Where the mon­ey is, 2016 edi­tion: The top 100 VCs in­vest­ing in biotech, by the num­bers

Us­ing the lat­est set of num­bers on the top 100 VCs op­er­at­ing in the US, you can sketch out all of the big trends at play in the multi­bil­lion-dol­lar game of biotech in­vest­ing and star­tups.

The top four VCs – Flag­ship, Third Rock, New En­ter­prise As­so­ciates and Arch Ven­ture – all en­tered 2016 flush with cash and ready to start ramp­ing up new com­pa­nies while fos­ter­ing the up­starts al­ready in their port­fo­lios, ac­cord­ing to fig­ures Thom­son Reuters pro­vid­ed to End­points News. NEA may have slipped down the list a bit, but the life sci­ences group un­der David Mott con­tin­ues to be one of the most pro­lif­ic in the in­dus­try, not shy in the least to take a lead role in big new rounds.

In many cas­es, these four have been kick­start­ing com­pa­nies in­to ex­is­tence us­ing a blank-slate ap­proach in track­ing down and spark­ing the shift from acad­e­mia in­to the clin­ic. And groups like At­las and 5AM have been close be­hind.

If you ranked these firms by the num­ber of deals, Po­laris would come in at the top (same as last year) though they are clear­ly look­ing at mak­ing small­er bets across a wider slate of can­di­dates.

Most of these top play­ers are keen­ly in­ter­est­ed in the ear­li­est stages of in­vest­ing in biotech, but the un­der­tow on the mon­ey is al­so in­evitably broad­en­ing to in­clude lat­er stages of work, which is why Flag­ship re­cent­ly added a new $285 mil­lion fund to ex­tend its reach fur­ther down the clin­ic.

With IPOs suf­fer­ing last year, it’s al­so no sur­prise to see a crossover in­vestor like RA Cap­i­tal drop from 5th in 2015 to 56th in 2016. But Or­biMed and Deer­field re­main in the top tier of the busiest play­ers./

The num­ber of new deals has slipped, which is al­so no sur­prise. 2015 re­mains a record year in ven­ture in­vest­ing that will be hard to beat in the com­ing years, as VCs wait out the lull in the pub­lic mar­ket. But the over­all flow of cash re­mains near enough to his­toric highs to keep the land­scape look­ing bright.

To ful­ly un­der­stand these num­bers, you have to start by clar­i­fy­ing that the to­tals in the amount in­vest­ed col­umn aren’t gospel. Thom­son Reuters gath­ers up all the num­bers it can find — in the news, SEC fil­ings and so on — and then divvies the amount of each round by the num­ber of play­ers on record. If one VC was in­volved in a round, they have a sol­id fig­ure. If 4 or 5 play­ers are in­volved, they di­vide by the to­tal and use that as the av­er­age. It’s not per­fect, but it does cap­ture the lev­el of ac­tiv­i­ty each VC is play­ing with.

Based on the num­ber of new funds that con­tin­ue to at­tract record amounts of mon­ey for play­ers like Ver­sant, it’s fair to say that 2017 looks sol­id as we be­gin the year. Just about every­one ex­pects a re­peat of 2016 on the IPO front, though with Don­ald Trump en­ter­ing the White House as the wild card in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics – stroking cor­po­ra­tions with one hand while slap­ping phar­ma with the oth­er – who re­al­ly knows what’s go­ing to hap­pen?

Some­one asked me re­cent­ly where they had the best shot at rais­ing cash for his biotech ven­ture. My sug­ges­tion: Look over the num­bers and deals in your own sec­tor and see who has a track record in your field. And this is a good place to get start­ed on that ex­er­cise.

Con­tin­ue read­ing for the en­tire list of 100 top biotech VCs with to­tal amounts in­vest­ed and links to their web­sites. Reg­is­tra­tion is re­quired.

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