European medtech accelerator MD Start, which developed and launched four companies with its debut incubator, raised $11.5 million in financing for its new accelerator.
MD Start, founded in 2009, aims to connect inventors and researchers with venture capitalists, large devicemakers and contract development and manufacturing companies. Since its inception by a pair of entrepreneurs and Sofinnova partners, Medtronic and LivaNova--then Sorin Group--have joined as investors.
Its first accelerator, MD Start I, picked 14 ideas to fund and develop, eventually launching four companies: Magnetic Pacing Technologies, CorWave, which makes wave membrane implantable blood pumps, LimFlow, which is working on percutaneous deep vein arterialization of the foot for patients at risk of amputation, and Advanced Perfusion Diagnostics, which is developing a device for the monitoring gut microcirculation in high-risk and critically ill patients. Between them, these portfolio companies have reeled in almost $45 million in venture capital, MD Start said in a statement Thursday.
The financing for the new accelerator, MD Start II was led by Bpifrance’s French Tech Acceleration, with participation from Sofinnova, Medtronic and LivaNova, according to the statement.
"MD Start II is not another fund nor another incubator: MD Start II is the entrepreneur as well as the incubator and the investor. We have both a strategic and a day-to-day hands-on approach to transforming innovative ideas into medical realities, in constant dialogue and partnership with the clinician inventors,” said Anne Osdoit, a partner at MD Start, in the statement.
MD Start II aims to evaluate up to 200 inventions each year, focusing on unmet clinical need, MD Start said in the statement. Like its predecessor, it plans to assess the viability of more than 15 ideas and launch and finance four startups that will be based in France.
“MD Start’s uniqueness in Europe stems from the ability of its team to scout for innovative medical device concepts, screen inventions and ideas, identify projects with the largest opportunity in order to fund them, but most of all to provide the operational resources to develop the start-up companies during a 2- to 3-year incubation period,” said Antoine Papiernik, managing partner at Sofinnova Partners, in the statement.