Daniela Couto From Biogeneration Ventures – EUVC #45

🎥 Daniela Cuto: From Biomedical Engineer to Biotech Investor | European VC Podcast

Welcome to the European VC podcast, your source for insights into the European venture capital industry! If you enjoy our show, please leave a review, share with your friends, and join our Slack community at [theeuropeanvc.com/community](theeuropeanvc.com/community). And if you’re about to raise a fund or an international round, let us know and we’ll introduce you to relevant investors.

In this episode, we are excited to have Daniela Cuto from Biogeneration Ventures (BGV) as our guest. BGV is an early-stage life science fund based in the Netherlands. Daniela, a PhD-trained Biomedical Engineer with over 10 years of venture capital experience, shares her journey from founder to VC and discusses the importance of having a strong entrepreneurial and scientific background as a biotech investor.

You’ll also learn about the impressive growth story of BGV, from 17M€ AUM in Fund I to 140M€ AUM in Fund IV. Additionally, Daniela highlights the amazing outcomes from the companies BGV has invested in.

Keywords/Tags: euvc, investing, podcast, spreaker, startup, tech, theeuropeanvc, vc, venturecapital

📽️ Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] Host: Hi and welcome back to the European VC, your podcast for insights into the European VC industry. If you love our show, do drop us a review, share with your friends, and join our Slack community at theeuropeanvc.com/community. And don’t forget, if you are about to raise a fund or an international round, let us know and we’ll be happy to introduce you to relevant investors. Today, we’re happy to welcome Daniela Cuto at Biogeneration Ventures, an early-stage life science fund based in the Netherlands. Daniela is a PhD-trained Biomedical Engineer with more than 10 years of experience in venture capital and building early-stage biotechnology companies, such as Staten Biotech, resulting in a $485 million transaction at the pre-clinical stage. Science has been at the core of Daniela’s career, and she’s now making a true difference at BGV by coupling that with her entrepreneurial experience and eye for judging people as well as investments. Welcome to the show, Daniela!

[00:01:21] Daniela: Hi guys! Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:01:24] Host: Daniela, before we start, I want to send a quick shout out to David Bragamata because he introduced us. That’s really cool because I didn’t know you and Andreas didn’t know you before, so thank you David for that. Daniela, to start with, we love to start on the personal side, and many of our listeners are emerging managers, and I think there’s a lot of interesting things with your story into VC. I’d love to ask you to start by sharing it, and then we can maybe deep dive on a couple of things in there.

[00:01:53] Daniela: Sure, okay. So I was born in the north of Portugal. I did Biomedical Engineering and then I enrolled in this MIT Portugal program to do my PhD studies at MIT. And then, I think that’s when my awareness to start the company and the excitement of being in this space started. This was early 2009 when I arrived in Boston, and I think I took courses on innovation and decision-making life sciences, which completely changed my way of thinking. One of the courses, “Innovation Teams” with Luis Perez Breva, brought papers and ideas from the labs at MIT to undergrads and grad students to think about how they would start a business based on that, and then actually pitch to the business angels and VCs around MIT. It was a very nice environment to be in, and it was just amazing. You’re doing your undergrad, or in this case, I was a grad student, and just pitching to real investors. How cool is that? And some of these ideas actually got funding, and you have the 100k contest where you can apply for and receive 100k to start an idea. How cool is that? So, all that in parallel while I was doing my PhD studies was just amazing. The ecosystem, the pace, everything went super quick. You could just do everything. That’s the feeling you can do anything. So when we started the first company, David Bragamata was the one that introduced me to the concept that became Cell2B later on. He’s been doing bridges and connections for a long time, true. And we connected with two other colleagues of ours that were doing their studies back in IST in Lisbon, and we thought it was a great idea. Let’s do this, and the feeling was, we were four Portuguese doing a new venture with IP coming out from Sangeeta Bhatia’s lab where David was a PhD student. Cell2B was a spin-out from Sangeeta Bhatia’s lab. So from MIT, we came back to Portugal with a feeling that we’ll keep a foot on both sides of the ocean, Lisbon and the US, and we’re gonna make it work. We can change the world, a company at a time. That was really the feeling that being there for a couple of years really instigated in me, and I’m sure David shares the same feeling. And this was 2012. I don’t know, David, if you remember those days, Portugal was coming out of a big hit. I remember seeing David at that time in a random restaurant and talking about the coming back and division of Cell2B. I remember perfectly that time. Everyone was quite depressed in Portugal because it was like four years of crisis, IMF, yeah, supporting the country. So when we came back, we were like, “We’re gonna do this, and we’re gonna change the environment and create that vibe.” I think at the time, 2012, there was also Startup Lisboa starting, and so there was a lot of movement towards doing more startups. It was great times to be in Lisbon, and Cell2B was great fun. We got to see investments from Portuguese business angels. We established labs until 2015. It was all going according to plan, with the new cell therapy, the novel education graft-versus-host disease support across the ocean. So the advisory board was pretty much in the US, the scientific team in Lisbon, and at the verge of raising our Series A of 16 million term sheet signed, strong Belgium lead investor, everything collapsed. So I think one month, we thought, “We’re going to have money in the bank account to just ramp up everything,” and no, we had to dismiss people. And at the time, I had a bet with my husband because he was also Portuguese but was working in the Netherlands, and the term sheet was signed. So I made the bet, like, “When the money is in the bank account, I can’t lose this one.” Well, I lost, and I had to pay for it, which was, I had to come. Whatever it was, so I ended up in the Netherlands. And 14 Capital Partners was one of the investors we had been in contact with to fundraise, so I just approached Sandra Van Deventer from 14 Capital Partners and asked, “Look, I’m going to the Netherlands. Is there anything biotech I can do there?” And amazingly, Sandra already had great ideas, and she was working on this company Staten Biotech in the cardiovascular space with antibodies. She said, “Oh, we need someone to take it on, and this is very early stage. Why don’t you…?”

Source: [European VC Podcast Episode](https://www.spreaker.com/user/theeuropeanvc/daniela-cuto-transcript)

Daniela is a PhD-trained Biomedical Engineer with more than 10 years of experience in venture capital and building early-stage biotechnology companies, such as Staten Biotech – resulting in a $485 million transaction at the pre-clinical stage. Science has been at the core of Daniela’s career and she’s now making a true difference at BGV by coupling that with her entrepreneurial experience and eye for judging people as well as investments.

In this episode you’ll learn:

– Daniela’s story transitioning from founder to VC
– The importance of having a strong entrepreneurial & scientific background as a #biotech investor
– The growth story of @BGV from 17M€ AUM in Fund I to 140 M€ AUM in Fund IV
– The amazing outcomes from the companies BGV has invested in