NanoBusiness Alliance Meeting: Preview of Nanotech Venture Capital Panel

As I mentioned in a previous post, I will participate in a panel at the NanoBusiness Alliance meeting called Nanotech Venture Capital: Opportunity, Issues and Challenges starting at 4:00 PM on Thurs., May 17th. Here I offer a preview for those who will be there, or a taste of it, for those who can’t come.

The panel is moderated by David Dykeman, a patent attorney and a partner of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge LLP, a law firm specializing in intellectual property, with a heavy interest in nanotechnology. Besides me, the panel will include: Robert Paull, the Co-Founder and managing partner of Lux Capital, one of the few venture capital firms that specializes in nanotechnology; and David Chen, a general partner with OVP Venture Parners, which funds technology start-ups, primarily in the Pacific Northwest. David is also chairman of the Oregon Nanosciences and Microtechnologies Institute, a partnership between government, business and academia in the state of Oregon.

Now you may think that panel discussions at business meetings are all ad-libbed affairs—au contraire—we have actually exchanged e-mails and held a conference call to organize this panel, at David Dykeman’s initative. So, what will this expertly pre-programmed panel cover?

First we will have an overview of what sort of technologies venture capitalists are now willing to fund. Robert Paull has promised to provide some actual statistics. A significant question will be: what ways have things been changing recently in terms of VC funding? One answer: Funding is moving away from strictly nanomaterials deals toward applications oriented technology. For instance, Nanosphere, a medical diagnostics firm, just pulled down a hefty $57 million in venture funding.

Next we will talk about where the venture financing opportunities lie presently in nanotech. My answer was that opportunity now abounds in energy (for a preview, see this recent blog entry). With gasoline edging $3.00 a gallon, prospects for nanotech energy solutions are looking brighter than ever. Another bright area would be new therapies and diagnostics made available by nanomedicine. Bonus question: what will be the first nanotech enabled blockbuster drug? Answer: Abraxane, a cancer drug from Abraxis Biosciences is way out in front of all competitors at this point.

At this point, our moderator will provide some background info on patent filings, who is filing patents on what technologies from what universities or companies and what are the leading geographical regions. Hint: U.S. is still no. 1, but there’s a lot of activity in Japan and China.

The evolution of nanotech patent issues will be compared with biotech. The basic feeling is that nanotech is now about where biotech was, back in the seventies and eighties; i.e. with overly broad patents being granted and an overwhelmed and understaffed U.S. patent office.

We will spend some time on communication issues, i.e. how do nanotech nerds talk to the financial types that are the gatekeepers for venture capital. Also, we may also discuss the recent trend of nanotech firms eliminating the prefix “nano” from their names (eg the rebranding of Nanopharma as Mersana Therapeutics). What does it mean? Does “nano” carry too much negative baggage? Is this like when all the dot-com companies dropped their .com’s?

By now, the panel discussion will probably running late, and we’ll need to stop and take some questions from the audience, but in case there is still time we may take up a few other esoteric issues, like: What advantages to publicly traded VC firms like Arrowhead Research or Harris & Harris have in funding nano vs. traditional partnerships? And what is Wall Street looking for in nanotech start-ups?

Or it’s possible that we’ll get off on some tangent and none of the above discussion will occur. That’s the way things frequently happen in these panels. But maybe we’re more organized than most.

Hope to see you there. And if you do show, please come up and identify yourself as a blog reader. I like meeting my audience.