Venture firm Early Stage Partners has raised $55 million for its second fund and expects 40 percent of its investments to go to life sciences companies.
The firm closed the fund short of its hoped-for $70 million total, Managing Director Jonathan Murray told VentureWire.
Early Stage closed its first fund, which totaled $44 million, in 2002. “We haven’t had any good exits or huge wipeouts,” Murray said. “But frankly, the whole venture industry has been struggling with exits.”
Early Stage is looking to make 15 to 17 investments out of the fund, with about 40 percent going to both life sciences and information technology, and the remaining 20 percent toward clean tech.
The company recently opened an Ann Arbor, Mich. office and hired Mike Bunker to lead its life sciences investments.
Early Stage’s life sciences portfolio includes Cleveland-based medical education company Simbionix, Cleveland-based imaging company Imalux, Garfield Heights, Ohio-based device company AxioMed Spine Corp. and Ann Arbor-based device firm Histosonics.
Murray said most of the first fund’s limited partners re-upped for the second go-round — despite the lack of exits. The firm even added two new investors — Credit Suisse’s Customized Funds Investment Group, acting on behalf of the state of Michigan, and the Ohio Capital Fund, a state-sponsored “fund of funds.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
