Vets First Choice makes acquisitions, startup accelerator relaunches with female focus, a conversation w/ Novo Biosciences' Kevin Strange, and more...

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Vets First Choice acquires two Arizona-based pharmacies

Just weeks after announcing the close of a $223 million round of fundraising, Vets First Choice is demonstrating how it plans to leverage that major infusion of capital. The company on Thursday announced it had acquired two Arizona-based pharmacy companies to expand the products and services it offers veterinarian practices. The company is not divulging financial details about the acquisitions, which increases the company's employee count by 50%, to 750, but CEO Ben Shaw told Maine Startups Insider that the acquisitions were enabled by its recently closed equity round. 
Read more at Maine Startups Insider >>
 

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Bangor accelerator relaunches with a female focus

Scratchpad Accelerator, which launched in Bangor in 2015 and worked with a single cohort of four startups before taking a two-year hiatus, is relaunching this fall with a new focus on female founders.

Beginning in October, the accelerator will work with four or five female-founded, high-potential, high-growth startups to help validate their customer base, value proposition and business model. The program is accepting applications online through Sept. 4.
Read more at Maine Startups Insider >>

Founder Forum

Kevin Strange of Novo Biosciences

Kevin Strange is co-founder and CEO of Novo Biosciences, a four-year-old biotech startup in Bar Harbor that is working on nothing less than developing a drug with the ability to give humans regenerative properties.

While that sounds straight out of a sci-fi novel, Strange and his co-inventors have identified a certain molecule that has demonstrated regenerative properties in the laboratory, first in zebra fish and then in mice. The goal now is to lead this drug candidate through clinical trials in large mammals and then, hopefully, demonstrate that it can help humans regenerate heart muscle tissue following a heart attack.

"That was pretty much a crackpot idea eight years ago, but in less than four years we made the discovery of a drug that launched Novo Biosciences," says Strange, who is also president of MDI Biological Laboratory, where the research took place. "To date, it’s the first and only drug that’s ever been shown to stimulate regeneration of the mammalian heart."

Despite his confidence in the research results so far, Strange is careful not to oversell the for-profit spinoff company's potential drug candidate. There are still many hurdles in front of them, not least of which is the need to raise massive amounts of money from investors. Leading a drug through clinical trials could cost as much as $30 million, he says, and the failure rate in drug development is incredibly high.

"We couldn’t be in a riskier business than drug development," Strange says. "I’ve heard that people who invest in drug development are viewed as fairly delusional."

But the payoff, if it does work, could be massive. Besides the honor of coming up with a drug that could help people survive cardiovascular disease, the number one killer in the world, such a drug would generate billions of dollars a year in revenue, Strange says.

In his Founder Forum interview, Strange discusses the financial risks of drug development, how Maine could better incentivize technology transfer at academic institutions, the lack of resources in the state to support biomedical entrepreneurs, and how perception about the state has hurt his chances to raise investment.

This last part led to one of my favorite quotes from the hour-long interview: "When you tell me you’re not going to invest in me because I'm in Maine, yeah, it’s disheartening. But screw you. We’re going to keep going."

We also discuss the Maine Center for Biomedical Innovation, which Strange just launched at the MDI Biological Laboratory to serve as an incubator for biomedical startups. Besides Novo Biosciences, there are four other startups in the incubator, including two that moved to Bar Harbor from out of state. We discuss all that and more.   Enjoy.
Read the Q&A with Kevin Strange >>

Briefly mentioned

+ Builder, a national online magazine covering the construction industry, covered the launch of Maine's GO Lab. GO Lab, an R&D lab focused on developing wood-based building products, is a collaboration between Belfast-based architecture and construction firm GO Logic and Joshua Henry, a chemist and former professor at Bates College and the University of Maine. GO Lab was recently named one of the semifinalists in Greenlight Maine's 3rd season. 

+ William Sulinski, a Maine native and UMaine grad, has raised $600,000 for his men's fashion company, Pistol Lake, according to TechCrunch. While Sulinski and Pistol Lake are based in Los Angeles these days, his previous startup, AccelGolf, was based in Portland. I wrote about him and AccelGolf back in 2009 when I worked at Mainebiz.

+ Mainebiz has selected Nancy Strojny, chair of the Portland chapter of SCORE, as one of its 2017 Women to Watch. Strojny is well known in the local startup community for mentoring entrepreneurs herself and for building an organization that has helped many startup founders find mentors with experience relevant to their business focus. Here's Mainebiz's profile of Nancy. 

Jobs

Seeking a full-stack engineer? A technical co-founder? A sales or biz dev superstar? Send me your job postings to make this a great resource!

+ Guideline Technologies, a venture-backed fintech startup that is headquartered in California but has a dev office in Portland (where CTO Mike Nelson is based), is hiring a senior ruby engineer, a senior JS engineer, a customer success associate, and a product designer. All these positions are full-time, available in the Portland office, and come with the potential for equity in the company, which raised a $7 million Series A last summer.

+ Welnys, a tech startup that's developed a wellness marketplace and dashboard for employers, is seeking a Head of Engineering. Tech skills required are Node.js and SQL. Familiarity with React, tech ops, APIs, web services, cloud, and security are bonus. Non-technical skills: ability to advise CEO on trade-offs and timelines, familiarity with agile/scrum, self-directed. Will work with existing part-time team of front-end developer, UX designer and project manager. Welnys is a post-product, post-revenue startup (current clients include PayPal and Stanley Black & Decker) that's planning to raise funding in September. Compensation is equity-based to start with salary upon funding. Very flexible regarding hours/remote work pre-funding. Welnys, while based in Texas, is a member of Venture Hall's inaugural accelerator cohort in Portland. For more info about this job, email heather@welnys.com.

+ Forager, an early-stage tech startup in Portland with a B2B platform for sourcing local food, is hiring an account manager. 

+ Pika Energy in Westbrook is hiring an office manager and a director of electrical engineering.

+ Big Room Studios, a software and web development firm in Portland, is hiring a project manager. 

+ CourseStorm is looking for a software engineer. Bangor-based is preferable, but the company is open to a remote worker if the right candidate was to come along.

+ Rapport is looking to hire a Senior Sales Rep and a Ruby/SQL developer in Portland.

+ BetterLesson, a Cambridge-based edtech startup, is hiring for a few sales and marketing positions. The right person does not need to be based in Boston, according to BetterLesson's Chief Revenue Officer, Betsy Peters, who lives in Freeport. The company is hiring a Director of Sales, Director of Marketing, and an Inside Sales Account Executive.

+ Certify in Portland is hiring a full-stack developer and several sales and marketing positions.

+ NBT Solutions in Portland is hiring a geospatial developer, a technical SaaS sales lead, and a marketing programs coordinator to support its VETRO FiberMap product expansion.

+ BlueTarp Financial in Portland is hiring an engineering manager.

+ Academic Merit, an educational software startup in Portland, is hiring a software engineer.

+ Environetix Technology Corp., a wireless sensor manufacturer in Orono, is hiring a RF engineer/RF technician.

+ Dream Local Digital in Rockland is hiring for a host of positions.

+ Vets First Choice still has job listings for several positions at its Portland office, from a UX/UI design to a director of e-commerce.

+ CashStar is hiring a UX designer and full-stack software engineer, among other positions.
 

Calendar

NOTE: In an effort to make this calendar of events more accessible, I've created a shareable Google calendar that I hope to keep updated. You can find the calendar here. Feel free to share it. As always, send me your event or calendar item for possible inclusion. 

Game Hack Night
Tues., Aug. 15 — 7-10 p.m. at Big Room Studios in Portland
Hack Portland hosts Game Hack Night. More details. 

Fireside Chat with Google's Rich Miner
Thurs., Aug. 17 — 7 p.m. at Cloudport in Portland
Venture Hall hosts an informal discussion with Rich Miner, co-founder of Android and a pioneer in the mobile technology space. Rich, based in Cambridge, Mass., is currently working on an education-focused startup within the walls of Google. More details.

Venture Hall Demo Day
NOTE THE CHANGES
Fri., Sept. 8 — 3-7 p.m. at USM's Hannaford Hall in Portland
Venture Hall's summer accelerator program culminates in Demo Day. Come watch the seven startup teams who have been working in Portland since mid June present their business models. More info and tickets.
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