Staff Report
Published Oct. 6, 2011
Hatteras Venture Partners is looking to set up presentations with S.C. life sciences companies during a conference next month in Charleston.
The company is focusing on the Southeast with a new $125 million fund for early stage life science innovation companies.
Hatteras invests in biopharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostic, and health care IT and services companies. Investments average $2 million to $5 million. Hatteras also is looking for syndication partners, according to a news release from the firm, and it often works with the venture capital arms of the pharmaceutical industry.
Michael Dial, an associate for Hatteras Venture Partners, said the firm has allocated some funds for seed capital, acknowledging that companies might need $50,000 to $250,000 even in the project stage.
"The Southeast region is home to strong academic medical centers, and we found that if you look at the levels of National Institutes of Health funding, which is a good proxy for innovation, the Southeast actually receives more NIH dollars than California, yet receives approximately one-fifth the level of venture funding," Dial said.
The company will look at presentations during SCBIO’s Creating Wow! life science conference Nov. 9 and 10 at the Mills House Hotel in Charleston.
Dial said Hatteras does not follow the pattern of other venture capital firms that have stopped early stage funding. It is finding ripe deals in the Southeast because the region has been underdeveloped, he said.
Hatteras has completed 12 deals from its third fund of $83 million and has closed out its first round of $74 million of the targeted $125 million fund.
Dial was previously a vice president in Silicon Valley Bank's corporate finance group, where he focused on emerging life science companies.
He has held research scientist positions in the biochemistry department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Laboratory of Structural Biology at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the UNC-Duke Michael Hooker Proteomics Center. He has performed research in the fields of cell cycle regulation, proteomics and cancer therapy.
Contact SCBIO via email to set up a presentation for Hatteras during the conference. Interested companies must complete a form, instructions and create a presentation. The deadline for submission and completed forms to SCBIO is Oct. 14. Every completed form will be submitted to Hatteras.
Dial will be a panelist, along with Ed Snape, founding partner of Nexus Medical Partners of Boston; Andrea Mitchell of Charleston Angel Partnership; and Shawn Regan of Rhythmlink for the panel titled Creative Financing: Finding Money in Tight Times.
Register for the conference online.
Hatteras Venture Partners, founded in 2000, is a venture capital firm based in Research Triangle Park, N.C. It focuses on biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostics and related opportunities in human medicine. With four funds, the firm has more than $200 million under management.
