LSN Story
LSN Story
Roadshows in the Life Science Arena
Companies encounter significant challenges in securing funding and forming partnerships in the competitive life sciences landscape. Life Science Nation (LSN) is a vital resource, guiding firms through every stage of their journey, from seed funding through Series A, B, C, D, and E to commercialization or exit. LSN doesn’t just connect innovative companies with capital and licensing partners; it provides comprehensive support tailored to each growth stage. LSN empowers life science companies to navigate each stage of their growth journey successfully. LSN’s ecosystem addresses these challenges, offering tailored support for each stage of development:
- Seed and Series A: Overcoming initial fundraising hurdles and establishing credibility.
- Series B and C: Scaling operations and expanding market presence.
- Series D and E: Securing significant capital for clinical trials or market expansion.
- Commercialization or Exit: Facilitating strategic partnerships and market positioning.
The journey begins with a stark reality: many scientist-entrepreneurs emerging from academia lack essential business skills and underestimate the time and resources needed to prepare and execute in the commercial arena. This gap, compounded by outdated entrepreneurial training in global accelerators and incubators, hinders their ability to secure funding and partnerships.
A critical disconnect exists between traditional pitch preparation and the realities of preparing and launching a long-term fundraising and licensing partner campaign. The industry’s focus on polished 30-minute presentations falls short of equipping companies for the marathon of a 9–18-month partnering campaign.
This misalignment significantly contributes to the high failure rate among life science entities. LSN changes this dynamic with its partner-centric products and services that combine entrepreneurial education, sourcing and matching of strategic partner candidates through a curated global database, and LSNs Redefining Every Stage of Investments (RESI) global partnering events.
LSN Is a Unique Funding & Partnering Vehicle
Life Science Nation (LSN) has built a global superstructure for sourcing and funding that features elite global technology assets, investors, and licensing partners seeking them. The international ecosystem consists of life science buyers and sellers, each with curated data profiles that are “matched up” based on the stage of development and product at LSN’s dedicated worldwide partnering events or with the aid of the LSN Global Partner Campaign database for supporting roadshows. This one-of-a-kind partnering ecosystem is unique because it is cross-domain, serving the silos of Drugs, Devices, Diagnostics, and Digital Health (the 4Ds). This wholistic partnering superstructure has various components consisting of the following:
- Life Science Databases: LSN curates two commercial databases: a buy-side of 10 categories of 3500 global early-stage investors and a sell-side of over 60,000 global technology assets.
- Global Partnering Campaign (GPC) Database: A life-science-specific investor database available to scientist-entrepreneurs raising capital which organizes present and future-looking investor data collected and curated by LSN’s Investor Research team
- Business Development Database: A life science company database covering emerging “4D” company profiles, product pipelines, licensing opportunities, financing rounds, technologies, licensing deals, and management contact details.
- LSN SalesForce.com Internal Database: Consisting of 15,000 under-the-radar start-up companies. The typical profile of these firms is freshly minted technology transfer agreements from academia that have received non-dilutive government, regional, or impact funding and are now seeking their institutional seed, series A, B, C, D, and E rounds.
- Partnering Events
- LSN created the world-renowned Redefining Every Stage of Investments (RESI) Conference Series, an established go-to partnering event series for scientist-entrepreneurs, fundraising CEOs, and the investors and collaboration partners who seek them. RESI has five events that take place worldwide, spanning North America, Europe, and Asia, with support from governmental agencies and regional international tech hubs, Incubators, and accelerators.
- RESI partnering events are held in concert with JP Morgan in San Francisco in January, with regional partner Biocat in Barcelona, Spain, in April, alongside BIO USA in June, LSNs home base, Boston in September, and London in December with regional partner One Nucleus.
- The LSN Labs Accelerator facilitates the migration of elite international, regional start-up companies into the global capital arena using the LSN ecosystem. There is a formal, open program for start-up CEOs to receive preparation in organizing and executing a global partnering and fundraising campaign. LSN Labs offers workshops, seminars, classes, and a curriculum that prepares international companies for global fundraising and fully integrates them into LSN’s global partnering network.
LSN Global Partnering Campaign (GPC) Database
LSN has employed a team of researchers for a decade whose job is to curate and keep the partnering database profiles up to date through one-on-one phone interviews. The LSN mantra is “data comes in two states, out-of-date and very-out-of-date”. LSN offers partner profiles, that are current, present, and future-looking, which makes them invaluable for launching and executing a successful Global Partnering Campaign. LSN sells this database integrated with SF.com CRM to early-stage startups who are seeking capital investors who can provide seed, up to 2m, series A, 2-10m, and series B, 10-50m. Plus, it includes all the major Big Pharma players and their licensing, co-development, and venture arms. The LSN Global Partnering Database consists of 3500 firms with 10,000 contacts.
LSN tactical value is that, in a few clicks, we can generate a target list of investors and licensing partners, ranging from 400-800 entities, LSN calls this, the Global Target List (GTL), that are a fit for a startups stage of development and product.
The Pricing, Terms and Conditions of the LSN Global Partnering Campaign (LSN GPC) Platform
LSN will offer a several packages of the SF.com and LSN partnering database ranging from $300 and $500 dollar a month. These packages with have real-time access to LSN partner data combined with RESI ticket discounts to the 5 international partnering events that LSN put on every year. Clients can choose a monthly fee structure with terms that are minimum 6 months commitment or elect a one-time annual subscription fee. LSN calculates that is has helped 400 companies raise over $5B dollars.
Redefining Every Stage Investments (RESI) International Partnering Events
LSN created the world-renowned Redefining Every Stage of Investments (RESI) Conference Series, an established go-to partnering event series for scientist- entrepreneurs, fundraising CEOs, and the investors and collaboration partners who seek them. RESI has five events that take place worldwide, spanning North America, Europe, and Asia, with support from governmental agencies and regional international tech hubs, Incubators, and accelerators.
RESI partnering events are held in concert with J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference Week in San Francisco in January, alongside Bio Europe in March and BIO International in June, LSN’s home base, Boston, in September, and London in December, with regional partner One Nucleus.
LSN LABS: ACCELERATING GLOBAL PARTNERING SUCCESS
LSN Labs helps life science startups expand from regional markets to the global funding arena through structured preparation and execution. The LSN AI Agent provides an AI-powered messaging assessment that reviews a company’s materials, identifies strengths and weaknesses across key business areas, and generates an initial tagline and elevator pitch to strengthen investor readiness. The BD Assist program delivers full-service business development support, including expert messaging, targeted investor outreach, CRM-based meeting coordination, and participation in LSN’s RESI partnering events. Over a 12-month campaign, startups can expect 80–100 meetings with qualified investors and strategic partners.
The Challenge for Scientist-Entrepreneurs and Fundraising CEOs
The problem that LSN is solving with the Focus on Cures (FOC) Accelerator Entrepreneurial Education Curriculum is that these early life science startups who need early-stage funding (Seed, Series A & Series B), all of whom are making this major transition, commonly lack a comprehensive background in the business development, sales, and marketing fields which are essential to growing their company.
There is no standardized methodology for teaching a company how to brand and message itself. There is no reliable, accurate, and current database (besides LSN’s) to get a company a list of global partners that are a fit for their stage of development and product set. There is no tech hub that teaches how to get a list of global partners and then mange that list with a CRM like SalesForce.com, nor do they teach how to prioritize that list into A, B, and C targets to go after and manage. They also do not teach how to launch and stage a partnering campaign and how to make an introductory phone call or write an introductory email. Most importantly, no one teaches the holy grail of canvassing…how to follow up.
The problem is then compounded because early-stage companies also must be able to assemble a list of global capital investors and licensing partners that are a fit for their particular stage of development and product. Whilst many startups do manage to acquire a general investor list or spreadsheet of partners, those lists are never current and accurate, so they will waste valuable time learning the hard lesson of how to aggregate a clean list of partners that are appropriate to pursue. Then, once an early-stage company manages to procure a good list of potential partners, they have to put that list into a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that allows them to properly manage and curate the list. These are all components of learning how to launch and execute a global partnering campaign which are commonly passed over in traditional education courses offered by various tech hub organizations.
Preparing for a Global Partnering Campaign
A global partnering campaign can take anywhere from 9-18 months and therefore, one needs to be fully prepared in all the nuts and bolts of exactly what it will take to be successful. LSN Founder & CEO, Dennis Ford, has written a book on the subject, The Life Science Executive’s Fundraising Manifesto, and over a ten-year period has developed a process for getting scientist-entrepreneurs prepared for a global partnering campaign. Using the book as a basis, Dennis and LSN staff have created an entrepreneurial curriculum that has been very effective in training the scientist-entrepreneurs. This involves a process, that when followed, produces great results for the early-stage company. An essential component of this is the value of getting your story straight and developing an easy-to-understand, compelling narrative about your team, technology, and market (something that is glossed over regularly in traditional entrepreneurial education courses). The slide below features the steps that a startup must go through to get their branding and messaging cogent, and the tools and actions required to go from being a regional startup entity to getting a global partnering campaign launched.
