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SEBIO's annual BIO/Plan Competition is designed to foster the development of Emerging Life Science Opportunities across the Southeast; opportunities that are destined to become the next wave of early-stage companies growing in our region. Emerging Opportunities are defined primarily as unincorporated or virtually incorporated biotech or life science business opportunities based on technologies that are best viewed as 'late concept-development stage' technologies. Typically, these opportunities will still be resident in the university lab or research center and be well advanced technically, but not yet possess the elements generally associated with an established company (e.g., a negotiated license to associated intellectual property, a management team, a formal business plan, occupancy in an established incubator as a small business, etc.). Most certainly, they will have had no prior funding from the institutional investment community. However, a reasonably clear path forward to commercial exploitation of the opportunity should be obvious and supportable. Ultimately, the program is a proactive mechanism designed to enhance the prospects for successfully launching, advancing and funding emerging early-stage enterprises based on novel, defensible technologies with considerable commercial promise.
The BIO/Plan Competition will have two principal components.
- Component One - Small Mentoring Teams, made up of 3 or 4 seasoned professionals from active venture funds or angel groups, the broader community of experienced biotech entrepreneurs, and service providers with specifically-relevant start-up expertise, will be assigned to and directly interact with the selected Emerging Opportunities — approximately 10 Opportunities in total will be chosen — over a period of approximately 5 to 6 months. The ultimate goal of this mentoring process will be the development of an executable business strategy and associated written plan. The Mentoring Team's role in this process will be to advise the principals, who will ultimately take the plan forward, helping them to define, shape and present the emerging enterprise's commercial potential, most appropriate business model, commercial development strategy, and value proposition.
- Component Two - Following the mentoring process, each of the selected Emerging Opportunities will submit their written business plan to a panel of judges who will score and select the best of these for further participation in the Competition. These Finalists (3 or 4 in total) will then prepare and present their plan to the broader venture community, in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, at the annual SEBIO Investor Forum where they will be judged once again by a second panel of judges. The combined scores of the written and presented plans will be used to determine the winner of the Competition. The SE BIO/Plan Competition winner will be identified, announced and recognized in a special ceremony at the SEBIO Investor Forum where they will receive a cash award of unrestricted, non-dilutive venture funds with which to implement key elements of their winning business plan.
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