The November 18 webinar has been recorded. Members of Société can view the webinar here
SPEAKERS:
- David Patteson, Operating Partner, Ampersand Capital and Chairman/CEO Adchim SAS
- Roshan Shetty, Co-founder/Chief Executive Office,
Photothermal Spectroscopy Corp.
- Fran Waller, Accredited Investor, Lehigh Valley Angel Investors
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Chemistry-related startups continue to thrive despite the negative health and economic impact of the Coronavirus outbreak. According to the Pitch Book-National Venture Capital Association Venture Monitor investors poured $37.8 billion into US startups during the third quarter of 2020, about the same as in the third quarter of 2019. Biotech and pharma investments have been strong for several years, but the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced an increase in companies focused on the development of vaccines and anti-viral therapies.
For job seekers who want to be on the cutting edge of new technology, Societe has assembled a panel made up of Ampersand Capital Operating Partner David Patteson, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Photothermal Specroscopy Corp. Roshan Shetty, and angel investor Fran Waller, to talk about job opportunities at startups. They will offer their views on: the sort of career opportunities newly minted chemists, chemical engineers, and biotechnology degree holders can expect at science-related start-up firms; the types of skills in demand at startups; steps would-be entrepreneurs need to take to successfully raise funding and attract investors; and the type of business skills would be entrepreneurs need besides technical expertise.
To be moderated by retired Chemical & Engineering News Senior Correspondent Marc Reisch, panelists will give a nuanced view of the startup scene today from their unique experience and perspective. Toward the end of the hour broadcast, panelists will answer questions from the audience.
About our Speakers:
David Patteson
David, who joined Ampersand as an Operating Partner in 2015, serves on the Board of New England Peptide, and previously served as a Board member of Gyros Protein Technologies. He is Chairman/CEO of Adchim SAS, a life science instrument business. He served as CEO of Advion, sold to Bohui Innovation Technology in 2015. David also served as CEO of Advion BioSciences, a bioanalytical CRO business acquired by Quintiles Transnational in 2011, and CEO of Biotage, which was acquired by Pyrosequencing AB in 2003. David holds two separate B.S. degrees from The University of Richmond and Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and completed an International Management program through IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Roshan Shetty
Before co-founding Photothermal Spectroscopy Corp., Roshan Shetty served as co-founder and CEO for Anasys Instruments and AiBiomed Corp. Anasys pioneered the field of nanoscale IR Spectroscopy, via photothermal IR (PTIR) technology that uses an AFM probe as the IR absorbance detector. The AFM-PTIR technique was widely adopted by leading academic and industrial researchers. Anasys was acquired by Bruker in 2018. AiBiomed is a medical device company that pioneered the first technology for intra-operative parathyroid identification, which enabled endocrine / ENT / Head & Neck surgeons to preserve the parathyroid glands during thyroid surgery. Adoption by leading endocrine surgery institutions like Harvard University, led to an acquisition by Medtronic Corporation. Prior to Anasys, he was the Director of Strategic Alliances for Veeco Instruments, where he conceived of and executed the $13.2 Million Strategic Alliance with Dow Chemical in nano-mechanical characterization and laid the foundation for the widely successful QNM (Quantitative nano-mechanics) product platform at Veeco/Bruker Nano that was responsible for over $100 million in revenues. In a former life on another galaxy, Roshan was the co-founder/COO of Alafolie.com, a click/mortar wedding registry based in Paris, Milan and Munich that raised over $20Mill and employed over 100 people with strategic online/offline partnership with Galeries Lafayette. He was a former Investment Banker at Alex Brown, San Francisco and Operations Manager at KLA Tencor, San Jose. He has an MBA from INSEAD, a Masters in Optical Sciences from the University of Arizona and a BS in Electrical Engineering from BITS, Pilani.
Fran Waller
Dr. Waller received his PhD in organic chemistry from University of Vermont in 1970. This was followed with a postdoctoral position, Visiting Assistant Professor at St. Lawrence University, NY, and Assistant Professor at Simmons College, MA. During this time, he taught not only organic but also advanced organic chemistry. Most of his professional career, however, was spent as an industrial chemist with E. I. duPont deNemours (1974-1988) in Wilmington, DE, at the Experimental Station and Air Products (1988-2005) located in Trexlertown, PA.
In addition to these research responsibilities, he continued teaching as an Adjunct Professor at Lehigh University where he taught Polymer Science and other graduate and undergraduate chemistry courses between 1993 and 2008. From 2006 to 2013, he taught a 1-day short course on intellectual property for the American Chemical Society at their national meetings. He converted this 1-day short course into a book published by Wiley: Writing Chemistry Patents and Intellectual Property: A Practical Guide, © 2011. A second book published by Lexis Nexis was developed for patent attorneys: Chemistry for Patent Attorneys, © 2014. During his industrial career, he was named on 46 U.S. patents and authored or co- authored 70 scientific publications.
Dr. Waller joined the Lehigh Valley Angel Investors (LVAI) group in January 2014 when individual investors numbered about 22. Today, this group has about 50 accredited investors. LVAI was founded in 2011 and is affiliated with the Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania. He has been involved in screening startups before their presentation to the LVAI. Presently, he is a member of the Steering Committee, which provides governance to the LVAI group and coordinates screening activities.
Marc Reisch
Mr. Reisch is a former senior correspondent for Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly news publication of the American Chemical Society. Until he retired from the magazine at the end of 2019, he covered a variety of topics including startups, industry research and development spending, fluorochemicals, firefighting foams, intellectual property disputes, and specialty chemicals. While he has a B.A. in English from the University of Stony Brook and an M.A. in English and American literature from the University of Chicago, academia was an unforgiving place for would-be scholars in the early 1980’s. Serendipity gave him an opportunity to investigate the fascinating goings on in the chemical industry and go in a direction he never regretted.