What’s the Buzz about the The Endeavor Venture Studio
Financing, Growing, Commercializing, Scaling: A Business Model To Build Unicorns
Dr. Martin Alexander Gershon is the Managing Partner and CIO of Endeavor Life Sciences Venture Studio – The Alternative to Accelerators, providing up to $5M USD of funding over four years coupled with very “hands on” guidance and operational and strategic guidance with seasoned entrepreneurs, subject matter experts and business leaders to help grow, scale and commercialize the company’s products or services.
Venture studios create startups by incubating their own ideas or ideas from their partners. The studio’s internal team builds the minimum viable product, then validates the idea by finding product/market fit and early customers. Examples of companies that have emerged from venture studios include the most famous alum, Moderna.
90% of startups fail in the first 3 years. Not because they run out of money as most CEOs believe, but because they don’t know how to put the right team, partnerships, and strategies together and don’t have the team to implement revenue accelerating go-to-market strategies (which are often flawed).
They lack key partnership and collaborators, and are often fearful of sharing their ideas because they believe their product is so unique and so valuable that everyone wants to steal it.
This is just poor judgment and leads to a death spiral of isolation, going it on your own, and ultimately then running out of money and failing. It’s the lack of leadership and vision that leads to running out of money. Not as most CEOs believe, running out of money as the great driver of failure.
Endeavor Venture Studio addresses these problems with proven solutions for success. Once you know how to be successful, you can template it. And that’s what separates Endeavor Venture Fund. We have over 25 years of experience in building and exiting great healthcare and life science businesses, all supported by our ecosystem of Big Tech, Big Pharma, MedTech, Biotech, HealthTech, and Prominent Academic Institutions like Harvard, MIT, Boston University, McGill University, NYU, and Columbia University. We partner with the largest Fortune 500 Companies and greatest institutions to help provide a problem solved ecosystem at the hands of great CEO/Entrepreneurs who are committed to growing, commercializing and scaling the next great healthcare and life science Unicorns.
Endeavor has created an ecosystem that creates resilient CEO/Entrepreneurs and sustainable funding for development, growth, commercialization and scalability from Seed Stage to Series B. Endeavor has designed a funnel within our ecosystem that moves our companies from the Venture Studio, to Venture Fund, and ultimately moves our companies into Corporate Accelerators and Corporate Venture who collectively have dedicated several billion dollars to advance the companies with a clear entry and exit path of increasing investment and integration into their corporate ecosystem leading to eventual acquisition. We believe this Future Proofs our companies, building great leaders, strong teams, and companies that can withstand any crisis.
Access to Business Leaders, Mentors, and Successful Entrepreneur Leaders
The Endeavor Life Sciences Venture Fund and Venture Studio was formed to offer entrepreneurs and CEO founders of Seed to Series A start-ups access to experienced mentors with real-life business experience. With a strong commitment to utilizing the resources of the Endeavor Life Sciences Network, mentors with proven track records work closely with entrepreneurs to build, develop, and grow fundamentally solid companies and forge a strong path to commercialization of innovative healthcare and life science technologies.
The strength of the Endeavor Life Science Fund and Venture Studio is the novel, disruptive, revolutionary technologies and singular commitment to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare, delivering real world measurable impact that empowers patients and healthcare providers.
Rich Network of Corporate, Strategic, Technical, Academic and Investment Partners
The Endeavor Life Science Fund and Venture Studio is dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship, and we believe that for great technology and innovation to have real world impact and a long term sustainable strategy that works, our founder scientists, engineers and physician innovators must also possess a strong entrepreneurial spirit, hone their leadership skills, and fortify real life business acumen, alongside an unrelenting determination and resilience to overcome challenges they will face along the path to commercializing their technologies.
Learn to Better Understand the Needs of Key Stakeholders for the Long Game
The Endeavor Life Science Fund and Venture Studio trains entrepreneurs to think strategically early on in the entrepreneurial process and to consider the needs of key stakeholders, who all speak different languages and require different things from entrepreneurs throughout the entire journey.
The Endeavor Life Science Fund and Venture Studio is committed to providing our companies and founders with a rich network and community of entrepreneurs with proven track records, corporate leaders, government organizations, and regulatory experts world class universities, and engaged investors from Angel to Growth VC to nurture and build effective companies and help build leaders who can navigate this complex process.
In this process The Endeavor Life Science Fund and Venture Studio seeks out industrial, technical, corporate, and strategic collaborators who have strong market expertise, technological and scientific depth, and broad commercial perspective to develop and commercialize breakthrough innovations that solve mission critical health challenges, empowering patients and healthcare providers and improving healthcare outcomes and the quality of our lives.
Wisdom to impart from real-world stakeholders with battle scarred practical experience and proven track records of success
The Endeavor Life Science Fund and Venture Studio network mentors have successfully driven scientific technologies from the lab to commercialization and are dedicated to imparting their hard earned life lessons and sharing the ‘tricks of the trade’ to help entrepreneurs and companies avoid common mistakes in fundraising, IP portfolio protection, clinical trial design, regulatory approvals, corporate governance, and developing and scaling their companies.
Our mentors have practical experience and real world knowledge, to connect with investors by using pitching techniques that are designed to succinctly convey ideas and business models to key stakeholders for financing and partnerships, realizing that it’s critically important to know who to talk to at which stage of the innovation and development process and to be able to build a message of confidence with key stakeholders that the founder has a clear path to successful commercialization.
Regulatory Approval, Intellectual Property Security, Manufacturing, Distribution, and Commercialization Pathway Designs by Experts
Entrepreneurs will learn it’s never too early to think about FDA approval, partnerships, and commercialization, because from a key stakeholder perspective that forward looking vision sets a strong platform for success down the road. Mentors guide entrepreneurs with practical experiences, creativity, proven problem solving techniques, and critical thinking designed to be fast paced, adaptable to dynamic market changes and forward thinking to make sure our entrepreneurs and companies are ahead of the rest of the world. Always playing the long game.
To be able to leverage the best parts of later stage development strategies while you’re still focused on the immediate needs of company development is a life long journey that turns dedicated entrepreneurs into future leaders who can seamlessly transition from start-up, to industry ready, to commercialization and scaling up, to exit. And this forward looking action plan is a critical component for investors showing the strength, vision, courage and sustainability of our entrepreneurs’ character.
What is our Mission?
The Endeavor Life Science Fund and Venture Studio is driven by our core principles to bring together exceptionally talented entrepreneurs, financial, strategic and operational resources, and real-life proven expertise to come together where we can do the greatest good to improve access and delivery of healthcare. We believe passionately that technology and outstanding entrepreneurs with great scientific innovations can play a role in improving health outcomes and providing a real long term pathway for all people to live a healthier life, every day.
We believe that innovations empower patients and healthcare providers and that innovation in healthcare has a vital social impact.
Health has been one of those personal topics we often try not to think or talk about openly, or even to ourselves. We often avoid taking our own health status into account. We instinctively push it to the side, low in the priority hierarchy, and put off the doctor visit, exercise class, or even taking our prescribed medications for another day, a better time. But health has a way of moving in a non-linear fashion, and often unexpectedly, something happens – a sudden illness like cancer or heart disease, a traumatic incident, or a global pandemic. These events change our lives suddenly, and with a flick of a switch health becomes everything, the number one priority not just for you but for your family. At that moment of realization nothing is more important to daily life and happiness than your health and well-being.
Why was the The Endeavor Life Science Fund and Venture Studio Created?
Dr. Martin Gershon established the The Endeavor Venture Fund and Venture Studio in honor of his Grandfather, who died from heart disease and kidney failure, to develop and grow emerging healthcare and life science companies that possess disruptive technologies and transformative innovations that will have an outsized impact on peoples’ health and well-being, creating a healthier, more sustainable world for decades to come.
We are at the dawn of a new investment paradigm. Akin to the industrial revolution. While liquidity is being drawn out from the global capital markets, investment into healthcare has grown and is 5x greater on a relative basis than other sectors. And for good reason. Market size in healthcare is increasing globally, pricing power is supported by government initiatives including a recent authorization of gene therapy for B Thalassemia at a reimbursement of over $2M per patient, access to care is exponentially growing, the ability to bring drugs and devices to market faster and cheaper is accelerating, digital health is empowering healthcare providers, and personalized medicine is empowering patients with wearable sensors, creating a more efficient and effective and expanding healthcare system.
Entrepreneurs take calculated risks to create and commercialize innovations that bring their disruptive technologies from concept, to lab, to commercial reality, to solve real world healthcare problems. The The Endeavor Life Science Fund and Venture Studio creates a collegial and highly professional network that enables great founder entrepreneurs to efficiently navigate those risks and bring great innovative technologies to patients and healthcare providers.
Great entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, and Jeff Bezos, alongside the largest technology companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Oracle, Nvidia, and IBM share a common vision: Science, Medicine, Technology and Innovation in Healthcare Are Converging to Change All of Our Lives Over the Next Decade, and these companies have put a flag in the ground, investing many billions of dollars in healthcare, letting investors know “if you build it we will come”.
Healthcare and Life Sciences companies will reward investors with outsized returns as the convergence of groundbreaking science and strong core business fundamentals integrates into the core competencies of Big Tech.
Our job as investors and entrepreneurs is to be at the tip of this spear.
The Endeavor Life Sciences Fund and Venture Studio acts as a Core Strategic Advisor and Impact Partner: Offering entrepreneur founders/CEOs the ability to Learn, Grow, Develop and Scale
The Endeavor Life Science Fund and Venture Studio is working in collaboration with world class corporate partners, ivy league institutions, and syndicate investment collaborators to demystify the groundbreaking new innovations in science, medicine and technology and change how people think about, talk about, monitor, and prioritize their health status.
A. Hands-on Virtual and Live introductions to Investors of multiple types who are specifically focused on investing in healthcare and life science companies: Angels Investors, Family Funds, Private Banks, Venture Investors, Sovereign Wealth Funds, and Strategic Investors. Raising capital can be a stressful part of an entrepreneur’s journey. Our team of mentors provide real-world techniques and insights about the fundraising process to empower entrepreneurs to be better communicators for presentations and stronger negotiators with investors.
Scientific expert entrepreneurs are poorer communicators in their own domain than non-experts. This skill becomes particularly important with investors and stakeholders who are not subject matter experts.
As part of this integral process Dr. Gershon personally accompanies all companies to virtual and live investor meetings, putting his thumbprint on the due diligence package that Gershon Capital assists in building out to professional level standards.
B. Development of vital Strategic and Corporate Partners for licensing, direct investment, clinical support and manufacturing, logistics, sales and go to market collaborations, and Operational Partners including prominent universities for collaboration with wet labs, Engineering assistance, Computer Science labs, Legal assistance with Intellectual Property and Trade Secret compliance, and some of the world’s most talented scientists, engineers, clinicians and fully staffed Clinical Research Centers.
C. Access to trusted FDA Experts and Regulatory Government Organizations, to guide companies early in the journey. 90+% of companies don’t do this right and it costs the company time, money and personnel.
D. Hands-on Operational Support with Harvard Business School Alumni for Board Member, C-Suite, Partnerships, Manufacturing and Supply Chain essentials.
E. Optimize and Accelerate Proven Go-to-Market Strategies including pricing, reimbursement, market size analysis, definition of use cases and diagnosis coding, manufacturing, distribution, and logistics, competitive market dynamic analysis, and leveraged partnerships with industry leading strategics to drive market penetration and sales.
F. Real-Life Case Studies to Inspire Entrepreneurs to Learn from Mistakes, Adapt, and Grow Stronger. Everyone makes mistakes. You are no different. You’ll make mistakes as you go on with your life. So don’t worry about making mistakes. There’s no way I’m going to make a lot of business and investment decisions without making some mistakes. I may try to minimize them. I don’t dwell on them at all. I don’t look back. Our mentors teach entrepreneurs to accept your mistakes, learn from them and move on. Better yet, learn from someone else’s mistakes as you don’t want to make too many mistakes in life.
H. Practical Training Modules to Become More Focused and Disciplined. Success comes rather easily when you are focused. Being focused means saying no to things that do not add value to your life. Your time and energy are limited. The more widely you spread your energies, the less you can spend on any one activity Our mentors train entrepreneurs that focus is the vital ingredient of the recipe for success. Putting all your energy into the pursuit of your goal with a single-minded effort will help you become a changemaker.
I. Real-Life Case Studies to Train Entrepreneurs to Make Better Decisions by being Patient/Thinking Fast and Slow. Most people worry too much. They can’t just sit still and wait. They hate inactivity. Our mentors teach entrepreneurs that good things come to those who wait. So practice the art of patience. It is the key to success. When you can’t find the right partner, the right investor, the right manufacturer that meets your criteria, don’t settle because you will regret it. In this world, everyone craves instant gratification. We believe that it’s important for entrepreneurs to understand that working with persistence and patience is the proven recipe for success.
What is Our “Skin-in-the-Game” Business Model: Removing Risk and Adding Value
The Endeavor Venture Fund and Venture Studio creates opportunities for early stage companies to flourish and grow, and this process provides a platform that ideally leads to a direct investment as part of a syndicate into the Endeavor Venture Fund II. During the course of the Venture Studio Initiative which is 9-12 months Endeavor Life Sciences takes a Board Seat and equity in the company in lieu of other payments for services in the accelerator and mentorship initiative.
As the syndication of our accelerator portfolio companies mature, Gershon Capital early in the process is in communication with our over 200 venture syndicate partners to prepare VC investors for later rounds of investment in Series B, C and eventually exit.
We believe that our network creates a safety net that protects early stage companies from falling into the “Valley of Death” and that by structuring sound companies with strong fundamental corporate and financial structure and partners companies will be better prepared to weather economic disruptions, often leading to destruction of value and chaotic decision making.
Our Accelerator and Mentorship Initiative De-risks the Investment for Investors Increasing Your Chances of Successful Financing and Partnering
The Endeavor Life Science Fund and Venture Studio believes that our mentor and advisor team process significantly de-risks investments, not only preparing the entrepreneur and company for accelerating development and growth but also by actively receiving feedback from investors, corporate, academic, and industry partners throughout the journey, identifying how the company can better align its goals with investors goals to warrant further financing for further development, commercial launch and growth.
For Endeavor Life Science Fund and Venture Studio and our team it’s all about groundbreaking, disruptive innovation in healthcare. Not for the sake of innovation in the abstract. Not because innovation has a cool wow factor, But because innovation in healthcare and life sciences when directed at solving real life human problems empowers patients, provides decision making tools for doctors, advances the effectiveness of medicine and helps people live more fulfilled, healthier, happier, and longer lives.
Make value your North Star
Innovation in healthcare is about improving the human condition.
If there’s one thing that Covid has taught us, we are all connected, susceptible, fragile, and we need science and medicine and innovation just as much as we need water and oxygen.
Entrepreneurs in healthcare and life sciences are likely to be the next great wave of innovators as scientific discoveries, medicine, and technology are coming together in a tsunami of breakthroughs that have the potential to significantly change all our lives, improving quality of life and life expectancy.
The ripple effects from this tsunami are global and multi-decade creating a momentum for a better world.
I am all in! Come join our incredible team of entrepreneurs. We accelerate your dreams.
Dr. Martin Gershon
Managing Partner and CIO, Endeavor Venture Fund and Venture Studio
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