New “pragmatic” consulting venture

Ex-Ambri CEO Dr Joe Shaw is to set up shop in Australia with a new biotech business consulting group – the Aus-American Group Inc (AAGI) – designed to help startups navigate the Pacific Trench minefield.

“There have been some successes with companies installing a US CEO to help make the move to the US market, but there have been some notable failures too – take Gradipore for example,” said Shaw’s partner in AAGI, Andrew McCrae. “The problem is, the CEO knows how to run the company to make the most of the US market – but he just isn’t in the right place. He is still remote from the target market. In some cases that approach doesn’t work at all,” he added.

Shaw, another ex-Ambri director, noted that the early transition from newly ASX-listed Aus biotech to international player was a very difficult one. He warned that the ability to get funding in Australia was not a green light to seek similar backing in the US for ventures in North America.

“The distance, local resources, capital raising laws, approvals are all very hard to deal with on the ground unless you have experience,” he said. “Many local CEOs say they are looking to list on the NASDAQ but very few actually do. It is not easy,” he added.

AAGI aims to offer a network of US-savvy advisors who, they claim “do not advise from a theoretical point of view but from the pragmatic realities of the company”.

“There is a window of opportunity at the moment in the US, particularly for diagnostics biotechs, and we are hoping to exploit that. There is money there (in the US), and increasingly so in the last year. But getting access to it needs a new model,” claimed McCrae.