California Life Sciences, the state’s life-sciences membership organization, is expanding its Fast Advisory Program for life-science startups to Southern California.
The organization said the new Fast SoCal program will bring customized expert-advising to entrepreneurs in the San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles areas.
The Fast Advisory Program provides select entrepreneurs with intensive team review and coaching to perfect their business models and product development plans and to build commercialization strategies. Fast said it has helped more than 150 startups in the Bay Area since 2013 and internationally since 2018.
CLS also said it has added two new hires to lead the effort of expanding Fast to Southern California: Sibylle Hauser as executive director of innovation services and Stephanie Allen as director of innovation services.
Hauser was formerly a strategic advisor with a focus on positioning for capital at Richtr Financial Studio and has chaired the national Women In Bio-Entrepreneur Center. Allen is the founder and former CEO of Canvas Health.
Launching this summer, the no-cost Fast SoCal program will run twice a year, presenting and hosting life-science startups at showcases and networking receptions.
Earlier this spring, CLS announced a new collaboration with Women In Bio. That program will help prepare early-stage life-science companies founded by women to pitch to investors in conjunction with the BIO International Convention. CLS also supports the MedTech Color Pitch Competition and the QuickFire Challenge for Diverse Innovators/Communities, which sends select winners of both through the Fast program.
Since launching in fall 2013, Fast California program cycles have generated more than 9,000 advisory hours valued at $2 million for the 96 companies that have been through the program, according to CLS. Since participating in Fast, these companies have raised $2.4 billion and created about 790 new jobs, more than tripling their collective workforce. More than 36 of these companies have secured Series A and beyond, and 21 have concluded strategic partnerships. To date, approximately 50% of Fast companies had a woman in the C-suite, most as founders and CEOs.
