Our Approach To Investing

We believe there are multiple opportunities to make a therapeutic intervention based on natural history of the disease.  That is why we invest across a spectrum of T1D approaches, including companies also working on adjacent diseases and “platform” companies with approaches applicable to T1D.

As a venture philanthropy fund, we approach investment opportunities slightly differently than either a traditional venture capital fund or a non-profit organization. We are looking for:

  1. Concentrated mission impact: All our companies must have or be developing a T1D program with significant potential for clinical impact. We are primarily focused on cure therapies.
  2. Potential for financial return: Each company must have an investable business model so we can attract multiples of private capital and biopharma industry capital.

We follow an investment model similar to a typical corporate venture capital fund where we usually syndicate with experienced biotech investors and conduct diligence leveraging our extensive expertise in the space. All private capital raised to be deployed by the T1D Fund is recorded as a charitable donation and receives associated tax benefits at time of contribution.

Geographically, our investments have spanned globally where we leverage the foundation’s affiliates in the UK, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Israel, and the Netherlands. We believe innovation has no bounds.

Other Investment Considerations

Process

All investments are reviewed on a rolling basis where the T1D Fund team will assess if the opportunity aligns with the T1D Fund’s overall investment strategy and mission.

Diligence

Our team, alongside Breakthrough T1D (Formerly JDRF), will leverage its expertise to assess each investment opportunity and work with each company to fully understand the value proposition as well as impact.

Technology

We believe that there are multiple avenues toward curative treatments for T1D and are willing to explore many different types of modalities and approaches.

R&D

We’re stage agnostic and invest in discovery through clinical stage assets.

Financing Structure

We consider traditional and novel investment structures in both private and publicly-traded companies.

If you’d like to know more about our investing guidelines or want to talk to us about contributing, you can contact us here.

Supporting The Next Generation Of T1D Treatments

The T1D Fund is Uniquely Positioned to Transform the Therapeutic Landscape of T1D Through our Investment Approach.

The T1D Fund strongly supports companies that are pursuing development of curative treatments to accelerate life-changing solutions to cure, prevent, and treat T1D.

We invest in opportunities that can mitigate developmental risk while generating returns. These returns on investments are important to continue to fund investments that would support the next generation of life-changing T1D treatments. Our recognition as venture philanthropy and a champion for treatments within the space has allowed us to attract and collaborate with well-known investors to create compelling syndicates necessary to finance T1D opportunities.

As a venture philanthropy fund, neither management nor donors to the T1D Fund receive distributions. Our returns are reinvested back into the Fund so that we can support the next generation of life-changing T1D treatments.