO (Nov 6, Miami, FL): The conference in Miami provides an unparalleled opportunity to meet key decision makers in the regional and national life science and medical technology communities. More than 300 biotech and medtech investors, corporate executives, university representatives, and entrepreneurs will attend the event this year. This is a rich opportunity to showcase your company at the most significant annual life science conference in the Southeast.
Life Sciences Summit (Nov 6-7, NYC): This is an early stage investor and business development conference that highlights innovation. The objective of the event is to connect emerging biotech companies and academic innovators with the capital and strategic partners they will need to move new discoveries through clinical development. Many great AVX community members will be presenting and speaking here, if you have a chance to attend, please check it out!
Yale Life Sciences Pitchfest (Dec 6, New Haven): Giving you all an extended heads up on Yale's upcoming Life Science Pitch Day - these teams will feed into their short list of Blavatnik awards. If you are interested to see these teams early, be sure to hold the day.
Yale Innovation Summit (May 13, New Haven): Yale’s premier tech and biotech event, with over 1000 attendees, 100 investment opportunities, 160 investors, and dozens of leading corporations. This year we are moving to an even bigger venue – Yale’s brand new science building on “Science Hill”. Hold the date!
So long for now! – Hamdi