Mr. Cashman, You're On

Chris Cashman is looking for $500,000. He has 45 minutes to convince the skeptics at Robin Hood Ventures that he's a good investment.

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On a warm Monday afternoon in early February, most of the members of Robin Hood Ventures, a Philadelphia angel investing group, are gathered in a conference room in a building in an industrial park in Wayne, Pa. The building is owned by Safeguard Scientifics, a venture capital firm that has co-invested with Robin Hood on a number of deals.

Chris Cashman, CEO of Protez Pharmaceuticals, is in the lobby, waiting to be called in. Dressed in a black suit, blue shirt, and conservative red tie, he resembles a less gregarious George W. Bush. Protez is developing several drugs that fight bacteria that have become resistant to existing drugs. Cashman is putting together a B round of financing that he thinks will total $10 million to $15 million, and he's hoping to get some bridge financing from Robin Hood -- money that will tide him over until the B round is complete. "If all my timing comes together, I'm gonna be fine," he says later. "But in case there's a hiccup that costs me a month or two on the financing, then this is where the Robin Hood bridge could come in and help the company."

Robin Hood was started in 1999 by Rob Weber and George Marks. Weber's background is in venture capital and in management roles at numerous tech companies. Marks is a partner in an architectural firm and runs a real estate investment portfolio. The two started Robin Hood after checking out another angel group and determining that for their taste the group did too much talking and too little investing. One of the basic requirements of Robin Hood, then, is that each member have money ready to invest -- to join, an investor must pony up $125,000 and keep it at the ready.

So far, the group has put $8.3 million into 14 companies. There have been no successful exits yet, but the members are feeling good about the eight companies and one venture fund still in the portfolio. The companies are in software, hardware, Web services, and medical technology. Should members invest in Protez, it would represent their first foray into a purely pharmaceutical business.

Today 16 of the 27 members are here: 13 men and three women. Marks is the only one of the group wearing a suit and tie; the rest are casually dressed -- some with preppy looks, some in plaid flannel, one man with a ponytail. Most of them are successful entrepreneurs who have experience in both start-ups and large corporations. They have the relaxed demeanor of people who are used to proceeding deliberately and thoroughly with an investigation before they make a decision, and thanks to their previous successes, they have all the time they need to do that.

In his short history as a company founder, Cashman has become accustomed to the fact that a large part of his job is going around asking for money, so he is relaxed as he takes the floor -- he stands and works a PowerPoint show; the angels sit -- and begins to tell his story. Cashman founded Protez in 2003 and started the ball rolling by swapping a 25% share in the new company to Influx Pharmaceuticals, a firm spun out of research done at the University of Illinois at Chicago, for some promising technologies Influx had developed. Along with this acquisition came $3.3 million in government grants that Influx had been awarded. Protez also got an $800,000 investment from BTG, a London drug licensing firm with a small venture capital arm. In addition to that money, Protez got the benefit of BTG's relationships with other firms with promising antibiotic candidates.

Occasionally a Robin Hood member breaks into Cashman's presentation. "Why would Influx sell its assets?" someone asks.

"Because the technology needed to be advanced," Cashman replies. "They didn't have the capability to develop the drugs, so they thought the assets were better off in our hands. They were academics." In other words, Protez is a company committed to commercial development while Influx is engaged in pure research.

Cashman talks about the facility Protez has been building in Malvern, Pa. It includes a robot capable of screening 10,000 to 16,000 compounds every week. He describes his background: 22 years in marketing, sales, and management roles in Big Pharma, first with SmithKline Beecham, then with Pfizer. His last position at Pfizer was global director for new product development for animal health. Then he took the reins of a small start-up called Message Pharmaceuticals.

Another question: "What was the outcome of Message?"

"We broke it up into pieces and sold it," says Cashman. "It was a distress sale." This, Cashman's only prior experience with a start-up, will prove to be a sticking point for some members.

Protez is working on four different drug technologies. Cashman believes that each of them represents an annual market of $250 million to $500 million. He describes three of Protez's drugs today, placing the greatest emphasis on the drug whose development is most advanced: Compound Y, a broad-spectrum antibiotic out of Japan that Protez has access to thanks to its relationship with BTG. It holds promise as a drug that could be used by itself to treat infections that currently require multiple drugs to treat.

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