Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the September 10,
2003 issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Epigenesis Investors: Care Capital
Epigenesis is alive today in part because of the
considerable
clout that Care Capital brings to the funding table. Among the
founding
partners is Jan Leschly, former CEO of SmithKline Beecham, and Jerry
Karabelas, former CEO of Worldwide Pharmaceuticals at Novartis has
joined the firm.
“Companies look for us where Jan Leschly’s and Jerry Karabelas’
experience could be helpful,” says David Ramsay, a Care Capital
partner.
Epigenesis’s money comes from the $130 million collected so far in
Care Capital’s second funding round. Care Capital’s first round
brought
$100 million, divided among five or six investments that are doing
well.
“We helped the company reinvent itself,” says Ramsay.
“That
involved focusing less on a discovery platform and long term, blue
sky investment and more on very specific product development. The
approach we took reflected the realities of a very difficult financing
environment.”
“It was a fair amount of work — to narrow down the business
focus to the most important product and raise the funds to develop
that to proof of concept and bring in a management team whose
expertise
was relevant to that strategy,” he says.
“We have a lot of portfolio companies with productive and
aggressive
scientists who come up with a lot of ideas, and we help them
concentrate
on those with the most commercial potential.”
Care Capital LLC, 47 Hulfish Street, Suite 310,Princeton 08540. Jan Leschly, chairman/CEO. 609-683-8300; fax,609-683-5787.Home page: www.carecapital.comTop Of PageNJTC Venture Capital FundJim Gunton, a partner with the New Jersey TechnologyCouncil Venture Capital Fund, says the imprimatur of Care Capitalhelped the partners at the fund decide to invest in Epigenesis.Founded in December, 2000, the NJTC Venture Fund has a proprietaryaffiliation with the New Jersey Technology Council, the businessnetworkingorganization. Limited partners include the NJ Economic DevelopmentAuthority, Commerce Bank, Merrill Lynch, and Kemper Insurance.Designated as an SBIC fund, it can get up to $50 million from theSmall Business Administration, which makes it the largest early stagefund focusing on the New Jersey market.Its first funding round was $80 million. Epigenesis is one of itsfirst investments, along with Incurrent Solutions, KidBiz, ManagementDynamics, Netilla Networks, Quantiva, Telelogue, and TeltierTechnologies.The fund seeks to invest in companies ranging from very early seedstage through those with annual revenues of $5 million.”We invested in Epigenesis for a few reasons,” says Gunton.”They had an experienced team that knew the industry and knewhow to grow a small company, and a world class scientist had puttogetherthe technology.”Second, because of some ups and downs the company was sufferingthrough,the valuation was at a bargain price despite having had millions ofdollars poured into it from international pharmaceuticalcompanies.”Of great importance was the leadership of Care Capital, which promisedto put its own money in and round up other monies to get the companythrough expensive clinical trial crisis.”And among the smaller benefits,” says Gunton, ” is that one ofthe people on our healthcare advisory board for NJTC, Zola Horowitz,happens to be on the board of directors for this company, so we hadspecial insight.”Says Gunton: “The short version is that when you are a startupyou need to have some kind of differentiator, either a unique domainand expertise or a set of customer relationships to drive earlygrowth.It is difficult to convince the skeptical investor that you candifferentiatefrom the other 10,000 startups.”— Barbara FoxNJTC Venture Fund, 1001 Briggs Road, Suite 280,Mount Laurel 08054. Jim Gunton, general partner. 856-273-6800; fax,856-787-9800. Home page: www.njtcvc.comPrevious StoryNext StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
