Partner at Brightlands Venture Partners | Venture Capital | Healthcare and Life Sciences | MSc PhD
It’s a wrap! The 2024 edition of the MedTech Strategist Innovation Summit in Dublin is in the books.🍀 It was a pleasure to (re)connect with MedTech start-ups and investors. Great to have three Brightlands Venture Partners portfolio companies in attendance: Hy2Care® BV, TripleMed and the latest member of the BVP family (soon to be announced! 😎 ). My 5 key take-aways of the summit: 1. The MedTech field keeps producing innovative solutions that will significantly enhance treatment outcomes in a cost-effective manner. MedTech therefore remains a key pillar for future-proofing our healthcare systems. 2. Strategics are acquiring MedTech start-ups later and later, often necessitating start-ups to go commercial stage themselves. Hence, having a strategy from the get-go to work towards a self-sustaining company post-regulatory clearance is increasingly critical for start-ups. 3. In reaction to strategics acquiring MedTech start-ups later, larger VCs are generally also moving to later stages for their initial investments. This is slowly but surely starting to lead to a valley of death at the earlier stages. 4. Start-ups and investors jointly need to ensure capital efficiency and realistic valuations at early stages, as otherwise the math won’t work at later deal stages (typically leading to later-stage investors not willing to engage at all 😟). 5. Reimbursement and Regulatory are not the same. MedTech start-ups were historically laser-focused on obtaining regulatory clearance. However, given that start-ups might have to go commercial prior to acquisition nowadays, understanding what it takes to achieve reimbursement is as important as understanding the regulatory pathway. Thanks for hosting this incredible event MedTech Strategist. Looking forward to next years edition!
Investing in Dutch Life Sciences companies, PhD BScEng
10moLinn Bäckegren Nina S.