Following on from the success of our Pitch Battle in April, we sought to encourage peer mentorship within our community. As the BioEscalator ecosystem currently comprises 13 high-growth companies in the early funding stages of seed to post series A, we were keen to utilise this wealth of knowledge and experience to support our companies in the process of raising series A, by matching our top start-ups with mentors from within our company pool. After 3 weeks of training and feedback on their business plans and investor slide decks, Theolytics, who are developing oncolytic viruses as therapeutics, Alchemab Therapeutics, who are utilising native antibodies and a novel platform to discover new therapeutics and Bioarchitech, who are developing novel oncolytic viral therapies, all gave excellent 6-minute pitches to our esteemed judging panel.
The panel, chaired by Nareg Sagherian, Managing Director, Investor Relations and Programming at BIO International, included Mark Homans, Senior Relationship Director at Santander UK, Claire Brown, Investment Director at BioCity and Bill Haynes, Site Head and Vice President at Novo Nordisk Research Centre Oxford.
The judges were asked to select the company most attractive to investors based on the pitches and, following lively deliberations, Charlotte Casebourne, CEO and co-founder of Theolytics was announced the winner receiving the £8000 cash prize along with a place in the final of BIO International Start-up Stadium on 8-12 June 2020. Danuta Jeziorska, CEO of Nucleome Therapeutics won the best mentor prize of £3000 and Jorge Dias, Senior Scientist at Alchemab Therapeutics won the runners-up prize of £3000.
The event was, by all accounts, a great success where the benefit of peer mentoring was clearly evident thanks to our mentors Tim Funnell from MiroBio, Caroline Godfrey from PepGen and Danuta Jeziorska from Nucleome Therapeutics.
As part of its prize, Theolytics will be pitching to an international audience at BIO 2020 Start-up Stadium, one of the largest biotech conferences globally. Everyone at the BioEscalator wishes Charlotte and the Theolytics team the very best of luck at BIO Digital.