YouSaid · the spoken record

Jan Garfinkle

lines on the record: 78
first: 2021-09-02
most recent: 2021-09-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Ross, thank you so much for this opportunity. Thank you for being a great investor and for believing in us when we first met with you six years ago. You've been such a great partner and we look forward to continuing that relationship long term.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It sort of goes to that Warton thing, but you really have to learn to listen to your gut, listen to trust yourself. I think it takes a while. It's so easy to always question yourself when you're younger. You feel like you maybe don't have the right words of wisdom or the right way to ask a question and you're always insecure about being able to do all that. But it's just really important to advocate for yourself, to learn to have a voice where you can ask questions and or speak up in a way that's not threatening, but that is helping bring to light to a group of people that there's other ways to think about ideas that are being suggested. And it's just really important to find a voice at a table and with senior people, with board members, with junior people that allows questions to be asked to really bring out the best decisions in a non-threatening way.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, oh man, I come from a very interesting background. My dad's Jewish and my mom is Mormon and they're very different people, but just wonderful people. And, you know, I think they always, A, they always felt education was super important. And so, you know, obviously followed suit with that and with my three girls, but they always said, do something with your life. Like make a difference on this earth and do something that really matters. I feel just again so blessed that our breedam allowed me to have a vehicle to do that. I think being in healthcare, you really do make a difference no matter what part of healthcare you're in. And the last thing I will say, which I have not done as well, but my dad used to always say, you know, 99% of what you worry about will probably never happen. But that really has never sunk in. And I'm a terrible sleeper. And I wish I didn't worry so much about stuff.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know and I got in obviously, so it was a mistake that I was so knotted fast on my feet and it was hard for me to respond quickly to him when he threw out what the issue was. But the thing I learned was if you make a mistake, you can go back and fix it, but you need to kind of do it quickly and you need to advocate for yourself in a nice way, but it's super important that you stand up for yourself.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I said, you know, I really appreciated you explaining that it was because my mask score was lower than my English score. I said, I just have to tell you, I took four years of math at Cal in engineering. There is no math that you are going to be able to throw at me here that I've done differential equations. I've done extremely complicated math, quantum physics. I mean, like there's nothing you're going to throw at me that I can't do from a business standpoint for math. Beyond that, I just have to tell you that I only took one English class and one history class in my entire engineering degree because there was just no time for anymore. And that was all they required to graduate. I said, once I graduated, I started reading novels. And I said, my English is probably higher than my math because all I've done is read novels over the last three years. And if anything, you should be thrilled that an engineer is coming in with a higher English score than a math score. And he looks at me and he goes, okay, call me tomorrow and I'll let you.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I said, Jan, you know, if you really want to go to Wharton, you got to go back and tell him what you really think. So I turned around. I went back. I went to a secretary and I said, could I please speak with the dean for just another minute? And she called and he said, sure. So I opened the door and he doesn't invite me in. He just lets me stand there from the door.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I said to him, you know, that I was here to try and understand why I was waitlist and if I could answer any questions for him to help him. And he said, oh, well, you were waitlisted because on your GMAT score, your math was lower than your English. And I said, okay. And he said, and we're just concerned if you could do the math here at Wharton. And I'm like, okay. And I had no idea that was the reason why I was like dumbfounded by it. And that was literally all he said. And then he goes, well, do you have any questions for me? And I asked a couple whatever silly questions that I had prepared that were sort of softballs. And he said, okay, that's it. We're done. And I'm like, okay, it was like a three minute interview. So I get up to leave. And when I'm upset and I knew I'd blown it, I go for a walk and I just like let my mind kind of wander. And so I went for a walk around Philly and I was meeting my friend roughly an hour later.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is going back a ways here, but when I was younger and applying to business schools, I applied to three. I got into two of them, but I was only waitlisted at Wharton. And so I thought, well, I'm going to fly to Philly. I'm going to go try and meet the Dean of Admissions and find out why I was weightlisted. And so I did that. And it was a horrible interview, Ross. It was like one of those things. I'm a tall woman and he was a very small man. And it was super uncomfortable just anatomy-wise.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My biggest investment pet peeve is CEOs that are not truthful or not forthcoming. And if any of that happens, we pass like quickly. There's so many good companies coming our way. Like it's just not worth taking the risk. But it's all about trust in these companies. And if I get any signal at all that there's not going to be a sense of trust, done. Got to listen to your gut.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I didn't know how to think about that. My pet peeve of myself is where I kind of ended up. I'm kind of an impatient person and I get really mad at myself when I lose my patience and don't show as much compassion as I should. This happens to me when I get hungry. And it's gotten better with age, but I, you know, if I get into that stage where I'm just like starving, like if I go into a restaurant and then if I have a reservation and they, yeah, don't monitor the reservation. And oh, yeah, then that's my personal pet peeve of myself.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Three guesses it's exercise. I get up and work out five, six times a week running, biking, pilates, lifting, whatever. And then recently I just started meditating with Headspace, which I just love. It's just 10 minutes a day, but I have really incorporated that into my daily routine, which it's fantastic. I have to exercise first because I can't calm down enough to meditate well otherwise. But right after I exercise, I meditate for 10 minutes and it's fantastic. Headspace is a great, great program.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love to bike. My husband loves to bike. So we have a place up in northern Michigan. And that is my favorite thing to do is to go to Leland, Michigan. We have this great house up there that overlooks Lake Michigan and the Manitou Islands. And we just love biking in northern Michigan. We love traveling and hiking. One of my goals is to go to all the national parks in the United States. I'm about a third done and hike all the great hikes. I love being athletic and moving and seeing things. And so kind of all wrapped around that.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have on the entrepreneurial ecosystem. So it was having started our Breedom and doing a first close on $6 million 20 years ago, I never in a million years would have thought that I could have had that pinnacle of my career. It was pretty awesome”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of 2020, COVID starts to hit, and I'm still chair. And the world exploded, right, for all of us come March 12th or whatever that day was, March 11th, and quickly evolved into trying to figure out if the PPP loans would apply to venture funds. I had to do a lot of work on that, a lot of webinars, a lot of talking with, again, senior people on the hill and trying to make sure that the rules of who could apply for the PPP loans were applicable to venture-backed companies if they needed it. So it was just an incredible experience. I got to testify in front of Senate on the importance of investing off the coast and how to build new entrepreneurial communities off the coast. I got to work with the lawyers that were trying to develop the tax package that Trump was instituting and sort of the impact that could.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And congressmen and congresswomen, and it is a fantastic experience. I actually shared one of my very first early lobbying experiences. I was meeting with a Republican congressman from Ohio and told him the Sonatist experience I just shared with you about not getting reimbursement. He actually wrote a bill to try and get CMS to approve new technologies that would reduce the cost of healthcare. So I was just like, this is incredible. I tell one story and literally I get back to the office and they call me next day and like he wants to write a bill to try and address this. I'm like, okay, they're like, can you help us? I'm like, I have no idea how to write a bill, but MVCA helped. It didn't get through. But anyway, it was a terrific experience. And when I became chair, it was fantastic, but it was the term is June to June. So in March.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was in healthcare, which was maybe 20% of the board. And my early days on the board, I really didn't know that many of the folks because they were from a lot from tech and software and whatever climate, lots of different areas, but these were just terrific people. And I was pretty vocal, especially in the early days about how hard it is to start a fund off the coast. It would be really great if there were more best practices that could be shared nationally about how to do term sheets, how to do succession planning, how to hire, how to just everything about how do you professionalize venture. And I think through that vocal experience that I had and a lot of positive feedback from the NVCA team, which is an incredible team, by the way, I also got the experience to go lobby on the hill through that because every other board meeting is in Washington and you literally go meet center.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually just stepped off the National Venture Capital Association Board. I was on that for five years. My last year as board chair, and that was an incredible, incredible experience and led to not only working with the other board members. It's a big board. It's 25 board members and Bobby Franklin, who's the executive director that has done a phenomenal job trying to make it a very diverse board. So actually when I joined five years ago, I walked into the first board. I mean, I thought I was picked because I was female, honestly, and they wanted diversity from that. But it was about a third female already at that point, which was great. And these are women like me that have started funds. They were all managing partners. I mean, it was the senior women in the venture world across all disciplines. But I was diverse much more so because I was the only person from the Midwest.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have found some great reimbursement consultants that really help us with this now. And so prior to close, we'll do a sort of condition of close, which is get reimbursement experts to opine on the process, the data, the probability of success. We tend to primarily invest in companies that already have a code exists and it's just a new product in an existing code. We would prefer that to having to go down the reimbursement path ourselves. But if it's a special circumstance, we still will do that, but it's much rare.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So our Congress, when they wrote the Medicare laws, said they will not reimburse for eyeglasses or hearing aids. We have to patient pay for eyeglasses and hearing aids. They will not pay for any of that. And even though it was not a hearing aid like the traditional hearing aids, it was only for single-sided deafness and it replaced a procedure that was being reimbursed. They viewed it as a hearing aid, and that's why they denied it. We tried to appeal. We could have sued them. It would have been so much money to do that. And we just said it's probably just not worth the squeeze. The juice wasn't worth the squeeze.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We couldn't get reimbursement approval, and when we couldn't get reimbursement approval, it killed the company. So we had to shut it down. We lost $10 million. It was one of the most disheartening experiences of my life because it was half the cost and better for the patient. How could this not be approved? And it wasn't.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we invested in this company in the Serie C. It was for commercial launch. I mean, this was a late stage company. And one of the big strategics was super interested in it. They had a big investment already in the company. And we went to try and get reimbursement. We tried to patient pay model first, but it was an expensive product and patients couldn't pay for it. So then we thought, well, let's get reimbursement. And we were denied reimbursement even though logically we should have been approved because cochlear was approved, but cochlear was approved because it required brain surgery basically to implant the screw. Ours was this little device that you just slip on your tooth. It was half the price. It was easier for the patient to manage. It gave you better hearing if you had single-sided deafness and could now hear through better ears because your microphone was where your ear was instead of behind your head where the sound does weird things when it goes around your head.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That you are listening to something and you hear noise. When you have single sided deafness, that's not working. But this really smart engineer, Amir Alfalfathi, figured out that you could use your teeth, which are bone, in order to hear. And so he developed this little device that went on your back tooth and it sent a signal to the ear that was deaf. And then you would hear as if you're hearing from both ears. And it replaced this post, like this screw that would get screwed into the back of your skull by cochlear. Cochlear had reimbursement approval.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Only invest in companies if there's already a reimbursement code. If we have to also go through the reimbursement path, it will add another up to $50 million to that company's development and timeline, but cost to develop that product to get reimbursement approval. When we diligence, we really look at reimbursement a lot now. And the learning came from a company that I led called Sonatus that was a hearing company. So this was For patients that have single-sided deafness, so they can't hear in one ear. There is a device that's already on the market by cochlear that you can use your bone structure to hear. So if you scratch your head, you hear your hair moving around. That's because your bone, your skull, is transmitting the sound waves to these little hairs inside your ear that tell your brain.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, a really big one, and probably the hardest part about what we invest in is reimbursement. And devices, unlike drugs, have to go through a whole separate approval process with Medicare, CMS Center for Medical Services. And they're the ones that determine reimbursement for new devices. And so if we invest in a new medical device, we spend a lot of time now trying to figure out reimbursement. Because to get FDA approval, we know that that is a well-worn path. We know how to do that. We know how to work with the FDA really well, how to develop the clinical trials to support getting FDA approval. The problem is it then takes three more years after getting FDA approval to also get reimbursement approval. And CMS, I would say, makes it challenging, very challenging to get that approval. So we often will.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we saw the human data, and we're like, she was able to get the cells, they were able to read the cells. It was terrific. And we said, okay, great. We'll invest. And so we were the Series B lead. And let's prove that you can get cancerous cells because she was only getting normal cells. And so based on that, Serbia was able to enroll at three sites. women who had masses on their ovaries to see if we could get cancer cells. And sure enough, we were able to, and they were able to show that they match to what was happening clinically and with these women were having their ovaries removed. So we could also match them to what was going on in the ovaries. This is, again, the first time anyone has ever been able to detect early ovarian cancer. Boston Scientific ended up buying the company. It was literally two years after we had invested in roughly about four years after she had started the company.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This little catheter that could be put into the fallopian tubes and go all the way to the ovary and could detect ovarian cancer at a very early stage. And so Serbia had approached us for the Series A. It was a California-based company. I had met her. I really liked her, but we really like to see some human data before we'll invest. She had no human data at the time. So she raised a little $3 million Series A from another woman, venture person, health catalyst, as I think is her name of her fund out in Boston. And Darshan is great. So on $3 million, Serbia went down to Mexico, did human patients, 40 human patients, and got FDA approval on those 40 human patients in $3 million. And then Survey came to us and said, okay, now I'm going to raise Series B. I'm going to raise $14 million.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that company was called Invision, Little N and Envision. And Serbi, I think, was 27 when she started the company. And she had when she tells her stories, this is in the public domain, when she was 13 had an ovarian cyst and got worked up because they wanted to make sure it wasn't ovarian cancer. And she decided at that point that she would figure out a better way to detect ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer is super hard to detect because women's bodies are designed to have children. And so you can have things growing in your abdomen that it takes a while. They can get pretty big before you really notice them. And so ovarian cancer is often detected at stage four when it's really too late to help the patients. And so Serbi was a biomedical engineer out of Cal, went to guidance, learned how to make catheters, went to a startup, learned a little bit more about the startup world. And then when she was 27 started in vision. And she developed.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was just a phenomenal experience. And I will forever be thankful for Jeff, for including us in all of his companies that he's so excited about. And when you look at the exits of our borenum, it's so interesting, Raz, because I think we've invested now in 50 or 55 companies. We've had about 20 exits, but 15 that were in sort of the 5 to 10 X range. And when you look at that, half of them are a mile from our office. Being in Ann Arbor is a great location. And the reason why they've been 5 to 10X is because we're in the Midwest, and these are Midwest companies and we're able to get that extra 1X or 2X on the exit return to our Breedom because of them being so capital efficient.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A huge hotspot, and they couldn't test these patients fast enough. And with the pneumonics device, they could test 300 patients in one shift. And that was phenomenal. So they were basically doing a thousand patients a day with the pneumonics robots down at Henry Ford. So hyagen ended up buying the company. But the reason I'm so proud of it, it was this right product at the right time for sure with COVID, although that wasn't our investment thesis. It was the fact that you could do this infectious disease testing on any patient with just putting the sample in, let the technician walk away in 45 minutes later they have the result. They didn't have to do anything. Everything was done by the robot. And so it greatly expedited the ability to give therapy to a patient in a much more timely manner and didn't require a heavy lift by the clinical lab to be able to do that. There's no other company that was able to do that.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Team from Accurate and Handy Lab. He brought together like the band. And because they had so much experience on how to do this already, they basically, in what would normally take three to five years to develop this robot, they did it in about a year, super capital efficient. We then brought in Series B, which was Baird and Pfizer, and continued to develop the product. Then we brought in one big strategic corporation, Cyagin. And over this roughly seven-year period, develop the product and then COVID hit. And what pneumonics did when the advent of COVID started, we were putting all the consumables into the back of a truck and driving them to different hospitals down in Detroit because they were using the pneumatics robot, but they didn't have enough consumables. And on Saturdays and Sundays, we were driving the products down there because if you recall when COVID first started, Detroit was”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To identify what the bug is, et cetera. So he came up with this fully automated robot that had all the reagents in the robot. And you just literally put the sample in at one end and 45 minutes later, it will tell you what infection that patient has. It revolutionized how clinical diagnostics are done in hospitals now, literally revolutionized. He came up with this idea. He filed the patent. He approached us and Jeff is very dear to our boredom. He's actually one of our advisors too. And I had made four phone calls to clinical lab directors and asked them, you know, if you could design the perfect infectious disease robot, what would it be? And they described exactly what Jeff had already invented. I'm like, okay, great. We're going to do this deal. So we put $5 million in on a five million pre. Jeff brought in an”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We invested in a company called Pneumotics, N-E-U-M-O-D-X, that was founded by an incredible CEO, Jeff Williams, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And Jeff had been previous CEO of two of our other companies that were very successful, Handy Lab and Accuri. And so Jeff had this idea that in the world of infectious disease, SARS, pneumonia, COVID, there's a lot of things that he came up with this idea that when you take a sample, whether it's saliva, blood, whatever, and put it into the infectious disease robots that are in these clinical labs in the hospital, it takes a long time to get a result too long. And they're very manual. You need a high paid lab technician to move the sample around, put the reagents in, which are these chemicals.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's not a lot of other venture backed companies solving a big problem and cutting costs out of the healthcare system.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a company in one of those disciplines that I mentioned that can be very capital efficient, won't take a lot of dollars to get to a successful exit with a fantastic team that is in a space that there's not 10 other venture deals in. We want to be in spaces where there's only one or two venture-backed companies. And we can talk more about examples of that. And half of them would be in the Midwest. Usually they're in the Midwest, but not all of them. And some of our most successful ones have been coastal. And really trying to drive cost out of the healthcare systems. We're trying to remove 20 to 30 percent of the cost of that procedure or of that technology with our investment. That's a lot. That is a big number. And so we spent a lot of time kind of analyzing that. I would say that's it. So it's off the coast, capital efficient in a space where”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“those we could raise a larger fund for fund six because they don't take that much more money but they have such huge upside potential To do. But I think with these pharma adjacencies, we have the potential to perhaps go bigger. We've done onesie twosies in the pharma space. So we are not driven by the fee. We are driven by making sure our investors are successful and then we get rewarded with the carried interest that comes with that. And I'm a little concerned that funds are more driven by the fee. We return all the capital first to our investors and then we get into the carry. We just want to make sure our investors are always first and maintaining the appropriate fund size is the only way to do that.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back up two steps. When I say healthcare, it's a very broad discipline where we invest is roughly 50% in what I would call the regulated, meaning FDA-approved side of healthcare, which is medical devices and diagnostics. And then the other 50% is the unregulated, so it doesn't need FDA approval, but healthcare IT, life science tools, which is equipment to make pharmaceuticals, healthcare service companies. And then we have this new category called pharma adjacencies, which is companies that play in the pharma space, but it's without a drug. So they have the same upside potential because pharma has big upside potential, but without the binary risk that the drug would fail in phase three. And so we have two companies there, Strata and Pear, that are really in that space and have done extremely well. And so because of”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the first fund, actually, our first close on our first fund was six, but the total fund, because we kept raising, was 25. We then raised funds every four years. I know a lot of venture funds have sped that up recently. We haven't done that yet, but we want to be sure we can be successful in the normal range of exits for healthcare. I mentioned it's the $200 to $400 million range. It is pretty consistently in there. So based on that, each successive fund, so fund one was the $25, fund two was $75, fund three was $140, 4 was 220, and 5 was 250. We probably won't go much bigger ever than 250 because we find that that will be really hard to be successful because of the normal range of exits with our companies. The one caveat I will mention there.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lot of brain power amongst our senior people to help solve these problems. So every week we have a managing partner and or senior staff meeting to talk about these really hard problems. We've had companies go sideways figuring out how to solve it. Do you switch out the CEO? Do you bring in consultants? What do you do? Do you stop investing? These are super hard conversations. And so we try and create safe environments where you can talk about these things and really come to the best decision based on hearing the input from your other team members.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Find it very important to ask the difficult questions in these meetings. Now, it's uncomfortable, it's really uncomfortable for me being really honest when it's a lot of people. I like smaller groups when I really want to work something out. So depending on the sensitivity of the question that's being asked, it may only get to the managing partner group. But I really want advice of the other team members at the managing partners, Tom, Nicole, Tim, Dan. I want to hear what they think about this problem that I'm trying to solve for one of my portfolio companies. It's super important, but I have to be vulnerable to say, I don't have the answer to this problem. Please help me to do that. And I think it's hard for people to admit they don't know how to do something or they don't know the right solution to a problem. And at Arboredum, we've really tried hard to make that okay. It's important to have conversations because there's a”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, that greatly impacted my career to be able to have done that, and it's really important. So things like when we're talking with physicians, who are the experts in a new technology we're looking at, we'll have them lead the questions in the diligence process. That's a lot about making sure the teams are working well together. Everybody has their Monday meetings at our Monday meetings. We have a staff meeting first where even our admins are all there. Everybody knows everything going on about our boredom. Everything that's happening that week, every deal we're looking at. And then we break into the investment team. We go through all of our portfolio companies every other week. And I think one other unique thing about our breedam that I would say that I think is super important is we want to have conversations, discussions that can be somewhat tense at times. And by that I mean Roz.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We view it as a professional services company. I think one thing that's really helpful is Tim came from a consulting business before he went to run the Wolverine Venture Fund. He had seen some great experiences with how to run a consulting business. I had incredible experiences having been at ACS and DVI and seeing how you take care of the employees. We just really incorporated, I mean things as simple as doing annual reviews. There are a lot of venture funds that don't do annual reviews. It's kind of crazy. We give a lot of feedback. We're very team oriented. Whenever we work on a deal, it's a senior person. So the managing partner, the principal, and then an analyst or an associate. There's three people on every team. We try and give the junior people many touch points working with different managing partners and giving them experiences where they are taking leadership roles at early stage.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that that's so critically important because one of the things that resonates is exactly that. When we go to the annual meetings and I'm interacting with the various arboretum staff people, I feel that. And I don't feel that with every GP annual meeting I go to. I would just simply say when it truly is a family, you can feel it. When there is that internal consistency about values, you feel it. And I think that's a major contributor. So let's talk a little bit about business management. You had a lot of business experience before you came, but now aside from an investment philosophy, what is your business philosophy for managing our burrito?”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Brought in Nicole Walker and Nicole is a traditional medical device investor who was with Baird Ventures before this and then Abbott ventures before that and she's fantastic. She comes out of the Guident family. Honestly, Ross, the big thing for us is do we fit culturally with each other? Do we have the same values? We feel we can teach anybody how to do venture, how we evaluate companies, how we help the board level. We can teach all of those things. We want to make sure they're a cultural fit from a personality standpoint and a work ethic.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Venture. He came in as a principal to our fund. He didn't even come in as a partner. And he said, I'm going to look at this as a fellowship. I'm going to learn everything I can about how to do cap tables, how to do term sheets. He's really great at evaluating new technologies, obviously. He didn't know any of the strategic corporations that would buy the companies. We had to introduce them to all of that. But what Tom has done phenomenally well is build his own deal flow. And any GI deal in the United States comes to Tom Shehab because he knows GI so well. He knows all the physicians. And the other thing he's really passionate about is women's health, which is really great. So all these women's, his first exit two years after becoming a managing partner was a women's health company for ovarian cancer. Young women CEO who just knocked it out of the park, Boston Scientific bodies. So Tom has just been fantastic. And then we've just recently.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Care is 18% of GDP. It's just horrible. I mean, it just keeps climbing. And we've got to figure this out. So Tom had a perspective on healthcare from living it from the inside. And we felt we really needed that at our boredom. So we all got together. We went out and went to our favorite Mexican restaurant in Ann Arbor and we're all talking like we could pick the perfect person to join Arboretum. Who would it be? And we're all like Tom, she habit. So I called Tom. He was rounding. It was a Friday. And I'm like, hey, Tom, I have like a crazy idea, but I really want to ask you. And he's like, oh my God. And he was literally going to become CEO of this big private specialty practice shortly, like within months. And he's like, let me think about it. I'll get back to you. And he was like, sure enough, he wants to change healthcare. I think that's one thing at Arbreedom. The passion about healthcare is palpable. So he came with zero knowledge about.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the higher levels, we've had these great advisors on each fund. One of our advisors in Fund three was Tom Shehab. And Tom is just wonderful. Tom is a GI physician with a specialty in liver. And he is also an incredible healthcare administrator. And he was at Trinity Health System, St. Jose and Ann Arbor. And he was targeted to be the next CEO of this huge private specialty practice with all these physicians in it, like a thousand physicians. And yet he was also our advisor. And when we got to a point where we said we need to bring in somebody who's been living the Affordable Care Act in particular at that point, because that was making a huge difference on access to healthcare. Many more patients were coming in, but that was also the time when the costs, as the baby boomers were getting older, now health.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great question, and as you can well imagine, in Ann Arbor, there's not a lot of people that already knew how to do venture. So Tim was teaching me how to do venture. We were homegrown. I mean, we are totally homegrown. Everybody that we have brought in, we have taught them the arboretum way. But the people that we have brought in and come from healthcare backgrounds at the analyst level, which is the entry level for the investment team or associate one of those, they've come from Eli Lilly and financial planning. They've come from consulting for LEK. They've come from Optum. They come from experiences where they've worked in healthcare companies and they already understand the jargon. They understand the financial planning of it. That's been primarily the entry point at the low level. And when we tried to bring in people that are just like bankers, that hasn't worked out nearly as well for us.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“want to make four to five to ten x times what we invest the amount of money into that company can't be more than 20 million if it's going to sell for 200 million or 40 million if it's going to be exiting at 400 million and it's pretty simple but it's hard to develop a company that capital efficiently the beauty of being in the midwest and focusing primarily on midwestern companies is that it takes about a third less dollars to develop the company in the midwest because salaries rent vendor costs just all those things all combined you basically get an additional one x return on your investment by investing off the coast that's cutting to the chase”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a lot to this. So, you know, in order to be successful in a venture fund, you have to make money for your investors. Sort of the most important thing. And so the way to answer this question for me, Raz, is twofold. One is we always knew that that was the most important thing. If we were going to go from fund one to fund five where we are now and fund one ended up being $25 million, so we closed on the six, but it ultimately ended up being $25. But now our current fund is $250 million. In order to be successful to bring in new investors, we had to make sure we were making money for investors. So one of the really important things that has informed us to this day is to find companies that are very capital efficient. And by that I mean they don't take that much money to get to the exit. That's kind of the core of it. In the world we live in, in healthcare, many of the exits are in the 200 to 400 million dollar range. So it's pretty simple math.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so between those three foundations in Stryker and Guiden, we really needed those. One thing that we did that I think was super helpful was we created an advisory board, which were folks that knew us, that really believed in us, that were going to cover the different disciplines within healthcare that we were investing in. And so this included another great mentor for me, Bill Hawkins, who was then the chief operating officer of Medtronic. He mentioned that summer internship again back at Eli Lilly. He had just graduated from Duke and was one level above me. I'm the summer intern. Then it's Bill Hawkins. Then it's three or four other people, and then it was Ron Dolins. And these gentlemen, I mean, Ron was on three of our funds as an advisor. Bill's been on all five of our funds as advisors. And it makes all the difference in the world when there's people can see that you have advisors that.”
2021-09-02 · Capital Allocators · Jan Garfinkle – Arboretum Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.09) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source