Alignment Ventures

Alignment Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm specializing in life science startups. They focus on spinning out companies from university technology and serve as interim CEOs until sufficient risk reduction tasks are achieved to raise a Series A financing. Their team comprises seed artists and life science executives with over 100 years of experience in starting, building, financing, and exiting biotech, medical device, healthcare IT, and life science tools companies, both as CEOs and as life science venture capitalists. If a development saves lives or reduces morbidity and can make a significant difference, they are interested.

Their comprehensive approach begins with a development in science or engineering that solves a critical unmet medical need. They form a new company and serve as the interim management team, with one of them taking the lead as the interim CEO. They invest their own capital and raise non-dilutive funds while managing the many risk-reducing tasks that need to be performed to get their seedlings to the point where they can raise a Series A financing. This involves technology licensing, IP strategy, recruitment of an industry-experienced VPR&D, design and execution of risk-reducing experiments that establish commercial proof of concept, setting strategy, writing the business plan and financial models, market research, competitor analysis, financing strategy, and finally, recruiting the right long-term CEO with decades of operational experience in the appropriate niche. Then they raise the next financing, back out, and do it again. They invest up to and including Series A.

Their team includes Michael Tippie, General Partner, who founded Alignment Ventures and has previously been a life science venture capitalist at Norwest Venture Partners and Medical Innovation Partners, as well as a senior executive in several life science companies. He was the CEO of TomegaVax, which demonstrated long-term effector memory T-cell responses in primates, until its acquisition by Vir Biotechnology in 2016. Michael holds an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT, an MS in Chemistry from the University of Washington, and a BA in Chemistry from Reed College. Continuing education has included graduate work in Proteomics, Genomics, and Immunology.

Scurry Johnson, General Partner, founded Capital Conceptions Inc., a Dallas-based Venture Capital Firm in 1999, where he invested in healthcare-related and physical-science-based companies, as well as leveraged buyout/growth equity in the medical device, pain, and inflammation control pharma sectors. He led the Series-A and A1 rounds at CerSci Therapeutics, which was recently acquired by Acadia Pharmaceuticals. Scurry co-founded Neuro Resource Group, Inc. (now InterX Technologies), an innovative pain & inflammation control medical device company. He previously held investment banking positions with NCNB and Goldman Sachs and was with McKinsey & Company in San Francisco. Scurry received a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

Rachel Dreilinger, Venture Partner, is currently the CEO of NeuraMedica, Inc., commercializing a system of bioresorbable polymer clips and applier to close the dura of the spine during neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery. The company's first product received FDA 510(k) clearance in July 2022, and sales are ramping. Rachel has more than 23 years of biomedical engineering experience and has held positions at Illumina, Intuitive Surgical, Aurora Bioscience, Acumed, and Quanum Medical Concepts before becoming the Founding CEO of NeuraMedica. She holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego.

Gerardo Noriega, Venture Partner, is a co-founder and CEO of PercAssist and a serial entrepreneur, inventor, and scholar in the medical device industry. He has founded five medical device companies and is a consultant to over 50 medical device companies in the Silicon Valley area. He is an advisory board member of the Santa Clara University Bioengineering, the University of California in San Francisco Catalyst Program, the UCSF Surgical Consortium, and the Simon Fraser University Bioengineering Innovation Blvd. He is also an adjunct professor at the SCU Graduate School of Bioengineering. Gerardo holds a BS in Industrial and Systems Engineering from San Jose State University.