BIOTECanada
ONTARIO
Q&A Andrew Casey, BIOTECanada Biotechnology Focus goes one-on-one with BIOTECanada CEO and president Andrew Casey to discuss the organization’s recent CEO Investor Conference in Whistler, its plans for the upcoming BIO International Conference in Philadelphia, PA and to get his take on the state of the industry in Canada.
Q: Your organization recently hosted its 10th annual investor summit in Whistler, BC, what was the turnout like, and who attended? We had a lot of people coming up from the U.S. which was very encouraging, both in the form of VC’s and also strong representation from pharma investment and R&D arms. In total, I think we had close to 70 attendees. We really wanted to maintain that intimacy because we find that’s what really works. As a small company attending you know you’re going to get time to spend with Johnson and Johnson, Versant Ventures or CTI Lifesciences. To keep it small, we did have to turn a few people away which is a very good sign and indicative of what’s happening in the industry. There’s a real sort of feeling we’re in an upswing and the energy feels very positive right now. It’s a little like what you’re seeing with the Bloom Burton Healthcare Investor Conference where it’s growing by leaps and bounds. Brian Bloom wants to turn that event into a JP Morgan of the North where everybody comes to that event and builds in side events and while not on the same scale, I think we’re seeing the same thing with the Whistler event. The quality of the presentations was outstanding by the companies. We put together an advisory group this year to help vet the companies to make sure the companies that came were in the right state, ready for that investor audience. Some companies weren’t even there looking for money, they were looking for licensing or partnership opportunities, like the business development people from big pharma.
Q: In terms of the biotech companies that attended, was there good representation from across the country? Yes, we try to balance it out, so we had a couple from Québec and Ontario. Obviously due to the location, BC had a strong presence. From a presentation company standpoint it was balanced across the country, we even had a company from PEI.
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Biotechnology Focus
June/July 2015
Canada Place Opening: Andrew Casey with Hazel McCallion (left).
Q: What were some of the takeaways from your roundtables of VC’s and industry leaders at this event? There were a lot of good things that came out of it starting with who was there. When you looked around there was probably over a billion dollars in investment money in the room which was really exciting. Many of the big name venture firms were there including Versant Ventures, CTI Life Sciences and Teralys Capital, in addition to SR1. A lot of investment money and a lot of expertise. We changed the format up a bit as well. Under the old format, Friday was the reception and Saturday we would have five companies presenting to investors and then you go off and ski. We would have a reception again on Saturday night, and start the whole thing over on Sunday. This time around people were coming in as early as Thursday night, so we started the conference early on Friday with some mentorship sessions. One featured a successful company answering questions on best practices. We followed that up with a panel featuring one of the lead legal firms that puts together the deals, one of the VC’s and also one of the pharma guys. I said to all the companies that were coming
