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#24 Josep Lluis Sanfeliu: founding 2 health focused investment firms totalling €380M+ AUM and 4+ NASDAQ IPOs
Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Asabys (health VC, €86M+ AUM & 13 inv), Ex Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Ysios Capital (life science VC, €300M+ AUM & 4 NASDAQ IPOs)
We are Pol Fañanás and Gerard García, two friends passionate and curious about tech, startups, and VC sharing views from exceptional people creating the future. Thanks for reading!
Josep LLuis is Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Asabys, investment firm based in Barcelona investing in healthcare and life-science innovation with €86M+ AUM and 12 investments including Inbrain Neuroelectronics (bioelectronics using graphene to build least invasive and most intelligent neural platform, €15.5M funding by BStartup, among others) and Ona Therapeutics (discovery and development of therapeutic biologics to treat metastatic cancer, €31.5M funding by investors like Bpifrance and Alta Life Science, among others).
Previously he was Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Ysios Capital, life science investment firm with €300M AUM, 33 investments, 4 NASDAQ IPOs, 40+ products at clinical stage and 14+ products brought to market. Some portfolio companies include BioVex (treatments for cancer and infectious deceases, $1B acquisition by Amgen) and CVRx (advanced heart failure treatment, NASDAQ listed at $317M+ market cap).
Originally, Josep Lluis started as a Lawyer in Cuatrecasas, helped tech companies with fundraising at KPMG and holded a Corporate Development leadership role at Almirall (leading Spanish pharma company, public listed at €2.28B market cap).
Summary
👤 Story: lawyer, investor, biotech, angel, musician, dad
🥇 Win: reinvention of oneself, family, Asabys
🚫 Fail and lesson: not meeting some expectations, be humble
🚀 Great founder: humble, hard worker and willing to change
💸 Great investor: emphatic, good reader of people’s feelings & emotions
📈 Markets: health (mental health, cardio, cancer), AI
🦄 3 startups: Glovo, Acqustic, Psious, Koa Health
👍 3 investors: Sergio Perez Merino (Sabadell VC), Pere Mayol, Beatriz Gonzalez (Seaya Ventures), Dani Sanchez + Carles Ferrer + Jordi Viñas (Nauta Capital)
📖 3 books: “Sapiens”, “War & Peace”, poetry from Joan Margarit
What is your story?
I studied law and economics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra University and started off my career at Cuatrecasas. However after 5 years of being a lawyer and specializing in intellectual property (IP) stuff, I got tired of being exclusively tied to the legal world and not exploring other things.
Around that time I started to cultivate some links with the tech world and I started helping a friend named Lluis Faus who was fundraising €3M for his company. At 25 years of age I ended leading the round with my savings and managed to get 3i, a big international private equity firm, as investor. It was a really good outcome and from that point onwards, I started to invest more in other private companies.
Eventually I reached a moment where I had to make a decision as to whether continue being a lawyer or completely shift my career and commit 100% to the finance world. And I did it. First, I worked at KPMG helping early-stage companies in their fundraising efforts, and then I worked for a smaller firm (Eurohold) doing the same kind of work.
Then somehow I came across Oryzon Genomic’s €1M capital raising (a public listed biopharma company now with a €160M market cap) and helping them was my first step within the biotech investment world. Thanks to this experience I realized I actually loved the space whilst at the same time there weren’t many professional investors covering it, so I saw it as an opportunity and I took it.
Also thanks to this project and pitching many pharmaceutical companies to try to get them as investors, I met Almirall (a leading Spanish pharma corporate) and they gave me the opportunity to join them in a leadership role within the corporate development team. This experience resulted in an incredible inflow of pharma and scientific knowledge, which combined with an IESE MBA made me think again about my next career move - I wanted to become a professional biotech investor.
So in 2007, I co-founded Ysios Capital with my other partners and launched the first Spanish venture capital firm exclusively focused on biotech. After 10 years, 2 funds, €250M raised and learning a lot with Ysios, other hobbies such as being a business angel started to stand out in my life and I started to commit more time into it from 2011 onwards. And walking this path, during 2014 one day a very young guy came into my office with an idea and I invested in him. He was Oscar Pierre, Co-Founder & CEO of Glovo. I became very involved in the company, introducing him to people, helping with fundraising and supporting with the set up for the great things to come.
During that journey, I saw how new digital angles linked perfectly with the healthcare industry and I also experienced how Barcelona was increasingly becoming a very strong hub for both, health and tech, therefore I started a new professional journey launching Asabys Partners partners in 2018, a new VC fund focused on healthcare investments with a high technological component. We had an initial target of €60M but ended up raising €88M and in the last 2 years we have made around 11 investments.
Lastly, the most important part. I am a proud parent of 2 fantastic kids, I have a great dog named Jerry and I am an amateur musician who loves playing with his band.
What is the biggest win in your life?
The adventure of reinventing myself, which means a lot of rejects (i.e. saying no to a career in Cuatrecasas), with a lot of work and constant learning.
Personally wise, I would say being able to manage a family successfully while working non-stop. I have some great kids, very curious, stable and hard-working. Sometimes balancing demanding jobs with being a parent can be a rollercoaster and overcoming those challenges is an important win for me.
Professionally, I would say creating Asabys based on my investment philosophy as opposed to the other experiences where I had bosses and I couldn’t be 100% myself. Being able to do that and have a partner like Clara, who is different than me and complements me really well, is amazing.
What is the biggest failure and lesson?
Mostly, not always being able to meet the expectations that some people may have. Missing some big business adventures, not delivering on promises of innovative disruption, personally not fulfilling what some people expect from you - I’ve been disappointed by having failed people who trusted me first.
But at the end of the day you apologize, you take ownership and time goes by. But you have to go through it, you have to fail and you have to take responsibility.
The lesson is being humble and transparent, share negative news before, and as I said, assume responsibilities.
What is your description of a great founder?
Oscar (Co-Founder & CEO of Glovo) is a good example. When I see many founders I use him as a reference, I ask myself “Will it be like Oscar?”
It’s easy to say after all this time of exceptional track record but he takes good decisions and executes hard, all while being really humble.
He is a great doer focused on restless work far from the flashing lights. He is not an alpha leader but a beta, supporting the team from behind and empowering them to freely build value. Oscar has no ego and that true humility enables him to be always open to listen and learn, which added to great execution skills I believe result in a great founder.
There is a lot of people who implement without listening or listen but don’t do anything of great value, being able to find harmony between these two factors is a really interesting sweet spot. Humility with hard work opens the door to progress on your vision yet keeps you alert to learn new things and be open to change if there is a better way to go.
What is your description of a great investor?
From an investor standpoint, I need a co-investor that adds empathy and understands the entrepeneurs’ emotions, someone who is not only for the money. We all have to understand where the founders’ views comes from and we need to be able to put ourselves in their shoes.
There are a lot of factors that can affect the entrepreneur like divorce, death, or stress. Imagine someone has an issue and an important Board meeting goes badly as a result. You need to understand this type of situations and be able to read persons in order to thrive as investor. Not all is black or white.
A great investor gets that emotions and feelings are important. Human factor is key.
What markets are you most interested in?
Without any doubt, health. COVID made even more relevant everything around it. Software and hardware. Specially, AI and new generation algorithms.
To me, health is the market with the the highest potential and I’m specially interested in AI and new generation algorithms, mental health, cardiology (blood and cardio) and cancer.
3 startups you like and why?
Glovo. Amazing socioeconomic impact from every angle you can think about. Glovo has provided thousands of jobs to a lot of people previously unemployed or looking for their first job after graduating from university. On the personal side, I’m attached to the company as the first investor and personal friend to Oscar. A clear success story across different levels.
Acqustic. I really like the way they have approached the issue of providing a market to the musical talent in Spain (where there is a lot of them and sometimes not quite recognized). The platform allows any musician to emerge and make a living out of it. I also like the fact that empowers the creator economy by allowing individual amateur musicians share their work with others and help manage all the events from one place. I’ve been very involved because aside from being an investor, you know that I’m a guitarist and pianist, so I relate to the millions of musicians out there.
Psious & Koa Health. Two bets of Asabys that I think deserve a lot of attention. Given the current environment, where we are getting out from a global pandemic and in the middle a of an important economic crisis, all the companies tackling the mental health issue are important. Helping those affected to recover while providing a social impact not only to their immediate relatives but to the society as a whole is something we should pay attention to.
3 investors you like and why?
There are many investors I’ve worked with with whom I feel really comfortable. I’m delighted to have had the chance to share adventures with all of them in different deals, I know how they work, how they judge opportunities, how they think, what values they have, what culture they envision, etc.
Some of them are:
Sergio Perez Merino (Sabadell Venture Capital). He is really hard-wordking, has a good track record and achieved interesting success. They are the VC arm from Banco Sabadell.
Pere Mayol. One of your previous guests at Views. He is great angel investor and his track record talks by itself. Brilliant whilst super humble.
Beatriz Gonzalez (Seaya Ventures). I called her to invest in Glovo, she did a thorough due diligence, invested in the company and have been really supportive in all the stages.
Nauta Capital. Historic within the entrepreneurial world. Dani Sanchez, Carles Ferrer, Jordi Viñas and all the team are the true example that from Barcelona you can lead a successful project in one of the most demanding industries in the world. They’ve done a phenomenal job.
3 books you feel everyone should read and why?
Some I find to be great recommendations are:
“Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari. A great book on the history of humanity, great perspective to understand who we are as humans.
“War & Peace” by Leo Tolstoy. Great masterpiece surrounding the French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society mixing novel, history, poetry, epicness, spirituality .. a must.
All poetry by Joan Margarit. If you want to have fun and get inspired, any piece of his poetry writings is great. I re-read his books and it helps me see things in life from a different angle, maybe too abstract sometimes, but in a positive way.
WILDCARD QUESTION
What is the current state of healthtech and what are the fundamentals an investor in the space should keep in mind?
COVID made more palpable the reality that a better healthtech industry implies a more positive outcome for society, and this has stimulated interest of capital. Having the best possible health systems is no longer an option but a must, and not only for the current COVID situation but for what can come in the future.
Additionally, there are so many diseases yet to be cured and so many demands from society to take better care of people’s health, that is great to see how capital has increased awareness towards healthtech solutions.
The hunger of investors is brutal and this inflow of capital will empower more investments in solutions where positive impact to society is clear thus accelerating progress.
About opportunities, I believe the intersection of some hot spots like mental health, cardio and cancer with tech breakthroughs in areas such as data analytics, sensors, graphene, AI and quantum, will bring a superior patient centric all inclusive health ecosystem that will dramatically improve how society goes about health right now with really game changing outcomes in matters of life quality standards, security and productivity.
Personally and more concretely, I really like new information systems of monitorization that leverage AI to process data in a way that empowers health solutions to anticipate the problem before it happens, with a special focus in heart cells and brain cells. And going down the rabbit hole, neurology and neuropsychiatry are two fascinating fields.
But even though pure tech core is super exciting, we can’t forget that a big part of health right now will continue to be biology, pharma, hardware devices and digital health too.
So to conclude, my views are that problems are big and painful, solutions are everyday more needed, capital interest is increasing rapidly, more new great tech and scientific talent is joining the adventure and building a significant amount of interesting projects in a varied number of verticals and we can expect very important positive outcomes for society in the forthcoming future. The challenge? We need to perform and make the promise of a better health for society a reality.
Big thanks Josep Lluis for sharing your views with us!
Big thanks to you, reader, for your time and interest!
If you enjoyed it, subscribe and we’ll be back with you. 🙏🏼
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