Shoosmiths Advises Octopus Ventures on €10m Funding Round for ‘Life-Changing’ Drug Access Platform
January, 2017 - Birmingham, England
The corporate team at national law firm Shoosmiths has advised long-standing clients, venture capital firm Octopus Ventures, on its investment in Dutch healthcare startup myTomorrows.
Octopus Ventures co-led the €10m funding round with EQT Ventures, along with existing investors Balderton Capital and Sofinnova Partners.
Headquartered in Amsterdam, myTomorrows gives physicians information on and access to investigational drugs, and drugs that have been approved by regulators in other countries. On the other side, the platform gives drug developers a medium through which they can make their life saving drugs available via early access programs whilst gathering data.
The firm, which currently has a presence in 17 countries, is now looking to scale into the US and Asia, along with further growth in the European Union, Latin American and the Middle East.
Shoosmiths’ partner Alastair Peet and associate Georgina Gurnhill advised Octopus Ventures on all corporate aspects of the funding round, with corporate partners Friso Foppes and Dimitri van Hoewijk of Dutch firm Van Doorne, the Dutch partner firm to Shoosmiths through the World Services Group (WSG).
Luke Hakes, Investment Director at Octopus, said: ‘myTomorrows has the potential to have a significant impact on users’ lives. Health tech is a space Octopus has huge interest for, and it’s important that we get behind businesses like myTomorrows that can move the sector on and benefit the global healthcare of tomorrow.
‘As for closing the deal, we have been working with Shoosmiths for a while now and continue to remain impressed by the corporate team’s expertise in the VC space.’
Shoosmiths’ Alastair Peet added: ‘It was a pleasure to have advised Octopus Ventures on an investment which has the potential to offer patients life-changing drugs they might not otherwise have access too. We look forward to working with Octopus Ventures on further investments in the future.’
Shoosmiths' national venture and growth capital team advises investors on investments into start-ups, growing companies and scaling businesses. The team also advise entrepreneurs and management teams through the business life cycle working with businesses from start-up and first round finance through to later stage development funding, mergers and acquisitions, MBO and MBI transactions, and on exits, by way of sale, listing, or private equity investment. Shoosmiths also provides market-leading VCT, EIS and SEIS tax advice to both businesses and investors.
Nationally, the corporate team is ranked in joint first place by deal volume in Experian's UK Deal Review and Advisor League Table.
