Company Performance Metrics
John Manzetti: Founder & Managing Director
The Accelerator Fund, LLC makes early stage investments in life sciences companies located in western Pennsylvania. As the first fund sponsored and managed by the professionals of the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG), the Accelerator Fund is in the unique position of leveraging the talents and insights of those most closely aligned with
western Pennsylvania’s robust reputation as an incubator for a new American spirit of entrepreneurial talent in biotechnology and the life sciences.
The $8.1M Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG) Accelerator Fund I provides life sciences companies with venture capital financing, which is the next step beyond capital provided by economic development organizations; friends and family; and angel investors. The PLSG Accelerator Fund, separate from and complementary to the PLSG, is building a portfolio of early-stage life sciences investments, primarily located in western Pennsylvania and spread across several life sciences sectors including medical devices, diagnostics, therapeutics, healthcare information technology and biotechnology tools.
The PLSG Accelerator Fund I currently has eight portfolio companies and is fully invested. The value proposition of the Accelerator Funds is at least 2-fold: (1) PLSG executives manage the Funds, affording investors with a quality of personnel and depth of domain experience that likely would be otherwise available only through significantly larger funds; (2) the PLSG seeks to de-risk companies for Fund investors by investing, with its own early-stage dollars, in companies before the Fund invests. Only companies that already have performed successfully using PLSG investments or have demonstrated their potential by going through the PLSG diligence process are considered for Fund investment.
A unique attribute of the Funds is that all the companies that are a part of our portfolio have already been vetted by the PLSG through due diligence, mentoring by the PLSG’s Executive Program services, and/or investments made through PLSG investment programs.
The bottom line is that the Accelerator Funds represent a fundamental part of the PLSG’s commitment to generate long-term sustainability for PLSG portfolio companies while creating the best opportunity for returns for fund investors.
Accelerator Fund executives all have domain and Fortune 100 company experience, having worked with companies such as Johnson & Johnson; Bristol-Meyers Squibb, and Boston Scientific, among others. They also have prior experience working successfully with early-stage companies. Each of the executives works with a particular vertical in our overall portfolio, developing existing portfolio companies; identifying potential additional portfolio companies.
