Business Angels Network Nijmegen (BANN)

Are you ready for the next step? Looking for a serious investment to help you realize the full growth potential of your company? Come and see whether your company qualifies to meet with the Business Angels Network Nijmegen (BANN).

The BANN is a network of angel investors who are specifically interested in innovative Health and High Tech initiatives. Thrice a year, we set up an informal meeting where companies can pitch their proposition and discuss investment opportunities with investors from BANN.

Business Angels Network focuses on bringing together young entrepreneurs and interested angels by focusing on an open exchange of experiences. The meetings between angels, start-ups, and scale-ups usually consist of some plenary sessions, followed by a Q&A with the present companies and an informal dinner. Companies that pitch here must have a certain level of maturity and be ready for some serious business discussions with investors. Briskr will extensively support start-ups with the preparation of tehri pitch.

The Business Angels Network is a collaboration between Briskr, the municipality of Nijmegen, Rabobank Rijk van Nijmegen, Poelmann van den Broek lawyers, Oost NL, BDO consultants, EP&C patent attorneys, and Aeternus company business valuation.

Venture Capital

Great ideas are essential for a great start, as are strong efforts and dedication from your start-up team. But you need more to create a sustainable business. Sooner or later, you’re going to need external money in order to attract the right people and seriously grow your company.

As they say: you might start with the help from friends, family and fools. After that, early-stage investors will help you get serious. And at some point, you will find yourself looking at larger investments by venture capital.

Briskr has the network and the knowledge to connect Health and High Tech businesses with investors. Whether you’re fully set to apply for series A capital, or only recently started wondering how to get there: we can offer professional support and extensive information.

Amongst our partners, you’ll find both early-stage investors (like INKEF Capital) and companies specialized in investment readiness. Furthermore, we regularly organize meetings and workshops about venture capital and everything that comes with it.

Stay up to date by checking out our upcoming events!

Innovation for Health

CONNECT WITH KEY PLAYERS IN HEALTH & LIFE SCIENCES
21 APRIL 2022

On 21 April 2022, the 9th edition of the leading conference for key players in Health & Life Sciences, Innovation for Health, takes place in Amsterdam! Thus, mark your calendars and join us in-person or online at Innovation for Health 2022. The theme of the next conference builds upon our previous edition and isinnovation for prevention.

At Innovation for Health 2022, you get to share insights, catch up on the latest trends, establish new or build upon valuable connections and collaborations and much more. With our energizing programme, we bring top-notch speakers to the stage, display high impact innovations, highlight best practices, and demonstrate inspiring developments in healthcare. Inspiring, interacting, and networking are at the heart of the conference. Moreover, the conference brings over 900 innovators, entrepreneurs, thought leaders and other key players from Health & Life Sciences together to shape the future of healthcare together.

More information.

Health Valley: Inspiration meeting: Life Science, Food and Health!

There is more and more attention for the importance of nutrition in preventing diseases. The relationship between nutrition and health is obvious, but to a large extent it is still virgin territory. Within the life sciences, health care and food sector, people are working hard on innovations. The strength, however, lies in cooperation. What new opportunities arise then? Do we want personalised drinks with ingredients that keep us healthy? Will we use smart apps in our personal (di)food choices? What are tips for entering into special nutrition contracts with health insurers? What challenges do these sectors face and what can they learn from each other?

During this exclusive free event, organised by LifetecZONe, Health Valley and Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo, we bring together entrepreneurs from all networks.

Registration
Where: Brightlands Greenport Campus Venlo

Health Valley Event 15-16-17 March ’22

After the success of previous editions, Health Valley Event 2022 in Nijmegen will be bigger and more international than ever. We are setting up a live three-day program that will also be accessible online. The edition on 15, 16 and 17 March will focus on connect, challenge and grow! Experience the latest trends and developments in Life Science & Health. Be inspired, challenged and surprised. Will you join us?

Profiling & sponsoring

Interested in presenting your business or organisation on our dynamic exhibition floor or want to make use of our profiling options at HVE in another way? Check our wide range of promotional opportunities.

In short, Health Valley Event 2022 is an absolute must! For more information go to www.healthvalleyevent.com.

How to build a successful team?

Picking the wrong people and creating the wrong team is the fastest way to kill your startup. But how do you pick the right people and create a team that complements each other?  A team that is open, shares lessons and learns together?

After al, success is defined by the people in the company and the way they can cooperate.

Ideally you will have a team that mostly supports the direction your startup is going into, but with a certain amount of courage, a critical view and an ability to discuss the important matters. But mostly a team of people that complements you.

A complementary team starts with knowledge about yourself as a leader or founder. Who am I? What are my qualities? What are my pitfalls? How do I perceive the world?

Trainer Frank Stofmeel is a team and performance coach (see LinkedIn profile) and he will guide you through questions that will help you find out what you need from other people. It will help you to make your team complimentary to accelerate growth and increase results on the long term.

This workshop will be a quest into yourself and will help you find out what you need from other people to complement your character so you know how to build a successful team!

Live event
We aim to organize this workshop in a live setting and will take all necessary RIVM/national guidelines into account. If a physical workshop is not possible, we will reschedule to a later date.

This workshop is specifically for innovative startups and entrepreneurs and is free of charge. We welcome new contacts, so feel free to share this invite with your network!

Women in Business

We would like to invite all women to celebrate female entrepreneurship on March 8, 2022! Women are underrepresented and underestimated in corporate leadership, making up only 4.8% of CEOs, despite making up 44.7% of total employees. Added to that, women are even now payed less than men in spite of doing the same tasks.

Mercator Launch hosts an interactive ask-me-anything meet-up with a panel of business women at different stages in their careers to discuss these advantages, challenges and opportunities. To hear their advice and learn from their own personal stories about starting an own business, combating gender stereotypes and championing the cause of women in the workplace, you can sign in now for this meet-up!

Panel consists of:

  • Marinka Nooteboom (CEO Koninklijke Nooteboom Groep & Businesswomen of the year 2022)
  • Chimwemwe de Gaay Fortman (Director Capital Oost NL)
  • Kris Bevelander (Owner Crowdience and senior researcher at Radboudumc)

More information.

The importance of solid general terms & conditions in contracts and agreements

Clear contracting
During this interactive workshop Valerie and Joost from our supporting partner Poelmann van den Broek advocaten will discuss the importance of clear contracting. They will talk about common issues and pitfalls regarding contracting and general terms & conditions.
 
Topics
Term
Termination
Intellectual Property
Liability
Exclusiveness
Confidentiality
 
Of course there is ample opportunity for the participants to bring in examples and ask questions.
 
Presenters
Valerie Lipman, attorney-at-law
Joost van Dongen, attorney-at-law
 
Valerie and Joost are both specialized in commercial contracts, Intellectual property rights and IT-contracts. They advise large to medium-sized companies when entering into various types of agreements such as purchasing and sales contracts, supply contracts, licence agreements, collaboration agreements, non-disclosure agreements and general terms & conditions. In addition, they frequently litigate in court.
 
Don’t miss this workshop, sign up below!
 
Physical meeting?
We aim to organize a physical meeting at Novio Tech Campus Nijmegen (if RIVM guidelines allow it), If needed, we will change to an online session or postpone the session.
 
This workshop is free of charge. We welcome new contacts, so feel free to share this invite with your network!

Recording How to grow your business internationally

Yesterday we organised the workshop ‘How to grow your business internationally’. Lizanne Jakobs of Brilliant Work taught us a number of key points that you need to consider if you want to expand your business abroad. She listed some common mistakes and stressed the importance of setting goals and having a good preparation & planning.
Besides the fact that you have to speak the language of the country where you want to do business, it is important that your presentation, brochures and website are professional. And don’t forget the culture of the country where you want to do business! It is also important to do market research first (Is there a market for your product, or maybe a different version of your product?) And what help can you get from the government?
This very practical & valuable workshop laid a good foundation for crossing the border. Thank you Lizanne!

Predica Diagnostics and TenWise announce collaboration on development of MicroBioDx

A novel microbiome-host profiling tool for health and disease.

TenWise BV and Predica Diagnostics BV have received financial support from the Dutch RVO (MIT-R&D-samenwerkingsproject) for the joint development of the high-throughput MicroBioDX platform for the characterization of microbiome-host interactions and their role in inflammatory bowel disease and cancer development and treatment.

Compared to existing state-of-the-art sequencing-based technologies, the MicroBioDX platform is more cost-effective, faster and more versatile: it maps host-microbiome interactions by yielding quantitative information on expression levels of hundreds of human genes of interest, while at the same time detecting pathogenic bacteria, fungi and viruses that are part of a diseased gut microbiome.

MicroBioDx uses ciRNAseq, Predica’s disruptive, high throughput targeted RNA sequencing technology in combination with TenWise’s expertise on literature mining, artificial intelligence and algorithm development, to detect biological pathways associated with health and disease. This combination will help researchers and medical doctors to better predict patient prognosis and guide treatment with precision medicines. Also, MicroBioDx will reduce costs of analyses for large datasets and reduce throughput time from a matter of weeks to a matter of days. It will therefore be very relevant for the evaluation of results of large clinical trials and of individual patients for whom a rapid diagnosis is essential.

“TenWise collaborates with Predica as ciRNAseq allows to measure both DNA/RNA from the human host as well as the microbiome from one and the same human sample. This means that human gene expression data and microbiome data are generated faster and interactions between the microbiome and host are determined more accurately. Within this project Predica also provides access to large data sets that we will use to validate our text mining based predictions”, comments Dr. Wynand Alkema, CSO of TenWise.

“Predica welcomes TenWise as a partner with expertise that is highly complementary to that of Predica”, says Dr. William Leenders, CSO of Predica Diagnostics. “As an expert in text mining and machine learning, TenWise will design knowledge maps of biological pathways that link relevant micro-organisms to expression of human genes that are part of the host response in health and disease. These knowledge maps are essential elements of the data interpretation software we will develop for researchers and for medical doctors who will be supported in rapid and accurate treatment of their patients.”

Predica Diagnostics B.V is a spinoff from the Radboudumc, active in the field of diagnostics, prognostics and prediction of treatment response in oncology. Predica Diagnostics aims to bring its ciRNAseq technology to patients in 1 to 2 years with a first focus on developing the CervicaDX test. This test allows non-invasive detection of cervical abnormalities in women who are at risk of developing cervical cancer, with unprecedented specificity. This, and other diagnostic tests for host-microbiome interactions will improve diagnosis, prognosis prediction and produce a list of potentially successful precision medicines, thus aiding in development of personalized treatment plans for cancer patients.

TenWise B.V. offers text mining solutions that help researchers and medical professionals to extract knowledge from literature in a fast and effective way. Also, it collaborates within consortia of industry and academia in life sciences on artificial intelligence solutions that assist in drug discovery with a special focus on interventions in the microbiome. The company is based at Leiden Bio Science Park, the Netherlands and works for clients around the world.