Attended: Keiretsu Forum

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending the Keiretsu Forum’s Life Science Forum. This invitation-only event resembled UltraLightStartups in that it allowed each company to present for 20 minutes (an eternity! ULS gives you ONE MINUTE!), then the entrepreneurs left the room while the investors discussed the pros and cons of the company.

In general, the presentations were interesting, but sadly, no one presenter blew me away, but if I were investing, there were three companies I *might* consider:

Aesthetic Factors, which has developed a proprietary product for facial aesthetic treatment. The product, market and team were stellar. My hesitation there is around intellectual property.
Immunomic Therapeutics, which has developed a proprietary vaccine technology platform, which they’re applying to the allergy immunotherapy market. Stellar team with a fantastic track record.
Makefield Therapeutics which has two late-stage pre-clinical products based on a nanotech delivery platform. Again, a stellar team.

There were a number of presenters that really wasted their 20 minutes, using too many charts, financial statements, and scientific diagrams (boring!). Plus, a few just didn’t have the answers the investors were looking to have answered. Bad preparation does not an investment gain.

But there was one tremendous development: Here’s something I’ve been recommending and finally saw an early-stage biotech company using Twitter! Dr. Bill Hearl, C.E.O. of Immnomix and a serial entrepreneur himself, said he tweets as @immunomix. He admitted it during the presentation and encouraged the investors to follow him. In conversation with him after the meeting, he told me he tries to Tweet at least weekly, hasn’t yet attracted the investors on Twitter, but he knows it’s worthwhile and has incorporated tweeting into his weekly routine.

This isn’t a big deal to those of us who blog and tweet on a daily basis, but after going to countless emerging biotech events, it’s nice to start to see a company doing this.

Kudos Dr. Hearl!