Our speaker, Maria Gotsch, discussed her experience investing in and building the fin-tech industry over the past decade and how her work has helped drive New York City to become the leader in fin-tech. She also discussed the requirements needed to create an ecosystem to support building a leading tech development area and explained her rationale for life sciences (including health-tech and bio-tech) becoming a key focus area of the Fund. Maria iterated her fund's differences and its core focus areas including its 'evergreen' structure and that improving innovation and entrepreneurship through the coordination with city, state and government is just as important as investment performance. This is highlighted through the portfolio's composition of a mixture of both not-for-profit and for-profit investments.
50 CEOs, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, PE, VC, and corporate development executives joined the conversation. During the round table discussion, Gotsch discussed the five problems present in the biotech industry, namely the lack of entrepreneurial culture at NYC universities, the difficulty of obtaining well-located and affordable wet lab space, the dearth of senior and mid-level executives interested in the field, the scarcity of early stage capital, and the disconnection of the biotech ecosystem.
About the Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips Dealmakers Series
The Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips Dealmakers Series events are for the top dealmakers and operators in the Media, Advertising & Marketing, Information, Education, Technology and Healthcare Communications industries. They feature industry experts discussing the future of investing in the media and technology industries, specifically focusing on recent and imminent notable transactions, as well as emerging trends and opportunities in our space. The HBSCNY Monthly Dealmakers Breakfast Series is intended to be a smaller more intimate event to bring together HBS Alumni and influential industry leaders for stimulating discussions, valuable networking opportunities and engaging Q&A. The program is a round table question-and-answer session at Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips' offices where the moderator asks 30 minutes of questions, and the audience the other 30 minutes.
Moderated by Joanna Stone Herman (HBS ’97). Joanna is a Partner at Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips and serves as the TMT Industry Group Co-Head for Oaklins, our affiliated global investment bank with 67 offices in 44 countries. Prior to joining Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips in 2011, Joanna worked in several senior executive roles including as SVP Global Strategy for LexisNexis, EVP of Corporate Development for Thomson Financial Corporate Group, VP of Strategy for Thomson Learning and Director of Strategy for Dow Jones. Joanna also served as CEO and co-Founder of Librify, a technology start-up that was the exclusive e-book platform for Target, sold to Scribd in 2015. Joanna has a BS and Masters Degrees from MIT and an MBA from HBS.
Please visit our website for more information about this event as well as our other Dealmakers Series events.
Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips is an investment bank for clients that operate at the intersection of content, technology and services. This includes enterprises operating within the media, advertising & marketing, education, healthcare, information services and technology sectors. Over 21 years, clients have included Advance Publications/Condé Nast, Deutsche Börse Group, Elsevier, Hachette, JP Morgan Partners, Microsoft, The New York Times, Time Inc., TPG and Wasserstein & Co. The firm is the TMT practice Co-Head and industry specialist in Oaklins, the world’s most experienced mid-market M&A advisory organization with 800 investment banking professionals in 44 countries. In the last five years, Oaklins has completed 5,000 transactions exceeding $75 billion in value.
Oaklins is the collective trade name of independent member firms affiliated with Oaklins International Inc. For details of the nature of the affiliation, please refer to www.oaklins.com/legal.
