Investments
4About Josh Resnick
Josh Resnick, American video game producer and co-founder Pandemic Studios, is an angel investor interested in the gaming sector. Before founding Pandemic, Resnick spent four years at Activision as a Producer. He also led the Strategy division of Activision's product development department, which produced Battlezone (1998).
Latest Josh Resnick News
Oct 22, 2020
Max Gelman Associate Editor Just over 15 months after launching its first venture fund, RA Capital Management is ready for more. And this time the firm is bringing an even bigger load of cash to the table. Announcing the close of its Nexus II fund on Wednesday, RA said it raised $461 million for investments in private companies across the biotech industry. The first venture fund, which raised $300 million, has churned through roughly 80% of its capital already, a pace that managing partner Raj Shah called unusually quick. “Obviously there were some opportunities that occurred because of Covid-19, and then there were just many across a variety of therapeutic areas that ultimately were compelling to us,” Shah told Endpoints News. “Based on our deal flow and what we saw, we ended up investing at a pace that was more rapid than I think is typical and than what we had intended originally.” The new fund will largely build off the first, and though the cash pool is still separate from RA’s main fund, the focus will remain in the life sciences arena, Shah said. Nexus I saw investment across 18 distinct areas and funded 59 companies, 15 of which have gone public or have been acquired. RA’s main fund invests not only in private companies but also participates in follow-on investments as well as newly-public companies, Shah said. Shah doesn’t expect the Nexus II money to be invested at a similarly quick pace, though he did say the plan is for Nexus II to be a 10-year fund. That way, RA can stay flexible with whatever investment opportunities might come about. Josh Resnick Originally founded by Shah and Peter Kolchinsky, RA has built up a team of more than 90 scientists and researchers over the years who pore over all the data and catalog emerging trends, managing director Josh Resnick said. Every life sciences VC has its own approach to investing, but the size of that division — called TechAtlas — is fairly atypical within the industry and allows the firm to keep up with all the innovation that’s going on in the field right now. “That gives us a ready source of systematically mapping and categorizing it,” Resnick said. “What that allows us to do really is put any investment opportunity quickly into its context so that, rather than rushing to try to understand something from first principles, we are ready to react to most opportunities, frankly, because we know where they fit into the market and into a competitive space.” At the end of the day, it’s still mostly about the money. RA narrows their choices down to the technologies and R&D that it feels can be the most “disruptive,” Shah said, with the potential of becoming the standard of care within five to 10 years. Though RA isn’t divulging specifics about what it’s looking at right now, Resnick added they never say no outright to anything. “We’re lucky enough to have the capabilities to be somewhat abreast of pretty much every therapeutic area and so respond to things on their merits,” Resnick said. “Obviously there will be some that are more investable than others, but there’s no area that’s closed off and there’s no area where we say, ‘We’re going to do X amount in this year.’” AUTHOR John Carroll Editor & Founder Biogen has flagged a pair of setbacks in the pipeline, spotlighting the final failure for a one-time top MS prospect while scrapping a gene therapy for SMA after the IND was put on hold due to toxicity. Both failures will raise the stakes even higher on aducanumab, the Alzheimer’s drug that Biogen is betting the ranch on, determined to pursue an FDA OK despite significant skepticism they can make it with mixed results and a reliance on post hoc data mining. And the failures are being reported as Biogen was forced to cut its profit forecast for 2020 as a generic rival started to erode their big franchise drug. Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 92,200+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SUBSCRIBE John Carroll Editor & Founder After a 7-year stretch building the commercial team at Sarepta, longtime drug salesman Bo Cumbo is jumping to the entrepreneurial side of the business, taking the helm of a startup that’s got several deep-pocket investors. And he’s not just bringing his experience in selling drugs. He tells me that when he told Sarepta CEO Doug Ingram about it, his boss got excited about the venture and opted to jump in with a $15 million investment from Sarepta to add to the launch money, alongside 3 of the busiest investors in biotech. Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 92,200+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SUBSCRIBE John Carroll Editor & Founder Setting the stage for an extraordinary one-day meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee this Thursday, the FDA has cleared 2 experts of financial conflicts to help beef up the committee. And regulators went on to specify the safety, efficacy and CMC input they’re looking for on EUAs, before they move on to the full BLA approval process. All of this has already been spelled out to the developers. But the devil is in the details, and it’s clear from the first round of posted responses that some of the top players — including J&J and Pfizer — would like some adjustments and added feedback. And on Thursday, the experts can offer their own thoughts on shaping the first OKs. Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 92,200+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SUBSCRIBE John Carroll Editor & Founder It’s only right that one of the industry’s top dealmakers just completed one of the biggest SPAC-related deals in the pipeline. David Hung, of Medivation fame, has completed a back flip into the market, merging with EcoR1 Capital’s SPAC Panacea and landing neatly on Wall Street with an $NUVB stock ticker after filling out the blank check in his name. In addition to the $144 million held in the SPAC — provided none of the investors opt out — Hung is getting ahold of $500 million more being chipped in by a slate of institutional investors who feel that Hung could have the keys to another Medivation-style success. Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 92,200+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SUBSCRIBE John Carroll Editor & Founder From the beginning, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla eschewed government funding for his Covid-19 vaccine work with BioNTech, willing to take all the $2 billion-plus risk of a lightning-fast development campaign in exchange for all the rewards that could fall its way with success. And now that the pharma giant has seized a solid lead in the race to the market, those rewards loom large. SVB Leerink’s Geoff Porges has been running the numbers on Pfizer’s vaccine, the mRNA BNT162b2 program that the German biotech partnered on. And he sees a $3.5 billion peak in windfall revenue next year alone. Even after the pandemic is brought to heel, though, Porges sees a continuing blockbuster role for this vaccine as people around the world look to guard against a new, thoroughly endemic virus that will pose a permanent threat. Keep reading Endpoints with a free subscription Unlock this story instantly and join 92,200+ biopharma pros reading Endpoints daily — and it's free. SUBSCRIBE SIGN IN
Josh Resnick Investments
4 Investments
Josh Resnick has made 4 investments. Their latest investment was in Vantage Point as part of their Seed VC on August 8, 2018.

Josh Resnick Investments Activity

Date | Round | Company | Amount | New? | Co-Investors | Sources |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
8/16/2018 | Seed VC | Vantage Point | $1.3M | Yes | 1 | |
7/24/2012 | Seed VC | |||||
3/9/2011 | Series A - II | |||||
7/14/2010 | Series A |
Date | 8/16/2018 | 7/24/2012 | 3/9/2011 | 7/14/2010 |
---|---|---|---|---|
Round | Seed VC | Seed VC | Series A - II | Series A |
Company | Vantage Point | |||
Amount | $1.3M | |||
New? | Yes | |||
Co-Investors | ||||
Sources | 1 |
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