If VGLS is such a good opportunity, why don't they have a real venture investor? If they were able to attract venture funding would have been massively cheaper than the "investment" from DMBM etc.
I see three possibilities:
- They pitched to VC's but none of them thought the IP was interesting.
- They pitched to VC's but none of them would do a deal without taking a control stake or without Haig et al hitting the road.
- They didn't pitch to any VC's (likelihood = 0.0001% IMO).
On Phelps: He has no apparent credibility as a nanocap biotech investor, and the fact that his $40K investment is now worth ~$200 certainly doesn't improve that assessment. The annals of pennyland are full of depressing tales of big company execs making dumb investments. Very, very often they are appallingly bad at doing the kind of diligence required with tiny companies - in their corporate life that was something juniors did.
On Newell: She has no apparent track record of getting a molecule or drug to market, and her pre-VG attempt to commercialise some of the same IP via her own company failed after burning $5M (? - think that was the number). Most academically interesting research has zero commercial value; maybe this stuff is the rare exception; who knows?
I have no insight into her joining up & remaining with VG instead of some more credible partner. Maybe nobody else liked the IP; maybe nobody else would pay her as much as VG. I also have no insight into how important she regards this IP in relation to her other activities.
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