incubated and backed with a $40 million Series A financing round in 2010, struck a partnership with AstraZeneca that brought in a $240 million upfront cash payment, and much more than that in future milestone payments. The deal was extraordinarily rich for a company with a new technology platform—messenger RNA-based drugs—that hasn’t yet advanced into clinical trials. Flagship isn’t splitting this baby with any other VC firm, and it didn’t even give up any equity to AstraZeneca. CEO Stephane Bancel talks a good game about building a great, big company. You can be assured that chairman Noubar Afeyan, Flagship’s managing partner, wants to make sure he remains the dominant owner as Moderna enters that growth phase.
Domain Associates—The Princeton, NJ and San Diego-based firm has a long history of syndicating with other VC firms, but it recently reduced its need to syndicate. That’s because it found one extremely big friend from Russia. Rusnano, a nanotechnology investment arm of the Russian Federation, agreed to put $760 million into life sciences startups in the U.S. and Russia, with Domain’s help. Domain has used some of that Russian cash to support companies like Lithera in San Diego and Regado Biosciences in Basking Ridge, NJ, as my colleague Bruce Bigelow has reported.
Aside from its Rusnano alliance, Domain recently struck a deal with Lexington, MA-based Cubist Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CBST]]) that gives Cubist the right to acquire one of the companies that was a Domain solo act—San Francisco-based Adynxx. Cubist agreed to pay $20 million upfront for the option to acquire Adynxx, and will pay another $40 million if it exercises the option, Cubist said in a recent regulatory filing. Domain put $18 million to a Series A financing of Adynxx in 2010, which means it has already gotten its money back, could get a 3x return if Cubist exercises its option, and Domain still has upside potential left if Adynxx hits certain development goals.
Avalon Ventures—The San Diego-based venture firm is known for its recent investment success with Zynga, the social game company. But it has put together what it calls a “hat trick” of three straight wins from its life sciences portfolio. Two companies primarily backed by Avalon—RQx Pharmaceuticals and AFraxis—were sold earlier this year to South San Francisco-based Genentech, a unit of Roche. Another company Avalon started, San Diego-based Zacharon Pharmaceuticals, was acquired by San Rafael, CA-based BioMarin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:BMRN]]). Details on these deals are limited, but they appear to have been structured to provide a small amount of money to the little company upfront, allowing shareholders to get a lot more later if the little company hits certain goals. Zacharon raised about $4 million with a post-money valuation of $7.5 million, according to VentureSource data cited by Bruce Booth on his LifeSciVC blog. BioMarin paid $10M upfront and a set of undisclosed milestones. That’s not a windfall in VC terms, but Avalon should have doubled its money on the upfront payment alone. It’s harder to pin down Avalon’s returns on the other acquisitions, because of a lack of disclosure.
Just scanning those headlines alone, it’s pretty easy to conclude that VC firms who go it alone can make money.
Bijan Salehizadeh, a managing director with Navimed Capital, there’s a pattern that you can expect VC firms to continue to follow. “Part of it is a reaction to the sense that there’s a lot of syndicate risk, so people are saying ‘let’s just take that off the table,’” Salehizadeh says.
Another reason VCs are going it alone is they just aren’t that into each other anymore. It’s based on a growing realization that the old model, of 3-4 venture firms pooling resources in a $30 million to $40 million Series A round, often ends up creating dysfunction. When a number of VC firms get board seats at a startup, the firms sometimes end up disagreeing about strategy. Research from Correlation Ventures suggests that startups with multiple VC board members tend to have lower odds of success. Another factor is the simple math. If you’re a VC firm and you are syndicated in a portfolio company with 15 percent ownership of a company that might someday be worth $100 million to $150 million, that’s not a big enough return to move the needle in a VC fund with $300 million or $400 million, Salehizadeh says. Owning a bigger piece of the company is one way to get a bigger return, he says.
The advantages are pretty clear. A go-it-alone VC keeps more ownership, retains more control, and can make board-level decisions quickly. Less time gets wasted on boardroom politics, or analyzing whether your pal at another VC firm will still be in business five years from today.
There are disadvantages, of course, with this approach. There’s more risk. If you have a $300 million venture fund, and want to invest $30 million each in 10 companies as a go-it-alone VC firm, the margin for error is slim. You can only have one or two portfolio companies fail in a basket of 10 companies, before you start putting a lot of extra pressure on the remaining portfolio companies, Salehizadeh says. Scalability is an issue, too. If you’re going to do this roll-up-the-sleeves-and-go-it-alone style of investing, you better have partners who have operating experience and really know what they’re doing. You can’t just hire bright young associates out of Harvard Business School and turn them loose. If you’re a firm like Third Rock, Flagship, Domain, or Avalon, you have experienced people who can do this, but there aren’t that many.
I’ve said before, I’m concerned about the lack of venture capital investment that’s going toward innovative life sciences startups, but I will say that some of the adjustments VCs are making to this reality are encouraging. A few firms will survive. And when they hit it big, they’re really going to hit it big. Venture capital may be becoming a less clubby, less cliquey world, which might be disappointing to some. But if the industry ends up with a small group of really strong VC firms that can dare to dream big, that’s not all bad. Cue up the Fleetwood Mac!
