New Leaf Venture Partners’ objectives with each investment are to back a strong, entrepreneurial management team, to provide appropriate financial resources, to help build a great company, and to create exceptional equity value. We are active investors and almost always serve as directors of our portfolio companies, who can draw upon perspectives and experiences of the entire NLV investment team and its network of successful scientists, clinicians, operating executives and entrepreneurs. We assist in building management teams, guiding corporate strategy, providing input to operating plans, and in making decisions about optimal paths for future financings and exits.

As conditions evolve, the NLV Partners team continually refines its differentiated strategy in healthcare investing. Both of NLV’s latest funds, New Leaf Ventures I and New Leaf Ventures II, focus on taking leadership positions in:

• Biopharmaceuticals – NLV has an in-depth understanding of therapeutic targets and modalities, the drug R&D process, clinical trial design, regulatory requirements, and pharmaceutical commercial activities. NLV’s extensive medical, clinical development, commercial and financial experience helps companies navigate the challenging path to regulatory approval and commercialization as stand-alone companies or through value-added strategic partnerships. NLV invests in companies at all stages in this sector, but looks at the level of risk, costs, and timelines to build real value in the underlying program(s) in determining if an investment fits our strategy. NLV has been particularly active in starting and investing in companies that been formed around the spin out of programs from larger pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
  

• Medical devices – NLV works closely with its network of entrepreneurs and scientific and medical founders to identify investment opportunities around promising technologies targeting areas of high unmet medical need and large commercial potential. The current strategy is to focus on later stage opportunities to provide growth capital or the last round to profitability in which regulatory and reimbursement risks are minimal. NLV will invest in early stage companies when there are large established global markets and an opportunity to prove safety and effectiveness in a focused, cost effective program. NLV’s investment team brings critical operating experience and the ability to evaluate the biological, engineering, regulatory, reimbursement and market risks most relevant to starting, growing, developing and exiting young or more mature companies in the medical devices sector.
  

• Information Convergence – The United States faces a near term economic imperative to reduce the cost of healthcare while increasing access and maintaining or improving quality. This imperative, now broadly recognized by all the major constituents within healthcare, will require nothing less than a transformation of the system, from one that historically rewarded providers for procedural volume to one that ties economic incentives to measurable outcomes. This transformation will be enabled by technologies in biology, software, sensors, communications, and others, creatively applied to implement value driven healthcare. As examples, we expect to see continued innovation in molecular diagnostics that connect patients with the most effective therapy, monitoring devices that improve the management of high cost chronic conditions, and information portals that engage patients in managing and improving their own health. Importantly, we are looking for companies with potential to rapidly deliver clinical and commercial value. NLV’s successful history building companies in diagnostics, tools, and healthcare information technology, uniquely positions the team to identify and support promising companies
  in this field.

In addition to providing attractive, risk-return opportunities, this combination of strategies allows diversification across healthcare sectors, stages of development, and public and private markets.