Episode 134: How to Connect with Family Offices for Biotech and Healthcare Investment

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Serving the entire Gulf South, but recorded in the heart of New Orleans. Welcome back to Bio from the Bayou. I'm your host, Dr. Elaine Hamm, the executive in residence at Tulane School of Medicine, and Today's guest is Neil Green. He's the founder and CEO of Jaboy Productions, a bespoke event company with a focus on producing conferences and networking events for family offices, registered investment advisors, and high net worth investors. And today we are gonna be talking to him about how startups can navigate family offices. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Well, tell me a little bit about yourself and how you started and became your own CEO of Jaboy Productions. What got you into this?

It's a long story. So started back at a young age working on Wall Street, took an opportunity to work for Lehman Brothers, a prominent firm back in the day. Unfortunately, it got taken away back in the last debacle of the stock market in 2008. But in any event, still a recognizable name. Learned from there, you know, how to interact with a lot of people and always been about relationships. As a young guy working on Wall Street right out of college, it was all about Learning to meet people and how to make them your friends. So maybe I kind of mastered that along the way, worked for many different major broker firms. And then about 15 years ago, I started working for a brokerage firm where I kind of created a bunch of different departments. And one of those departments included alternative investments. And the alternative investment department really was sourcing everything from venture capital, private equity, real estate, Biohealth, you name it, and brought those to the firm as a platform for them to invest with their clients. So did that with a conference model that was very different. The model really incorporated a general session where the speakers would talk to the audience, tell about their story, look for some interaction. We'd also create some panel discussions of thought leaders that would be up on stage telling about their experience in different sectors of whatever it was, real estate, credit, or something else. And it was super inspiring because you didn't bounce around the room. You stayed there. You were able to take notes. You're able to engage with the audience and hear enlightening stories.

Yeah.

And about 2018, we came into the market and started doing this for family offices and registered investment advisors. And it was truly different because typically the model is either a family office conference Or a registered investment conference, but there weren't many REA conferences and that's why I kind of put them together. And the reason it really merged well is because a family office, which typically is a family looking to figure out how to navigate the markets, needs some advice from who they need from a financial advisor. So the REAs became that component that they can give the insight of how that they should be looking at the markets, whether or not the equity markets or the fixed income markets. So. People really enjoyed being in that type of room. And from there we continuously progressed. And again, always since day one, our philosophy in marketing has been invest in yourself. Number one, number one across all our platforms, the invest in yourself theme is all about taking the time to be in the right room and for a purpose. What I mean by that is that you should come to our events or any event With intention. Intention meaning that you're either looking for investments or you're looking to share your story about what you have to offer. And I know firsthand you've experienced our conferences. You've been, you see the makeup of the audience. It's very high caliber. Everybody that comes to our event is profiled, is going through an interview process. So we know who is in the room. So it's the highest caliber and we're able to control that. Through an interview process rather than just taking anybody who registers and letting them into the room that can corrupt an audience. We want to make sure that the highest caliber thought leaders are there. And that's a lot of work. Panel discussions, designing, we've done with you fireside chats or even the right speakers, right? We want to make sure that the presentations are going to be sensible. We don't want to have companies come in with pie-in-the-sky ideas that nobody's ever heard of and probably won't ever make a dime or ever raise a dime. We kind of try to do the best to shy away from them.

Yeah.

More importantly, we really look for great opportunities. And from that, it really is a hard job, right? It's a hard job to find the companies that have, whether it's a new healthcare drug or a biodrug or whatever it's going to be. And to find the right room, to find the right audience of people, again, is challenging. And I think that we help with that, right? And we help with, like you said, the backbone of what we do. So otherwise, I'm looking forward to a lot more dialogue as we continue.

I love this. I've been in those rooms and it really is, I mean, a 2-day, I mean, I think the last, the first one I went to was in Madrid. And so one, you pick amazing locations, one of which was actually New Orleans, which is how we met, but the, we was at the conference in Madrid, and I was just, in addition to furiously scribbling notes and all of the things that people were talking about, I mean, there were so many inspiring stories that you put forth to the audience, inspiring people, and just practical advice. And it was just this incredible mixture of energy and experience that was just really palpable. And it's intense too. It's an intense 2 days. My brain was just swimming by the end of each day, and it was just an incredible event. So, it's really, it was an honor to be in those rooms just being around those people that sometimes I even forgot to pitch because I was just listening so much. But it's really challenging as I think about, like, people have asked me or given me the advice of like, well, just go pitch to family offices. It is not straightforward. And if you know one family office, you know one family office. All of them are a little bit different. What's the simplest way to explain how a family office invests and how their decision-making and their diligence differs from the, the more traditional VC office?

Well, first of all, like you said, every family office is different. So some family offices take pride in being the patriarch at the helm and making those decisions. And that's the person you talk to. Yeah. In a lot of cases, the family offices, they don't do any of it, right? They just sit, they travel the world and enjoy all their money. Yeah. They have a chief investment officer. That's their role is to go out to conferences or other sources to find Opportunities. So you need to, first of all, find out like who it is. Like you can pitch a family office that really doesn't do that and waste a lot of time. Or secondarily, you can meet the CIO and forget about him as being the center of influence. And therefore you actually miss out on opportunity. So the real clear path is, and what I always say is with any family is get to know who they are.

Yeah.

What is it? A family office is a person that basically is either in a generational situation, maybe they inherited the money or they created the money. But you don't know anything about that family until you get to know that person. So I think that the first thing comes with actually building the relationship, spending the time to ask, like when you meet somebody, it's a family office, how did you make your money? How many kids do you have? Where do you live? What are your hobbies? Like, these are things like I see people talking to family offices and they sit down, they immediately start to pitch them, hey, did you hear about this newest this and that? And then—

Yeah.

I'm like, I don't even know who you are. And it scares people off.

It does.

The one thing you need to do is just treat these people, whether it's the chief investment officer or the patriarch, just treat them as individuals and really gravitate towards the conversation of who they are and what they're all about. You'll change tides. I talk to families all the time, and the one thing they always compliment about me is that they're like, you never like pitch me on anything. Like, what do you—

Yeah.

trying to sell me? And I'm like, I don't have anything to sell you. Like, I just wanna get to know who you are. And they really respect that. And one of the things they feel, and when you make a family office feel safe and safe to talk to you, it's a whole different conversation. So you need to really take that into consideration as far as, like you said, if you're a founder and you wanna pitch, get to know them. And if you know a handful of family offices that you've used that concept of building that relationship, you can raise a ton of money. So make them your friends, invite them to your family dinners or whatever it's going to be. Even if they don't show up, it's nice to get the invitation. They can always say no, but you know what? It makes you a different person from the other person that's got their hand out. So that's how I look at the approach.

No, that's such great advice. And that's, I mean, in general, that's good advice for life of just instead of pitching people, take the time to build relationships. And to be honest, a lot of our founders are scientists and human interaction can be challenging and they are into And don't like small talk. And these are actually really great situations for those types of people of like, yeah, small talk is very shallow and not interesting. Instead, just really take time to find out more about them and have more intriguing, interesting conversations and build a relationship versus like, here's my thing, you have to like it. And I think that's good advice across the board, whether it's a family office or just people in general. It's not about what they can do for you or what you could do for them. It's just Just relationships and being, having a human interaction, which sometimes we have to zoom out and think about a little bit.

No matter who that individual is on the family side, the, as you come across as an educator rather than a salesperson, it's going to be much more beneficial. So talk about, we talk about healthcare and biotech, which is a lot, some cases very complicated. So you may talk to a family member and he has no idea about the drug world or bio or whatever, and you completely blow his mind. So sometimes you need to really just sit down and just narrow it down. I mean, dummy it down, as they say, be like, listen, let me tell you how this can actually work or how it could save lives or how it could change the world. And now you come across as more of an educator. Yeah. And again, like you said, that's a relationship thing that it just, you should always have. And I tell this to anybody, have an elevator pitch. Like, what's your simple pitch?

Yeah.

And then from there, use that as an educational component.

Yeah.

To talk to whoever it is. And again, if you come across as a thought leader and as the expert in the field, people want to work with you. And if you listen to anybody, Grant Cardone out there and these other guys that do a lot with raising money, how do they do it? They come across as experts. They really focus on that particular sector. And that's what they deliver. They deliver that message and people wanna work with them for that reason.

So you have a family office that might be interested. You've built a relationship with them. They want to learn more about what you're working on in your company. What do you think they like to understand first? Is it the timeline to liquidity? Is it the ROI? Is it risk, the problem? What, what do you think is the most important? I mean, I know every, every family office is a little bit different, but what would you say in general is the most important thing that they like to look at first?

Yeah, I think that a lot of the time that they actually want to understand the people and the process behind it.

Yeah.

And I'm a big component of getting an invitation to visit with whoever's doing whatever it is, whether or not it's a real estate operator or a bio pharma. Like, why not invite them to your office to actually see what you're working on?

Absolutely.

To understand that there's a legitimate company that's behind it. Really see the lab. I remember back in the day I went to, I think it was in Ohio. There's a big biotech area that they have all these pharma companies. And I went into all these labs and I was like, oh my God, I was just blown away. But the fact that I was invited and saw what was happening inspired me. And we were, I was with a bunch of other investors and a lot of capital just came from there because they were able to see guys looking at microscopes and people come over and said, here, look at what I found and look at these cells and look how, if I can— inject this particular thing that I'm working on into the cells that would actually dissipate. And I was like, oh my God.

Yeah.

Don't be afraid to invite people to see what you're doing. I literally do that. The process of onsite due diligence is invaluable. Let people see it. Let them feel it. I love that. And guess what? It now takes something from a concept to reality. If you can show people that there is something real about what you're doing.

Yeah.

That is going to legitimize your story. So like I said, if you meet the person, you build a relationship, take them through the process, show them what you're doing and show them who you are. And then from there, you can explain how you're looking to raise capital for whatever that is. Again, a generational program that you put together that you walk them through a story. They're going to want to buy into that story if they like what you have to offer.

I love that. That tangible piece is really important, and I think we forget about that. I mean, we just— I kind of think of like, who wants to see a lab? Like, it seems ho-hum to me because that's where, you know, we are. But I— yeah, that makes a lot of sense of just like, no, come look in the microscope, see what we get excited and nerdy about all the time. I mean, I just didn't— you know, it's just like, I worry that people are gonna think it's too boring or too nerdy, and usually isn't the case. They're usually really excited. I like to invite senators in Congress. Oh, that's great. representatives to come see the labs and they're usually super jazzed to do it.

And like I said, like most of these families, they're probably not getting invited. They're getting pitched on a lot of other biotech deals. They're just hoping they're going to see it on paper and they're going to be moved to get investing. But like I said, if you create the story and have a relationship, it just turns into something different than everybody else is doing.

I love that. Well, so one thing I think is a little bit of a challenge is Where do you even find family offices? Let's say you're a startup company and you've gone down the VC route, you've done grants, you've done all the things, but someone had, like someone has suggested to me, why don't you pitch to family offices? Where would someone even begin to look for them?

So there's a couple ways. First of all, there's conferences and events like ours.

Yep.

We do events, bring in family offices, also investment advisors, athletes, and other investors. That's part of it, right? Make sure you go to the right platform. There's a lot of companies and groups out there that do these events, but The quality control isn't there and you don't want to waste your time, right? You want to make sure that it's effective use of what you're doing, whether or not you got to travel someplace and spend time. The other thing is that there are groups, and I know one actually in particular, I won't mention the name right here, but there are groups that actually have family office lists that you can actually purchase. You can actually drill down and you can pay for a geographic sector or even a type of family office. You can actually go in and find the type of family office that invests in bio, healthcare, technology, real estate, and actually kind of narrow it down and pay for those lists. It's not crazy expensive. So there is a company, again, we can talk offline about that. Not giving a particular commercial, but there is something that exists. So hopefully that helps those out there that want to find out more. You can reach out to me how to access that. Again, it's not my company, but I have a company that I work with. That again, if I'm going someplace and I want to invite family offices to my event in Switzerland, they will send me a spreadsheet. I get the list and we can prospect that. So it is available. You just need to know where to get it.

That's really great information. Okay. So now a little bit of the, I wouldn't call it gossip, but I'd love to know like, what are the red flags you think that would make a family office pass on someone? Or like, what would you say would just be The worst thing for a founder to do? What are some red flags and things that we should avoid doing?

Right. Well, I mean, one of the worst things that creates a red flag is being too salesy, right? Or drinking too much, right? Oh my God. I see so many people that are just, they're going out there, they're thinking they're in a meeting, they've gotta have 2, 3 martinis just with the other group just to prove that they can have a couple cocktails. Stay away from the alcohol.

That's my advice.

100%. And then otherwise, you know, like I said, have a team in place, showcase your team, have somewhat of a track record, have the, the bio or the information behind you to back up your story. Telling a story without anything to really fulfill what's coming from it on the other side is going to hurt you in the long run.

Such great advice. I mean, there, that just in that alone, there's a range of like super practical to really nuanced, but the practical of just, yeah, don't try to hang with the guys and drink too much. I mean, I own a wine bar and people think that though, that's what I just drink all the time. I really don't. If you see me at an event, I really don't eat and I don't drink. I am there for a purpose other than eating and drinking. I have my own bottle of wine that I can have later on, but I am there to not eat the spinach artichoke dip. I am there to meet people and I can't do that if I have spinach in my teeth and I'm 3 martinis in. So yeah, I love it.

You're too salesy if you're just too overly excited. I mean, you should be excited, but just too overanxious to just get them to listen to you. It scares a lot of people off. And I think another important part of it, which is kind of maybe offline a little bit, but dress the part. Make sure you look professional. Make sure you look like, you know, you're— if you're a doctor, like, look like you're a doctor. Like, dress the part. So many people just don't take that into consideration. And, you know, The impression and positioning of where you're at and who you're talking to. Meeting people, like you said, at a wine bar or flying on an airplane or a hotel lobby, you know, in a nice prestigious hotel.

Yeah.

Be there to actually, like I said, to network, but don't be salivating over somebody's conversation 3 seats down because you hear them just come out with the word that says healthcare or bio.

Yeah.

Jumping on their table.

Right.

So, um, you need to know how to, like I said, navigate that and be able to figure out positioning should work for you, but you need to do that and not create a red flag where you're just stalking them to their room or through the hallway.

You mean like me in college trying to get a date? Yeah, exactly. Where you're just coming off a little too anxious, a little too needy, a little pick-me. You gotta play it cool a little bit. Exactly.

Exactly.

I love it. Well, as a sort of a last question for you, you're around a lot of these family offices and obviously you keep track of the markets. What type of life science opportunities are you hearing the most interest from family offices? What's the— word on the street of where people are interested in?

Yeah, right now I talk to a lot of people in the medical field. They're interested in longevity and health and wellness, whether or not it's the stem cell treatments or things with anything related to that sector seems to be the growth component. You see hotels right now incorporating testing into— there's a hotel brand I just heard about when you check in. They do your lab work and they actually tell you based upon your lab work what kind of things you should be doing at the hotel during your stay. And then yesterday there was another guy that was talking to in the healthcare field that he said that there's a patch that you can wear on your arm and that patch takes 6 vials of blood without you even knowing about it. You then take the patch off and you bring it to LabCorp and they tell you exactly what your lab work is like. There's all these different things that are happening. So I think that is really inspiring a lot of people because again, they want to look younger, they want to feel younger, they want to live longer. And how are you seeing that? You're seeing a lot of these biohacking conferences pop up, seeing these longevity spas, you're seeing these places.

Oh yeah.

IV treatments. And there's a whole bunch of stuff that's coming about, even hyperbaric chambers, right? And we see hyperbaric chambers are starting to come about where there's facilities you can go and use a hyperbaric or people are buying them for their own home. But there's a lot of talk right now. I just saw, and I don't remember the dollar amount, but hotels and hospitality, their big focus is on the wellness and healthcare sector.

Interesting.

And they're incorporating that into how you travel.

Wow.

And I think that that is something that should be inspiring for those people that are out there in bio or health, because there's a lot of opportunity. You just need to figure out where it could be positioned.

Yeah.

And what sectors are most prominent. And from there, obviously be able to tell the story to the right people.

Right on.

Because there's a lot of momentum in that health and wellness. You know, luckily Dr. Kennedy that's in there, uh, right now in charge of the healthcare stuff, he's very pro-health and wellness. Yeah. And take that to your advantage because you have an advocate. It used to be the other way, right? It used to be all these big drug companies would take advantage of you, and if you had something new, you'd probably get overstumped by a big company. But now you actually have a fighting chance. If you have something that's really looking inspiring, it can save lives and can actually help people. So to me, I think that this is a really great opportunity to be in healthcare and bio and pharma. Just all about, like we talked about, positioning, knowing the right people, knowing what products are most important. And again, developing your story and telling that to the right audience.

I mean, I think this podcast has been just jam-packed of information and advice. This has been so great. I, again, I'm fiercely taking notes with my AI note-taker, which is a lot easier. But thank you so much for talking with me, Neil. I really appreciate it. And we'll be sure to keep an eye on Jaboy Productions and your work in the future.

Thank you, Ellie. Thanks for having me.

As always, we'll have Neil's contact information and informational links posted in our show notes. Make sure you check them out to learn more. Thank you once again for joining us.

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This podcast was edited by Resonate Recordings.