Invasion of the Equity Investors Program

Sponsored by: Innovate@BU & Technology Development

Are you looking to pitch an idea or find out if your idea is equity fundable? Our equity investors are looking to help BU people with their ideas. An equity investor is a person with money or access to other people’s money with the intent to invest in new companies through companies’ stock/shares. We have arranged for both angel investors, corporate venture capitalists and venture capitalists to come to our campus to meet with BU researchers at select times during the fall and spring semesters.

We invite you to schedule a 30-minute appointment to pitch* your idea to one of these equity investors one-on-one, in a friendly environment. The equity investors will hold informational office hours on BU’s Charles River Campus each month at the Photonics Center. Each session will be comprised of 30-minute sessions with scheduled faculty, doctoral students, postdocs, residents who would like to pitch an idea

This is neither “coffee with investors” nor is this Shark Tank. These people are here to meet with and discuss your ideas: whether it is investable, what to consider if it is not, what milestones will be important for you to advance your idea, and other comments about the idea and your pitch. Use this as a genuine sounding board for your idea, a friendly but serious opportunity to talk with an investor without worrying about reputation or a second chance. They are volunteering to come here knowing most of the ideas they see will be early or possibly not investable but wanting still to be helpful to BU researchers to advance your idea.

Each investor will have a particular sector in which they are interested: Med Devices and Diagnostics, Software & Hardware, and Life Sciences (therapeutics). Be sure to identify the right sector investor for your idea; investors with expertise and interest outside of your sector will not be interested in talking with you.

To schedule an appointment with an investor below, please send a pitch deck to Rana K Gupta, rkgupta@bu.edu, Director, Faculty Entrepreneurship. Rana will share the slides with the investor in advance of your meeting. Preference will be given to faculty, doctoral students, postdocs, and residents.

Office hours will be held in the Photonics Building Boardroom on the 9^th Floor (PHO930). You’ll meet for 30 minutes. I’ve allotted three meetings per Invading Investor visit.

Carl: October 28^th starting at 10:30
Johannes: November 2^nd starting at 10:30

Carl M Berke, PhD

Sectors of Interest: Drug, Diagnostic, Device, Digital, Delivery

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Carl is a Partner at Mass General Brigham Venture Fund in Cambridge, investing in new biomedical technologies emerging from Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham & Womens Hospital and Mass Eye & Ear. He is also currently a Founding Director of Mass Medical Angels LLC, a local investment group dedicated to seed stage investment in biomedical innovation. His career has spanned over 25 years in the practice and management of innovation to bring new technologies from lab to market. As a bench scientist and R&D director, he worked at Polaroid Corporation and Hygeia Sciences in the development of photographic and clinical diagnostic products – he is an inventor on 6 US patents. He served as a Partner at Integral/Analysis Group, a management consultancy focused on innovation strategy. He has served on the following board of directors: Quosa (publishing software), Kasalis (robotics), Annovation (safer anesthetics), Combinent (drug delivery), Sebacia (acne treatment), Infobionic (cardiac monitoring), QPID Health (bioinformatics), LifeImage (diagnostic image sharing), Syntimmune (autoimmune therapy), Argo Cardiovascular, Walden Bioscience (renal disease), Pykus Therapeutics (ophthalmology), Starlight Cardio (pediatric device), Walden Bioscience (renal disease), Lyndra (drug delivery), SeQure Dx (gene-editing therapy) and the Sudanese Education Fund (philanthropy). Carl holds an AB degree from Cornell University and received his PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley. He also holds an appointment as Lecturer in the in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Division.

Dr. Johannes Paefgen

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Johannes Paefgen is Director at Hilti’s Technology Office in Boston, from where he facilitates startup partnerships and investments focused on construction technology. Prior to this role, Johannes was VP for R&D at Hilti’s Business Unit Tool Services, bringing new SaaS and IoT solutions to market maturity. He holds BSc and MSc degrees in Engineering from ETH Zurich, and a PhD in Information Systems from the Business School of St. Gallen, Switzerland.

Stay tuned for additional, new investors, including corporate VCs.

^* For your meeting, we recommend your pitch be 10 of the 30 minutes, leaving 20 minutes for discussion. Also, if you wish to show slides on your computer, please limit the pitch deck to 10 slides. If you would like assistance to develop or hone your pitch, please contact Rana K. Gupta to help you create or refine your pitch deck.