Goodwin’s Life Sciences team partnered with leading academic institutions, investors, and members of the legal community to develop a representative term sheet that an investor and an academic institution might use to begin discussions around launching life sciences startups.
Following more than two years of collaboration, the group developed a non-binding term sheet template, with representative clauses, which can be downloaded and used freely. The template aims to significantly reduce the time spent negotiating deals across the whole early-stage life science industry, which could lead to therapeutics, diagnostics, and medical devices reaching the market months or years earlier, with the resulting benefit to patients worldwide.
Life Sciences partner Sarah Solomon spearheaded Goodwin’s participation in this project. Participating venture capital firms included 5AM Ventures, Atlas, Omega Funds, Osage University Partners, Polaris, and RA Capital. Participating academic institutions included Columbia, Duke, Harvard, Indiana University, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Stanford, University of Michigan, University of Kentucky, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale. Participating law firms included Goodwin, Cooley, and Wilson Sonsini.
For more details, download the term sheet and read the BioCentury article and the guiding principles for the project: Term Sheet Recommendations for Launching University Life Science Startups and Recommended Process Improvements for Launching University Life Science Startups.