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NETWORK

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“A strategic partner that excels at execution. A steward of capital that anticipates pivots. Mike has boundless energy and if he promises you can expect him to over-deliver.”

— Rich Diemer, Co-Founder, Co-Chair & Treasurer CAV Angels

Our approach is built from the ground-up to align founders with life science tools investors to build transformative companies serving life science.

 

The Thielsen network has both a breadth and depth of technical expertise, current life science tools investors, and operators in the space. In our diligence process as well an actionable part of our post-investment process, we leverage the centuries of experience in this network to provide guidance to our portfolio companies.
 

46%

of network members

have a Ph.D. or M.D.

42%

are operators or

researchers in life science

Why does this matter?

For Founders

  • Raising seed stage financing from a (generally) non-technical audience is time-consuming, slow, and distracts from the core work of tech de-risking and work with early customers.

  • There is substantial value creation between seed and subsequent rounds (often exceeding 5X), but a valley of death between friends and family and Series A, and there are few experienced operators who have been there before.

  • Capital is a commodity, and must be paired with the right strategic and operational advice early, with a keen focus on commercial execution. 

  • We are focused on building value from our first call to diligence – regardless if we choose to invest.  If we do invest, we offer a formalized acceleration process through activating our network.

For Investors

  • We leverage our advantage in understanding deep life science tech to assess and understand technical risk, determine the status of retiring this risk, and can access companies earlier in their journey.

  • We use both our network, a proven playbook for high performance, and access to SMEs to perform technical and practical use diligence with researchers and scientists who would be the end customers of any solution.  

  • Our target companies possess mitigated and constrained commercial risk (it takes a specific set of business and commercial development steps to establish PMF).

  • Tools and infrastructure are the recipients of the surge in funding in biotech, who are the end customers. 

  • Every network member is a Venture Partner.

For Both

Target companies may have non-binary outcomes (e.g. tuck in acquisition rather than Series A etc.) which does not fit a traditional fund.  We cultivate strategic optionality at every stage of the business.

LEADERSHIP

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Mike Stadnisky, Ph.D. is the managing director of Thielsen Capital. He is the former CEO of DNA Nanotechnology startup Phitonex (exited to ThermoFisher NYSE: TMO, 2020); Worldwide VP/GM Informatics of Becton, Dickinson and Company Life Sciences; and CEO of life science informatics company FlowJo (exited to Becton Dickinson NYSE: BDX, 2017).  He is an author of 10 patents; won a 2020 GOOD DESIGN® Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies; and won the 2019 International Society for the Advancement of Cytometry Innovation Award.  

 

He has taught at MIT Sloan and has won and competed in running races from 30 to 100 miles.   He is the author of the upcoming book Level 11 Negotiation which synthesizes the approaches, psychology, and neuroscience of high-performance negotiators.

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Alex Roederer is founding Vice President of Thielsen Capital. He was an early investor in Phitonex (exited to ThermoFisher NYSE: TMO, 2020).  Alex leads the firm's pipeline, due diligence, and IC efforts. He has a BS in Biochemistry from the University of Washington, is a 4th year PhD student at Harvard, and his work has been featured in Science and Cell. 

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