Five years ago, the universally accepted investment path was to write a proposal for grants, hit up a list of friends and family, and canvass the local regional angel groups to help get you on your way to commercialization. After the first wave of funding, the second wave was to canvass the venture capital entities or find strategic partners, each coming with their own unique set of challenges and outcomes.

The good news is the investor landscape has morphed and the goal of enlightened scientist entrepreneur should be to find the investors that are a fit for his or her technologies sector and stage of development. This entails putting aside some of the old dictums regarding fundraising and separating the facts from fiction as it applies to fundraising today. Let's dispel some of the out-of-date notions regarding fundraising and commercializing technology. Below are some of the old myths that circle in and out of the conversations around funding updated for how the reality has changed. A lot of these items below setback scientists before they even have a chance to get into the game...

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Life Science Nation is calling on innovative early stage companies to present at the next Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) conference. RESI will bring together over 150 active early stage investors for a one day partnering event and is accepting applications from emerging companies developing therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, and healthcare IT products to participate in a technology showcase on January 12, 2016.

If you are one of the 30 companies selected by our in house scientific evaluation team, you will be given full-day exposure to investors and potential partners in the exhibit hall, through a poster display, allowing for the creation of meaningful dialogues. Unlike traditional 5- to 15-minute pitch presentations that do not allow any real one-on-one interaction and provide no actionable feedback from investors, the RESI Innovation Challenge enables executives to pitch directly to attendees, which can generate more in-depth and frequent conversations with investors throughout the event...

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What defining elements make a diagnostic company stand out? What do diagnostic investors look for and why should the healthcare marketplace care about diagnostics? What should these companies do to get their foot in the door of these investors? These are the types of questions our Diagnostic Investors panel answered at our RESI Conference in Boston last week.

Moderated by Parker Cassidy, Executive in Residence, RA Capital, the audience got to hear from:

The panel revealed the key elements they seek when evaluating a diagnostic company and the reasons behind them. Together they discussed four main criteria-the impact in the healthcare delivery marketplace, the regulatory and reimbursement pathway, the "push" and "pull" from investors and clinicians, and the ability to prove positive patient impact with the tests results-before closing with advice for fundraising companies...

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