Category: Austin (Page 126 of 318)

San Antonio doesn’t attract as much venture capital as Austin, Houston and Dallas.

But now a group of high net worth individuals are trying to change that.

Last week, they launched the San Antonio Angel Network and announced Chris Burney, a former Rackspace executive, as its executive director.

While San Antonio has had investment funds, this is the first organized angel network. And it seeks to be as big a force as the Central Texas Angel Network in Austin, which is routinely listed as one of the most active networks in the country.

CTAN along with the Austin Technology Incubator and the Austin Technology Council were instrumental in establishing Austin as a major technology center.

The head of the new angel network most recently served as a finance manager at Rackspace. He also previously worked as a market data analyst for Thomson Reuters and an analyst for J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

“The San Antonio Angel Network is interested in investing in companies in a variety of industries, in addition to tech,” Burney said in a news release. “Our city and the professionals within it excel in many fields, such as biomedical and healthcare, hospitality, and energy, among others. We want to be a source of funding for all startups with growth potential in those spaces.”

Members of the San Antonio Angel Network include Michael Girdley of Codeup, Lew Moorman of ScaleWorks, Pat Matthews of Filestack, Cole Wollak of FlashScan3D, Amit Mehta of Intrinsic Imaging and Brent Barry, former Spur. Girdley and Wollak also run the Geekdom Fund, which invests in technology startups.

“Given the growth in the tech and medical industries, among others, an angel network is something we are desperately in need of in San Antonio,” Girdley said in a news release. “The network will open startup investing to a new group of investors who, until now, have had to travel outside of San Antonio to get deal flow. For entrepreneurs, it will provide funding opportunities without having to leave town access investment dollars.”

Geekdom, a coworking site and tech incubator, plans to help attract angel investors and companies to the San Antonio Angel Network.

The Department of Defense on Wednesday officially launched a Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, known as a DIUx, at Capital Factory in Austin.

The defense department already has DIUx offices in Silicon Valley and Boston.

The Austin office will focus on national security challenges and cutting edge technologies to help the nation’s warfighters. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter made the announcement at a press conference Wednesday morning at Capital Factory along with Mayor Steve Adler and other local and state officials as well as Austin technology leaders.

“I created DIUx last year because one of my core goals as secretary of defense has been to build, and in some cases rebuild, the bridges between our national security endeavor at the Pentagon and America’s wonderfully innovative and open technology community,” Secretary Carter said in a news release. “Austin’s commitment to innovation, access to talent and academia, as well as the department’s longstanding ties to Texas make this an ideal next location for DIUx.”

Christy Abizaid, who previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia and on the National Security Council staff, will lead the DIUx office in Austin. The rest of the staff will primarily be filled by local reservists and National Guard members already working within Austin’s tech community. Abizaid will report to DIUx Managing Partner Raj Shah.

“This Austin presence will introduce us to even more innovators looking to help America’s warfighters,” Abizaid said in a news release “The entrepreneurs in this area, including many veterans, are working on cutting-edge technology that could benefit our troops. We want to make it easier for them to do business with the DoD.”

DIUx is focused on a wide range of technologies including autonomy, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cybersecurity and analytics. Already, the DIUX offices have signed five agreements worth $3.5 million and another 22 projects are in its pipeline totalling $65 million in investment.

Q.  In your role as Senior Vice President Global Technology and Innovation what are the goals you wish to accomplish?

MS: I work on behalf of Austin’s Economic Development Corporation and Opportunity Austin with the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. I lead the organization’s vision for Austin to be a top global region for technology and health care innovation, company formation and expansion, in addition to increasing access to venture capital, private equity and attracting top talent.

In this role, my primary function is to provide leadership to cultivate emerging and strategic economic dynamism in the Greater Austin region. This focus on next generation technology and innovation trends aim to continue to seed and drive the long-tail of Austin’s sustainable and prosperous economic growth.

Q.  What are the biggest challenges you think Austin faces right now? How is the Chamber working to overcome them?

MS: Over the past 15 years, Austin has seen many highs and lows. Austin in the late ’90’s was living large. The technology industry was at its peak, driving a booming economy throughout Central Texas. A few years later, that boom turned bust for the U.S., and Austin’s economy took one of the most profound hits.

To combat our economic pains, business and community leaders in Austin created a public-private initiative with the goal of building and diversifying our economy. Opportunity Austin, has since been the driving force behind notable improvement in job, wage, salary, and high-tech growth among the nation’s 200 largest metro areas and benchmark communities. We have not just survived, but thrived despite the 2009 economic crash and resulting recession.

Today, Austin continues to have several foundational advantages: a central location, favorable tax climate and most importantly one of the most highly-educated workforces and incredible talent pipelines in the country. On top of that, Austin is continually recognized and branded as a place for innovation, growth and lifestyle. Entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial spirit are powering so much of what makes Austin’s current economy so exciting.

Q. So how do we extend our current success for the next decade?

MS: A large part of our success now and in the future will depend on our curation and support of our rich culture of music, creativity and our innovative spirit of collaboration. Nurturing the “Soul of Austin” must be embedded in every aspect of our growth and development and how we build the future of the city we love.

Tactically, one of the greatest opportunities Austin has, is the creation of a new blueprint for Austin to support the next-gen, innovation-based economy. We can optimize our growth by leveraging our strength in Tech with the opportunity to revolutionize healthcare. This convergence of Health and Tech by advancing innovation from discovery to outcomes and improving health in our community, can act as a prolific job creator and as a model for the nation if we get it right.

At the heart of our economic growth strategy is the opening of the Dell Medical School and Dell Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas – Austin (UT), and the Central Health Brackenridge Campus redevelopment.

Q. What is Austin’s life sciences industry like right now?

MS: Austin is home to best-in-class research facilities and boasts one of the most educated populations in the U.S. The dynamic, creative and entrepreneurial environment is fueled by the availability of funding, research collaboration, clinical trials, and skilled talent. Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, welcomes its first class in 2016, transforming the local economy as dramatically as the semiconductor and dot.com industries did in previous decades.

Through a mix of strategic relocations and continued support for our existing industry, Austin’s life sciences cluster has evolved into a well-rounded representation of the industry as a whole. Over 200 life sciences companies in the region, and a workforce of nearly 12,300 is focused on the highest growth segments and research areas in the industry, including the specialties of biologics, medical devices, diagnostics, pharmaceutical, contract research, and others. We’re in good company: more than 3,700 companies with 93,800 workers make the State of Texas one of the leading biotech states in the country.

Austin’s Life Sciences Industry
•Medical device/diagnostics (33%)
•Biologics/biotech (12%)
•Contract Research Organizations (17%)
•Pharmaceuticals (16%)
•Other (22%)

Q. Does Austin have enough talent in the life sciences field to support the growing industry here?

MS: In the Austin metro area, you’ll find a combined enrollment of 177,000 students in four-year and community colleges. This provides an ample supply of well-educated workers to area employers. The student population within 100 miles of Austin exceeds 414,000, providing one of the world’s strongest talent pools. Life and physical scientists number over 4,500 in the metropolitan area’s workforce—approximately 43% of those are in life sciences fields.

With a strong talent pipeline and rapid emerging growth surrounding our development and growth phase, Austin will continue to add a deeper bench of talent that will be attracted to the unparalleled new opportunities, as we set our vision as a model healthy city of Healthcare innovation.

Q. What is going to set Austin apart from other healthcare centers around the country and world? What are the key factors we need to accomplish this vision?

MS: Leveraging the creative spirit of Austin that itself in innovation is key to this success.

Collaboration is key. Both inter-industry and inter-organizational collaboration is essential to the success of the community. Austin’s current high-growth industries within technology – creative/digital media, data management and life sciences/healthcare – have natural synergies that can create a whole greater than the sum of its parts, if proactive collaboration is sought.

Investing in knowledge communities. The importance of knowledge communities cannot be overstated, particularly in the life sciences field. The primary source of funding for medical research comes from the National Institutes of Health, which has been consistently declining in recent years, driving the need for additional autonomous research pipelines. Austin is working towards the creation of an innovation growth strategy that seeks to provide research testing facilities and incubators for early stage life science companies.

Everything rests on talent. Talent supply is the currency of innovation. While Austin has among the strongest workforces in the country –since 2000, more than 225,000 people with a bachelor’s degree or higher have moved to Austin – we must do more, particularly in the realm of middle class job creation and re-training. Programs at UT and Austin Community College (ACC) are pioneering efforts in short-term skills certification, and have an opportunity to provide far greater resources with their recent expansion and enhanced offerings.

Know your strengths – and be honest about your challenges. Austin has a unique opportunity to approach the next phase in its evolution in a way that’s exclusively Austin – focused on lifestyle and a thoughtful, creative and inclusive community. Austin should focus on being a better Austin, not becoming Silicon Valley. Austin has phenomenal things happening in music, art, technology and culture, and projects should stitch all of those things together. A current challenge for Austin is a gap in the talent pool focused on life sciences, but convergence from its strength sectors within technology will go a long way towards influencing digital and software driven innovation that has applications in healthcare.

There is a national opportunity to transform the medicine and life science sectors. While the “IT and Informatics Revolution” has escalated massive innovation in industries like banking, communications and media, making inroads in the healthcare industry has proven much more difficult, with “a broken innovation system”. For multiple reasons, healthcare has been notoriously resistant to technology advances. As a country, we spend more than any industrialized nation on healthcare, but our health outcomes are roughly equivalent to that of Cuba. New, collaborative research organizations that cross sector and industry lines offer the opportunity to be at the forefront of this transformation.

Q. What other ingredients does the city need to create a thriving life sciences industry?

MS: What we choose to invest in now will shape Austin’s future prosperity, and seizing opportunities presented by a new Tier-1 research medical school and teaching hospital and a thriving, hungry creative community, is a great first step. To address and build the innovation economy, we must collaborate, continue enhancing our workforce and build private capital.

Most importantly, we must continue with collective passion and fire, to accomplish this big, bold vision and opportunity.

Editor’s note: this is the first in a series of Q&As with the people featured in the Silicon Hills News 2016 technology calendar.

By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

If you have a bad experience at a hospital—and just having to go to the hospital is often a bad experience—you may write a letter of complaint, post something in social media or blast the hospital on your patient survey.

And there’s a good chance that if someone got around to reading it, it would be long after you were gone.

That sucks for the patient, but also for the hospital. According to a May survey by Accenture, hospitals that can provide superior patient service show up to 50 percent more in net margins than hospitals without it. Plus, if you’re a hospital with low patient satisfaction ratings, Medicare and Medicaid will reduce your reimbursements.

So there are a lot of reasons why optimizing patient experience should be of enormous importance to everyone. Recently, the two Austin founders of NarrativeDx figured out how to do it.

NarrativeDx uses natural language software to process everything from patient surveys to letters, phone call transcripts, and comments on social media. It can “read” this information and identify key issues in the hospital that can be as broad as a cleanliness problem in the hospital and as specific as the bedside manner of a particular provider. Historically, hospitals relied on patient satisfaction surveys from Press Ganey, but that took forever.

“You wait one to two months for patient experience surveys from Press Ganey,” said Geoffrey Hall, a NarrativeDx advisor who uses the service as administrator of Rusk Rehabilitation at New York University Langone Medical Center. “When I first started doing the pilot (with NarrativeDx) the information came back in 24 hours. Now it’s almost instantaneous. It can mine and capture data and map that out…now we might actually resolve the issue while the patient is there. It’s a game changer for me.”

Shawn R. Smith, VP of Patient Experience at Christiana Care Health System in Delaware said that, with the volume of feedback they collect, he said, it would be impossible for even a team of people to compile themes from the information they receive. NarrativeDx does it almost instantly and can identify problems in myriad areas.

“When looking at medications and adherence (a patient’s willingness to take meds according to instructions) to patient side effects, you can learn that a particular side effect has a lot to do with this one medication. You can go very granular. And you might never have thought that these side effects would be connected with this medication.”

Patients Tell Their Own Stories

One of the big advantages of NarrativeDx is that it lets patients tell a story about what happened. Too often in filling out patient surveys, there is no box to mark for the issue they faced. NarrativeDx co-founder Senem Guney did her master’s and doctoral work at the University of Texas studying the communicative fabric of work organizations and the issue of high-technology innovation in complex, multi-site organizations. Part of her studies included researching the importance of personal narrative in getting the message across. At hospitals, she said, the most important thing to patients is empathy, compassion. Patients consistently rank that higher even than providers’ knowledge. And that’s easier to capture in a narrative.

Co-founder and CEO Kyle Robertson said the team did a deep dive into patient experience before launching in 2014. “We did a lot of research before to find out what’s important about patient experience: What about listening, empathy, compassion, kindness? What’s important about meals? There is this huge tree of all those things that are important.” Robertson has degrees in computer engineering, economics, and math from Iowa State University and a juris doctorate from Boston College Law School. “We plug these into machine learning algorithms that actually learns new stuff. It categorizes the comments and builds off that. It takes the human bias out of it…. It basically marries the insights from qualitative date with scaleability of quantitative.”

NarrativeDx has its own “smart survey,” known as adaptive rounding, that is used when someone from the hospital makes patient rounds and asks about their experience. It can add questions based on previous responses. For example, if many patients complained about dirty showers in the rooms, it will add a query about whether patients were satisfied with the cleanliness of their showers.

Both Robertson and Guney worked for major institutions before embarking on the entrepreneurship journey. Robertson worked for National Instruments and was an IP attorney representing organizations including Cisco and Apple, before starting his first company. Guney served on the faculty of State University of New York and was a Fellow at the Center for Technology in Government, a SUNY Albany think tank.

NarrativeDx was accepted into DreamIt Health accelerator in Philadelphia in 2014. They received $50,000 as part of the incubator and have since raised $1.35 million from angels, LiveOak Venture Partners and Capital Factory. They will be working on a $3 million series A in the fall.

Since they returned from Philadelphia, they said, they noticed a big improvement in the ecosystem for medical startups. For example, Seton’s hiring of national virtual care pioneer Dr. Kristi Henderson as an advocate for medical innovation. But Austin has a long way to go to catch up with the northeast in terms of support of innovation and tech startups in the healthcare system. Part of the problem is that the sales cycle in hospitals can be “long and brutal,” Robertson said. There are so many different people who have to sign off on any innovation.

With help from people like Dr. Henderson, the Dell Medical School and proposed Innovation Zone, they said, the next generation of startups should find it a lot easier. Maybe Austin needs a NarrativeDx for entrepreneur experience….

By Michael Dell
Reprinted with Permission

I grew up in a family of brothers. As you might guess, competition was a way of life. A game of cards or tag or Battleship was serious business.

My brothers and I have our mom to thank for much of our competitive spirit. Her usual parting words when we bolted out the door to play any kind of sport were “Play nice…but win.” 🙂

Those words stuck with me, and they sum up how we’ll approach this next chapter in Dell’s story—which begins today with the successful acquisition of EMC and Day 1 of Dell Technologies.

After 32 years in business, I’ve learned some important lessons about winning. Winning with integrity (to paraphrase my mom) certainly tops the list. But another lesson that’s particularly relevant and crucial in today’s business environment is this: change or die. It sounds dramatic, but it’s truer than it’s ever been.

This is a time of unprecedented change. It’s been called the next Industrial Revolution, where data, the Internet of Everything and information technology replace industrialization as the driving force of progress and transformation. Disruption is around every corner and in every industry, but so is opportunity.

To win in business today, you must be fearless about disrupting yourself and transforming for the future. Think about the big companies that didn’t—like Blockbuster, Kodak or AOL. They faded away completely or became a shadow of their former selves. ‘Business as usual’ is how you lose in the digital era in which we live.

Today, Dell, EMC and VMware play mission-critical roles in the transformation of our customers’ organizations around the world. But together as Dell Technologies, we will be unstoppable.

We will deliver the essential infrastructure our customers need to secure their digital futures. We are already a market leader across four globally recognized technology franchises—servers, storage, virtualization and PCs—and we have unmatched scale and innovation to lead in the technologies of the future, like hybrid cloud, converged and software-defined everything. Global tech companies must transform, too, and we’re doing it in a big way with Dell Technologies.

I’ve been dreaming about this day for a while. It’s yet another turning of the page for the company I started as a 19-year old college freshman, and this was very much on my mind as our new leadership team met for the first time in Austin recently. At the end of the meeting, I shared my thoughts on the future of our company and the enormous, positive impact we can have on our customers and the world. The energy and excitement from everyone in the room was palpable. We all see the opportunity ahead and are equally committed to win.

So it was only fitting that I ended the day with wise words that have served me well my whole life—Let’s play nice…but win!

This post was originally published at LinkedIn.

Shopify is on the hunt for five people to participate in its newly launched Shopify Partner Accelerator in Austin.

The company just opened up applications on Wednesday and is accepting them until Sept. 23rd. Then it will choose five people to work at WeWork University Park in Austin from Oct. 3rd until the end of December.

It’s looking for web designers or web developers interested in learning more about e-commerce and Shopify specifically, said Courtney Symons, Shopify’s partner growth manager.

Shopify, founded in Ottawa, Canada in 2006, makes software and a platform that lets small and medium-sized businesses easily launch a storefront. It is a direct competitor of BigCommerce, which is based in Austin. And Shopify is a publicly traded company which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SHOP. Its total revenue for 2015 was $205.2 million, up 95 percent from a year earlier. More than 300,000 merchants work with Shopify.

The Shopify Partner Accelerator will provide resources and support to local small businesses in the design, web development, and marketing spaces. Those resources include mentorship and hands-on training from Shopify.

In addition to Austin, Shopify launched its partner accelerator in three other cities: New York, Montreal, Canada and London, England.

“This is a massive opportunity for Shopify partners,” Symons said.

Shopify chose WeWork as its coworking partner site because “their spaces foster creativity,” Symons said.

Austin is a place for innovation and that’s why Shopify chose to put a Shopify Partner Accelerator here, Symons said.

“We have seen a really successful Shopify community growing in Austin,” she said. “We know it is a rich ground for opportunity. “

In a $60 billion deal, Dell Technologies Wednesday closed its acquisition of EMC Corp. launching a new chapter for Dell, a 32 year old company founded in a dorm room at the University of Texas at Austin.

It is the largest tech deal ever.

And Dell gets the award for coolest aerial stunt to introduce a new company ever.

Together Dell and EMC have created a huge powerhouse technology company. Dell Technologies sees the combination creating “the focus and innovation of a startup with the global scale and service of a large enterprise.”

The privately-held company plans to focus on its customers and partners for the long term.

“We are at the dawn of the next industrial revolution,” Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies said in a news statement. “Our world is becoming more intelligent and more connected by the minute, and ultimately will become intertwined with a vast Internet of Things, paving the way for our customers to do incredible things. This is why we created Dell Technologies. We have the products, services, talent and global scale to be a catalyst for change and guide customers, large and small, on their digital journey.”

The company will continue to be based in Round Rock. It will have 140,000 employees worldwide. It will have combined revenue of $74 billion.

In a post on LinkedIn, Dell talked about the importance of adapting and changing and not growing complacent as a large company. He also talked about the importance of playing nice, but competing to win. Advice he gleaned from his mother growing up.

“After 32 years in business, I’ve learned some important lessons about winning. Winning with integrity (to paraphrase my mom) certainly tops the list. But another lesson that’s particularly relevant and crucial in today’s business environment is this: change or die. It sounds dramatic, but it’s truer than it’s ever been,” Dell wrote in the blog post. “This is a time of unprecedented change. It’s been called the next Industrial Revolution, where data, the Internet of Everything and information technology replace industrialization as the driving force of progress and transformation. Disruption is around every corner and in every industry, but so is opportunity.”

Dell chose to disrupt his own company – first by taking it private. And next, by acquiring EMC in the largest tech deal in history.

So now all eyes will be on Dell to watch the company “play nice…but win.”

Just coming off Labor Day, it’s hard to get back into the swing of things. So Silicon Hills News has made it easier by culling a few tech events worth attending this week.

Tuesday – How to Meet Investors in Austin: Ask Me Anything with Joshua Baer at Capital Factory starting at 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Tuesday: Austin Forum – Virtual Reality in Austin: A New Generation of Gaming and Beyond – Stateside Theater – Paramount – 5:15 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday: Texas MSTC Meet the Faculty event at Gabriel’s at the AT&T Education and Conference Center 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Wednesday – Austin Technology Incubator 2016 Company Graduation at the AT&T Education and Conference Center 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Thursday – Austin Health Tech – Ask the Venture Capitalists at Capital Factory starting at 7:45 a.m. until 9:30 a.m.

Friday – AEC Hackathon 3.6 at Austin City Hall starting at 6 p.m.

By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

Austin is home to a small, but growing biotech and medical technology industry with about 200 companies, according to the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.

That number is sure to skyrocket in coming years as the city feels the full effect of the new Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin and the healthcare innovation zone being created in the downtown area.

Right now, the city’s strength lies in medical device and diagnostics, biologics and biotech, contract research, pharmaceuticals and startups in a wide variety of areas. Here’s just ten local companies we’ve highlighted.

Alafair Biosciences – The company, founded in 2011, a medical device startup, recently received FDA clearance for its first product, VersaWrap Tendon Protector. It is used in the treatment of tendon injuries. Earlier this year, the company closed on $2 million in funding to help roll the product out nationwide. To date, it has received $5.9 million in funding.

Curtana Pharmaceuticals – The company, founded in 2013, moved from San Diego to Austin in 2014. The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, known as CPRIT, awarded the company a $7.6 million grant to develop a drug for glioblastomas and other brain cancers.

Lumos Pharma – The company, founded in 2014, is a clinical stage, biopharmaceutical company developing therapeutics for rare and neglected diseases. In April, Lumos completed $34 million in funding and planned to use the proceeds for clinical trials and commercialization of its lead drug, LUM-001, for the treatment of Creatine Transporter Deficiency, the second leading cause of X-Linked mental retardation in males after Fragile X Syndrome. To date, the company has raised $48 million, according to its profile in Crunchbase.

PotentiaMetrics – The company, founded in 2010, relocated from St. Louis to Austin in 2015, and provides proprietary real-world outcomes registries and analytics platforms to reveal personalized and predictive insights. It is harnessing patient data to provide better treatments and outcomes for different diseases.

Savara Pharmaceuticals – the company, founded in 2007, creates drugs to treat rare respiratory diseases. In June, it acquired the assets of Serendex Pharmaceuticals, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Its lead product is AeroVanc, an antibiotic being developed for the treatment of persistent MRSA infection in people with Cystic Fibrosis. The drug’s Phase III clinical trials are expected to begin later this year. In March, the company closed on $20 million in Series C financing.

Spot On Sciences – the company, founded in 2014, recently received a $225,000 grant to support research for a preanalytical, endogenous standard to compare blood sample types. The company has developed HemaSpot devices to simplify collection, preservation and shipping of dried blood samples. The company also participated in the first ever White House Demo Day in 2015.

TeVido BioDevices – The company, founded in 2011, is making nipples from human cells using 3-D printers for breast cancer patients. It has received funding through crowdfunding and a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Cancer Institute and a grant from the National Science Foundation. It is also a graduate of the Texas Ventures Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.

TVA Medical – The company, founded in 2008, is a medical device maker developing minimally invasive therapies for patients suffering from end-stage renal disease. In late 2015, it completed a $15 million Series C financing. It plans to use that money to support clinical activities and commercialization of everlinQ endoAVF system, a catheter-based technology designed to create hemodialysis access for chronic kidney disease patients in a minimally invasive procedure. To date, it has raised $27.1 million in funding, according to its profile in Crunchbase.

UnaliWear – The company, founded in 2013, makes the Kenega watch aimed at seniors that provides discrete support for fails, medication and reminders and guards against lost-wandering. Earlier this year, the company announced it had raised $3.4 million in seed funding. It has also joined forces with Maxim Integrated Products to make the watches. The company also successfully raised $110,154 from 306 backers on Kickstarter last year.

Xeris Pharmaceuticals – the company, founded in 2005, closed on $41 million in Series C financing in January. It is using the proceeds to develop patient friendly injectables for treatment of diabetes, epilepsy and immunology. It plans to use the proceeds of the funding for Phase 3 clinical trials and commercialization of its G-Pen, glucagon injection program for severe hypoglycemia.