“There has been $180 billion invested in the IPO market this year,” said Ira Miller, CEO and
chairman of Zone Capital Partners, a California based M&A advisory firm for small- and midcap companies. “Life sciences is a big part of that as a percentage. The reason is that health
care is 17% of the GDP so it will always play a significant part of the IPO market.” The traditional
IPO process can take a long time to complete. Between having a well-documented financial
history and selecting board members and underwriters, the process unfortunately is built
to miss peaks in the market. Private life science companies survive on fundraising in the early
years and will rarely reach commercialization without access to the public market.