“How to Impress Investors with your Business Plan Financials”

During the April 2021 Forum, a panel of seasoned entrepreneurs and other experts provided their perspectives on this critical topic for early stage startups. (First couple of minutes are missing from the video due to technical glitch.)

Moderator:

Jack Miner Chief Investment Officer, TEDCO. At TEDCO, Jack stewards diligence and investment processes, leads the Builder, Seed and Maryland Venture Funds and investment portfolios to maximize the financial return, and ensures a lasting impact for the State of Maryland. He reports to the CEO providing insight to advance TEDCO’s investment activities, leads investment teams, completes all investment transactions, effectively maintains portfolio development and ensures compliance with all investment policies and guidelines. Jack recently spearheaded 20Fathom’s HealthSpark in Traverse City, Michigan to engage provider, payor, and patient organizations to provide support for rural healthcare and this underserved patient population. Jack’s most recent leadership position was at Cleveland Clinic Ventures as Managing Director where he spearheaded the development of a new corporate venture team for investing in internal startups and external early-stage companies while managing these companies with appropriate governance and oversight. Jack also deployed a robust investment process to co-invest in companies that were strategic to the Clinic. Before joining Cleveland Clinic Ventures, Jack worked for the University of Michigan as Director of the Venture Center where he championed the Mentor-in-Residence Program, the Business Formation Team, and the Venture Accelerator under the Office of Technology Transfer to accelerate new startup ventures to the marketplace. He achieved top status in the industry with over 300 companies in the portfolio. Jack was part of Computer Associates before it went public on the NYSE and subsequently was acquired. Jack also served in senior management and board positions for Enhale Medical, Custom Orthopedics, Juventas Therapeutics, and Navigate Cardiac Structures, among others.

Panelists:

Jeffrey Basch Co-founder and CFO, Fifth Eye Inc. Jeff co-founded Fifth Eye, an Ann Arbor venture funded company that develops intuitive real-time clinical analytics to improve patient outcomes and reduce hospital costs. In March, Fifth Eye received their FDA De Novo grant authorizing the commercial launch of their Analytic for Hemodynamic Instability, known as AHI. AHI can continuously monitor any patient with an ECG for hemodynamic instability — a leading cause of death for critically ill or injured patients. Jeff built his broadly adaptive skills over 14 years at early-stage start-ups and 17 years at General Electric. He started his 30-year career as a chemical engineer in a manufacturing plant. After a stint in research and development, he followed one of his products to a sales and marketing position in Automotive. As a sales manager he was directly responsible for contracts worth over $30M a year. When Jeff left GE in 2007, he was managing a team of 19 spread across North America and responsible for over $200M in annual revenue. Jeff officially joined the start-up finance world in 2008 as business manager for Accio Energy. He has been CFO of Fifth Eye since its founding in 2018. Jeff has now managed early-stage financing of over $20M from a broad array of sources including multimillion dollar transactions with venture capitalists, angels, and US and State agencies such as the Department of Energy, Department of Defense and Public Service Agencies. Jeff has built financial systems from the ground up to support the most rigorous requirements of venture capitalist and government agency audits. His experience in many different functional areas allows him to speak the language of all customers. Jeff views Finance as a cross functional role whose mission is to make others successful with strategies developed from credible and timely data.

John Freshley – President, Fresh Venture Development & Co-Founder, Bioscience Navigators. Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, John Prista Freshley is a high-energy entrepreneur, company builder and leader that has founded, launched, and/or led 10 early-stage life science companies over the past two decades. Currently, as President & Owner of Fresh Venture Development and Co-Founder of Bioscience Navigators, John is focused on being “helpful” to scientists, founders, and/or companies within the entrepreneurial ecosystems of Michigan and Portugal as an advisor and/or in interim leadership roles. Within Michigan, he serves as Executive Chairman of Curio Genomics, Head of Corporate Development for Asalyxa Bio, and Venture Partner at Orange Grove Bio. In Portugal, he serves as an Advisor to A5 Ventures, an advisor to P-Bio (the Portuguese biotech association), and a faculty mentor to ITQB Start-up, a collaboration of life science research institutions from around Portugal that is based out of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, where he coaches 6+ teams annually to plan the launch of new start-up concepts. Outside of Michigan and Portugal, John also serves as Interim EVP of GenomiCare, Inc, where he is leading the launch of a real-world evidence (RWE) clinical genomics company to serve pharma and biotech interested in high quality, patient-centric real-world oncology data in Chinese patient populations. Previously, from 2013 through April 2019, John served as President & CEO of ONL Therapeutics, an emerging ophthalmology company focused on preventing the death of retinal cells, the leading cause of permanent vision loss. Prior to ONL, he led the launch of Compendia Bioscience in 2006 as its Start-Up CEO for 2 years. He continued to serve the company for another 4 years as Chief Business Officer until its acquisition by Life Technologies (now Thermo Fisher) in 2012. 

Mike Klein CEO, Genomenon, Inc. Mike is the CEO of Genomenon, an Ann Arbor venture funded company, commercializing a genomic search engine that leverages Artificial Intelligence to organize the world’s genomic knowledge and put it at the fingertips of clinicians to diagnose patients suffering from rare diseases and cancer, and researchers to create precision medicine targeted at these diseases. Prior to this, Mike was a 4-time serial entrepreneur with several successful exits under his belt and 30 years of CEO experience starting, building and growing high tech, software companies. He wrote the business plan for his first company, Steeplechase Software, while in the MBA program at the University of Michigan and started the company in 1993. Steeplechase was #89 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies when it was sold to Schneider Automation in 2000. In 2001, he led a turnaround at Interlink Networks.  In 2008, Mike joined Online Tech as Co-CEO, and sold the company 4 years later for a 10X return to its investors.

SpellBound, an Ann Arbor-based augmented reality company, has received an $1.8 million fast track grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to study opioid use in pediatric cancer patients. Details of the award were covered in a recent story published online by WDIV.

As reported, the study will measure the effects of SpellBound’s augmented reality scavenger hunt, ARISE, on the length of hospital stay and opioid use by pediatric cancer patients after surgery. The fast track grant allows SpellBound to accelerate the study by combining phase 1 and phase 2 trials to test feasibility and perform clinical trials. With the grant funds, SpellBound will provide support resources for research hospitals in the study, hire more engineers and evolve ARISE. The study will begin this month at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers in Houston, Texas.

SpellBound CEO and Founder Christina York was the Showcase presenter at the New Enterprise Forum in May 2017. Christina comes from a user experience background and spent 15 years designing technology solutions for health care and higher ed, building high-performing teams and managing 7-figure budgets. She holds a B.Sc. in Biochemistry and a Master’s in Information Science and is active in the STEM movement in southeastern Michigan. Over the past few years, her startup has won numerous awards and received venture funding from multiple angel funds. Spellbound is used by child life specialists, rehabilitation engineers and nurses across the United States and around the world in countries like Kenya and Japan. More information about the company and its solutions can be found at the SpellBound website.

Mercy Education Project team, comprised of Highschool girls won funding for their pilot project Rock City Mobility Stations.

When the 11th grade girls of Mercy Education Project were asked about mobility in their neighborhood, Southwest Detroit, they identified two key concerns: Getting around safely and feeling isolated from the greater city. Because Detroit is so geographically large and lacks an all-encompassing and dynamic transportation and communication system, these young residents feel disconnected. Rock City Mobility Stations look at mobility through the eyes of youth who are not able to utilize a car, but still need to get around their city, while also contributing to a quality visitor, tourist and worker experience.

Click here to learn more about the Michigan Central Station challenge and all the winners.

Vic Havele, Manjiree Nikam, and Robert Shannon coached Mercy Education Project Team at TechTown in Detroit. Bill McPherson, David Rish, Vic Havele and Bob Shannon coached several other finalists.

As part of this challenge, Ford Mobility sought written proposals from around the country and selected twelve teams as finalists to revitalize Detroit’s oldest neighborhood-Corktown, around Michigan Central station. Ford requested New Enterprise Forum to help these finalists prepare 5-minute pitches to judges in order to win pilot funding for their mobility solutions, based on Ford’s evaluation criteria. The competition took place on Jan 23^rd.  Finale Event was held in Detroit on January 30^th.

Throughout the fall semester of 2019, several New Enterprise Forum members headed to the Ross School of Business every Wednesday evening to volunteer as mentors in an innovative educational experience called "Financing Technology Commercialization: A Venture Capital Practicum". The course paired up nineteen student teams with nineteen entrepreneurs who are seeking investment in their startup companies. With guidance from their assigned mentors the students developed value propositions, business plans and pitch decks for the startups. The climax of the course came in mid-December when the students took turns making their investment pitches to a panel of judges with deep experience in venture capital investing. In addition to providing an unusual 'real-life' educational experience for the students, the course helped the entrepreneurs fine tune their business plans and gain connections in the investment community.

The course was conceived by David J. Brophy, one of the leaders of the Zell Lurie Institute at the Ross School of Business. Professor Brophy joined the finance faculty at the University of Michigan in 1968 and has served since 1992 as Director of the Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance, where he assists emerging and mid-size companies.

A number of New Enterprise Forum members have been involved in the development of the course over the last several years. One of Brophy's key staff members for the course was Stewart Nelson, Past President and long time Board Member of the New Enterprise Forum. With fellow NEF Board Member Gary Hazen, Stew created the Entrepreneur’s Equity Roadmap, a crucial element of the course curriculum.  Current NEF members who volunteered as mentors this year included Francis Glorie, Matt Hulbert, Vic Havele, Paul Henchey, Ravi Nigam and Stefan Sysko.