By Ravi Mhatre, Will Kohler, and Jonathan MacQuitty
For more than 20 years, Lightspeed has served as a catalyst for innovation, backing intrepid founders creating high level impact on markets and society. Perhaps the most personal among these sectors is health. While it’s important to celebrate achievements in healthcare to date, it is critical to recognize how much more work we have ahead of us.
In addition to COVID-19, people in our families and our communities are living day-to-day with cancer, heart and lung disease, Alzheimer’s, and many other life-threatening illnesses. At Lightspeed, we never lose focus on the central stakeholder in healthcare: the patient. This is the lens that the Lightspeed team uses as it invests from cutting-edge biotechnology developing novel medicines to digital and preventive technologies making it easier to access top healthcare from home.
It is with this central mission of improving patient lives, that Lightspeed began to focus on health a decade ago. Initially, recognizing the value of health data with the dawn of the genomic era, we began investing in diagnostic and cutting-edge platform technologies with early investments in Natera (NASDAQ: NTRA), Personalis (NASDAQ: PSNL) and Guardant Health (NASDAQ: GH), which was quickly followed by our expansion into biotherapeutics such as Forty Seven (NASDAQ; later acquired by Gilead for $4.9 billion). In 2016, Jonathan MacQuitty, PhD, MBA, joined Lightspeed, after having served as the head of the West Coast office of Abingworth and founding CEO of GenPharm International, a platform that led to 8 FDA approved therapies. As Venture Partner and Sector Head for Life Sciences, Jonathan has taken on several roles at Lightspeed, from operator as founding CEO of technology spin-outs (Forty Seven, D2G Oncology) to investor (Orca Bio, Teneobio).
Healthcare is a diverse and complicated ecosystem with opportunities within and at the intersection of multiple sectors and drivers of innovation. With that in mind, Lightspeed decided to take the next step to help innovators across the whole spectrum of ways to improve patient lives.
Welcoming 3 New Investors to Lightspeed
We are excited to continue growing the practice and are welcoming new Partners Galym Imanbayev, MD, MBA and Shelley Chu, MD, PhD to the team. With Ling Wong, PhD onboard as of last year as a Senior Advisor, our expanded team is well-positioned to lead investments and work with founders who are driving the convergence of technology and health to transform the sector.
Ling draws from her unique background and experience as a scientist, entrepreneur, and investor to support and bring to market companies that are uniquely positioned to drive transformative change. In 2014, Ling founded and is General Partner of Sea Lane Ventures with notable investments including Collective Health, Devoted Health and Singular Genomics (NASDAQ: OMIC). In 2016, Sea Lane began to collaborate with Lightspeed and was instrumental to LSVP’s investment in Guardant Health (NASDAQ: GH). In 2019, this partnership was formalized with Ling joining as a Senior Advisor to invest across healthcare opportunities. Ling’s leadership style is colored by her science-driven-by-purpose approach to entrepreneurship and investing, which has shaped how she partners with founders.
Galym brings forth investing and research experience across health sectors ranging from early venture to growth stage investments. Prior to joining Lightspeed as a Partner, Galym held several investment roles, chiefly at Capricorn Healthcare where he focused on healthcare diagnostics, IT and services, including investments in HeartFlow, Epic Systems and CPF Senior Living. In addition to spending time with Data Collective VC, HealthTech Capital and Pear VC, Galym served as an advisor to several university initiatives and early-stage companies across biotechnology and digital health. Outside of investment and strategy roles, Galym performed research in a number of labs, publishing peer-reviewed papers in gene therapy, stem cell biology and medical imaging.
Shelley joined Lightspeed as a Partner to lead biotech and has two decades of investing and operating experience in the biopharmaceutical industry. Her passion is working closely with entrepreneurs to navigate R&D, clinical, and business hurdles to bring innovative new medicines to market. To date, her biotech investments across all stages, from seed to growth, have led to 7 FDA approved therapies and 16 exits through M&A or IPO. Some recent examples include IFM/Tre (acquired by BMS/Novartis), Tizona (acquired by Gilead), and Phathom (NASDAQ: PHAT). During her time at Gilead, where Shelley led R&D Strategy across all Therapeutic Areas and Business Development in Immuno-oncology and HBV, 3 new drugs were approved and launched.
Investing in Health, the Lightspeed Way
Lightspeed believes in driving innovation that positively impacts health. We strive to accelerate the development of tangible solutions to major health challenges, from transformative medicines to novel methods of delivering healthcare.
Lightspeed’s latest series of funds total over $4 billion and consist of an $890 million early-stage fund, $1.83 billion growth fund and a $1.5 billion opportunity fund. We are eager to back ambitious innovators and catalyze the formation and growth of the next generation of iconic companies across multiple health sectors. Lightspeed provides a variety of ways to partner with entrepreneurs and invest across all stages, from company formation and early venture rounds through growth, IPO and beyond. Although we prefer to lead rounds, we will also join others as value-add syndicate partners. We acknowledge all the co-investors we have worked with both individually and collectively.
Our team’s broad investing and operating expertise, as well as its flexibility to invest from this large capital base, enable us to serve as long-term partners throughout the journey of our portfolio companies, providing diverse perspectives and hands-on support to our founders.
Hitting the ground running
In the past 12 months, this expanded team has deployed over $215M in a number of new and follow-on investments (from Seed to PIPE), including in novel therapeutics (from bispecifics to cell therapy, transplantation and digital), virtual care, payment systems, and genomics. We look forward to growing our commitment to this essential sector.
For any inquiries regarding the above portfolio companies, please contact Galym Imanbayev (galym@lsvp.com). For general inquiries on Lightspeed, please contact Meredith Kendall Maines (meredith@lsvp.com).
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