Emerging Companies & Venture Capital

From guiding early-stage enterprises through the entire life cycle of a company to connecting investors and entrepreneurs, Ropes & Gray’s emerging companies practice helps clients meet and exceed their business goals.

Our knowledge and experience in these areas allows us to understand and anticipate the legal and business needs of our emerging company clients and to foster valuable business relationships between these clients and interested investors. We also work closely with investors to advise on investments and support them in their ongoing relationships with portfolio companies.

Our emerging companies practice spans the entire life cycle of a company, from organization and incorporation, through venture, mezzanine and late-stage funding to sophisticated financing and acquisition transactions for large, multi-national companies.

We routinely assist our emerging company clients with: 

• Founders arrangements
• Evaluating and structuring of initial investments from angel, seed and venture investors
• Additional financing rounds from venture, crossover and late-stage investors
• Strategic early-stage regulatory advice
• Strategic patent portfolio advising and securing trademark protection
• Supplier, distributor, co-promotion and other strategic relationships
• Corporate, transactional and international tax advice
• Mergers, acquisitions and asset sales
• Initial and follow-on public offerings

• Acceleron Pharma – Represented Acceleron Pharma since inception in its private financings, licenses, $83.7 million IPO and concurrent private placement, and have continued to advise on several follow-on offerings worth an aggregate of $947.5 million.
• Arbor Biotechnologies – Represented Arbor Biotechnologies in a strategic research collaboration with Vertex Pharmaceuticals focused on the discovery of novel proteins, including DNA endonucleases, to further develop new gene-editing therapies for cystic fibrosis and other diseases.
• Beam Therapeutics – Represented Beam Therapeutics since inception in its licenses, including from Editas and The Broad, its preferred stock financings in excess of $240 million and its $207 million IPO and follow-on offerings.
• Foghorn Therapeutics – Represented Foghorn Therapeutics in its licenses, including with Merck and Johnson & Johnson, its aggregate $136 million Series A, Series B and Series C Financing rounds and its $120 million IPO.
• Genesis Therapeutics – Represented Genesis Therapeutics, an innovative biotechnology company engaging its proprietary molecular AI technology to transform clinical outcomes for patients, in a $52 million Series A financing round.
• GNS Healthcare – Represented GNS Healthcare in a $15 million Series C financing round. New investors in this round include Alexandria Real Estate Equities and Gi Global Health Fund LP who joined existing investors Celgene Corporation, Cambia Health Solutions, California’s Heritage Provider Network, and Japan’s Mitsui & Co. 
• Goldfinch Bio – Represented Goldfinch Bio in its $55 million Series A financing, in its $100 million Series B financing, and in its license agreement with Takeda Pharmaceuticals for worldwide rights to a preclinical, peripherally-restricted cannabinoid receptor 1 monoclonal antibody.
• JHL Biotech – Represented JHL Biotech on its pre-IPO restructuring activities and its $45 million pre-IPO equity financing led by Fidelity Investments with participation by Milestone Capital, Liwick Investment Management and Sungent Bio.
• LogicBio Therapeutics – Represented LogicBio Therapeutics in its $50 million preferred stock financing led by Arix Bioscience and OrbiMed, and in its subsequent $70 million IPO, as well as numerous licensing transactions.
• Mersana Therapeutics – Represented Mersana Therapeutics in its licenses with Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Merck to develop antibody-drug conjugates, a class of pharmaceutical typically used to fight cancer, its $35 million Series B-1 venture financing as well as its $75 million IPO.
• Prevail Therapeutics, Inc. – Represented Prevail Therapeutics, Inc., a biologics and gene therapies company for Parkinson’s disease, in its formation, Series Seed financing, initial IP in-licensing, definitive agreement to be acquired by Eli Lilly & Company, and with respect to various general corporate matters. Prevail was launched and initially financed by The Silverstein Foundation and OrbiMed.
• Sigilon Therapeutics – Represented Sigilon in raising over $225 million from investors, lenders, and other sources, and in its $126 million IPO.
• Vapotherm, Inc. – Represented Vapotherm, in a $29 million financing led by 3x5 Special Opportunity Fund L.P. and including investors Morgenthaler Venture Partners along with previous investors in the company, and in its $56 million IPO.
• Zai Lab – Represented Zai Lab since its inception, including advising the company on its Series A, B and C preferred equity financings, in which Zai Lab raised an aggregate of $165 million, and subsequent $172.5 million IPO.

In today’s economy, private financing is playing an increasingly important role in the growth of emerging companies. Through our life sciences, health care, technology, media & telecommunications, and energy & infrastructure practices we are familiar with the industries in which venture capital funds typically invest and understand the potential benefits and risks associated with investing in these areas.

After assisting our venture capital client with its investments, we continue to add value by:

• Advising on fund formation 
• Evaluating and structuring initial and follow-on investments 
• Evaluating intellectual property portfolios of target companies 
• Advising on continuing relationships with portfolio companies 
• Determining strategies for investment exit 

We represent hundreds of venture capital, private equity, and private investment firms, including:

Bain Capital Ventures

Represented Bain Capital Ventures in various venture and growth capital investments, including:

• in its $55 million Series D financing and investment round in InflaRx, a German biopharmaceutical company, which was co-led by Bain Capital Life Sciences, Cormorant Asset Management LLC and RA Capital Management.
• in its $100 million Series F financing and investment round in Redis Labs, a private computer software company.
• in its $5 million seed financing and investment round in Venminder, a third-party risk management platform.
• in its seed financing and investment round in LogicSource, a leader in sourcing and procurement services.

Northpond Ventures

Represent Northpond Ventures in various venture and growth capital investments, including: 

• in its $25 million Series A financing and investment round in SGI-DNA, a DNA printing platform.
• in its $14 million Series A financing and investment round in Vizgen, a biotech company developing solutions for next-generation spatially resolved, single-cell transcriptomics.
• in its $28 million Series C financing and investment round in ChromaCode, a molecular diagnostics company.
• in its $14 million Series A financing and investment round in Deep Lens, an AI-driven digital pathology company.

Pfizer Venture Investments

Represented Pfizer Venture Investments in various venture and growth capital investments, including:

• in its $20 million Series C financing and investment round in CytomX, a biotechnology company developing Probody™ therapeutics for the treatment of cancer.
• in its $53 million Series B financing and investment round in Imcheck Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical company designing and developing a new generation of immunotherapy antibodies.
• in its $49 million Series A financing and investment round in Triplet Therapeutics, a biotechnology company harnessing human genetics to develop treatments for repeat expansion disorders at their source.
• in its $53 million Series C extension investment in Amplyx Pharmaceuticals Inc., a biotech company developing innovative therapies for debilitating and life-threatening diseases in patients with compromised immune systems.

Sands Capital Management

Represented Sands Capital Management in various minority investments, including:

• Amagma
• Chime Financial
• Dice Molecules
• GreyNoise Intelligence
• iRhythm Technologies
• KITBio
• Opentrons Labworks
• StockX
• Tarsus Pharmaceuticals
• Taysha Gene Therapies
• Tolerion, Inc.
• Vesper Technologies
• WireWheel

TPG Growth

Represented TPG Growth in various venture and growth capital investments, including:

• in its $75 million investment in Precision for Medicine, a provider of specialized scientific services for life science innovators to research, develop, and commercialize medical products.
• in its $35 million Series B financing and investment round in Noodles.ai, a leading provider of enterprise AI applications.
• in its $70 million investment in Resource Label Group by TPG Growth.
• in its cross-platform minority investment, which included TPG Growth and TPG Tech Adjacencies Fund, into Kaseya, a software company owned by Insight Partners.