You might call it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Framingham, Massachusetts health care firm called Alira Health has acquired RedCrow, an equity crowdfunding platform co-founded by Jerry Harrison, keyboardist for the Talking Heads and a native of Shorewood.
Harrison founded RedCrow back in 2016 with former Morgan Stanley financial adviser Brian Smith. The two thought they could take the same concepts underpinning GarageBand.com — an online musician community, also founded by Harrison — and translate them to health care, a space that has historically been inaccessible to small-scale investors.
"We started RedCrow to focus only on health care, and specifically companies in health care that were making a social impact," said Smith, who now lives in California but once spent most of his days in Boston's Financial District. "We were going out to patients, patient advocates, investors who had spent their entire careers in health care, and health care providers — doctors and nurses. Let them look at the companies on our platform and crowdsource feedback."
That feedback, in turn, would allow the best companies to "rise to the top," Smith said. Over the next six years, RedCrow helped 250 companies crowdfund on the platform, collectively raising more than $200 million.
Now, RedCrow of Mill Valley, California, will be integrated with Alira Health. Alira offers a vast array of clinical trial management services, including electronic patient recruitment and help with study design. Alira's goal is to "humanize" health care, making it easier for patients to participate in studies at multiple stages of the process and from multiple geographic areas, not just those near major medical centers.
"The humanization part (of Alira's mission) is for any and every patient, not just some patients. It's the same thing for RedCrow," said Alira CEO Gabriele Brambilla. "With the crowdfunding platform, the proximity to the hubs of Boston or San Francisco is not so key anymore."
Brambilla and Smith declined to disclose the financial terms of the acquisition.
Smith says the acquisition positions RedCrow and Alira nicely on both coasts. Next, they will work to expand into the center of the country. That's something RedCrow has already done: Most of the companies that have crowdfunded on its platform have been based outside of traditional hubs, including in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Florida.
Alira also plans to grow locally. Of its 600 employees worldwide, about 90 are based in Framingham, and Brambilla expects to grow by 30 to 40% this year, which would put local headcount at about 120.
"I'm Framingham proud," said Brambilla, who in 2018 co-founded the MetroWest Life Sciences Network. "Framingham is key, because for me, Framingham represents the 'any patient.'"
