Foundry Innovation & Research 1 Ltd (Fire1) has closed its Series B financing and appointed Conor Hanley as President and CEO.
The company, which is developing a novel remote monitoring device, raised $7.5 million from existing investors including leading venture capital firms Lightstone Ventures and New Enterprise Associates, as well as Medtronic.
New CRO filings disclose that the the December 2015 funding round, Covidien Group invested $1.5 million, New Enterprise Associates $2.5 million and Lightstone Ventures – with an address in the Cayman Islands – invested $2.5 million. The company was advised by law firm Arthur Cox.
FIRE1 is the 15th medical device company founded by The Foundry. With this financing, Foundry managing director Mark Deem was also appointed chairman of the board.
Located in Menlo Park in California, The Foundry was founded in 1998 to turn the best concepts into successful new medical device companies. In addition to inventing new technologies itself, The Foundry works closely with outside clinicians and inventors with promising ideas.
In Association with
Over the past 18 years, The Foundry has been involved with Ardian (acquired by Medtronic), Cabochon Aesthetics (acquired by Ulthera/Merz), Cierra (acquired by Terumo), Concentric Medical (acquired by Stryker), Cotera, Emphasys Medical, Evalve (acquired by Abbott Labs), First to File (acquired by Mark Monitor), Holaira, Miramar Labs, Satiety, Twelve (acquired by Medtronic), XTENT (Nasdaq: XTNT), and the ophthalmic company incubator Forsight Labs.
New boss Conor Hanley (pictured) previously held senior management positions with ResMed, and was CEO and co-founder of BiancaMed, which was acquired by ResMed in 2011. He was allotted 700,000 shares in the Fire1 venture on joining.
Hanley received a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, an MBA from INSEAD, and a First Class Honours B.E. from University College Dublin.
According to Hanley: “With the support from these premier investors, the strength of our newly expanded leadership team, and the Irish government aggressively pushing the connected health ecosystem, we are in a very strong position to accelerate the development and commercialisation of our first product.”
The company has also appointed John Britton as Vice President of Commercial Operations, and Fiachra Sweeney as Senior Director of Engineering. Britton is joining from ResMed while Sweeney previously worked with Nypro Healthcare and Medtronic.
Fire1 is headquartered at NexusUCD, the industry partnership centre at University College Dublin. The operating company booked a startup loss of $1.96m in 2014, when equity invested was $3.6m.
