Michael Lerner Interviewed at The PIPEs Conference in Hollywood, Florida

Hey, I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and today we are at the Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida, and we're here for the Pipes Conference that DealFlow Events is holding, and my guest is Michael. Michael, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. All right, Michael. So first off, what do you think about this venue? It's a great venue. Great place to be. Yeah. I, my, my first time to this casino, but it's been a lot of fun and I'm like, we just got done eating. We're getting like, I'm feeling good. Yeah, me too. Got hit a little bit on the tables, but it's okay. Yeah. There we go. It's all good. So what brings you to the conference today? Firms is a sponsor of the conference. We do a lot of work with small micro cap companies in various areas. verticals and we decided to come and sponsor the event. Yeah. Is this year, is the firm been behind the deal flow events for a bit, or is this one of the first conferences you've been to? This is my first one, by the way. I'm just asking. I think over the years we've supported many of these events or these types of events, including the deal flow events. Yeah. Yeah. A lot, a lot of fun. I've been doing these, these interviews virtual for them for a while. And I'm like, I'm going to get out there. Don't worry. I'm coming. I'm coming. So finally to see it all in action. I'm like, it's good. It's really good. It's really worthwhile. And I believe your niche within the firm, is it life sciences? Yeah, I chair the life sciences group at Loewenstein Sandler. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Sure. We have the life science group focuses on various companies engaged in the life sciences industry from pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, med tech companies, diagnostic companies, other healthcare service providers that cater to the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry. We have offices in New York, New Jersey, California. Washington, D. C., and we're fully focused primarily, or at least I focus primarily, in the life sciences. Nice. What? And I'm not asking for any particular company or client or anything like that, of course, but you have a unique vantage point. I mean not only with working through your clients and where you, and your position, But just also being in that field, like what interests you in the life sciences space in general right now? Well, generally, I've been in this space my entire life. Oh, wow. I grew up, you know, my father was in the pharmaceutical industry. So I learned the industry at you know, at the kitchen table. Oh, that's awesome. And I started in the. Practicing law back in the 80s and had chaired a life sciences group at another firm, went in house to a company, to the first specialty pharmaceutical company where we developed many products and made them into market. We ultimately exited with in a fairly large M& A transaction back in the mid 2000s. Joined Lowenstein Sandler 18 years ago to head up their pharmaceutical and life sciences practice. I've been doing it ever since. Man. So what's interesting. So then I like my question even better than now, because you, you grew up in this. The beauty about this business is you can do well by doing good. Yeah. Basically, if you can develop a product that gets approved and can save, either improve somebody's quality of life, cure a disease, or otherwise make somebody's life better and make them live longer, make them healthier, you know, what better reward than that is. And if you. If you're able to do that, then you could have, there'll be financial success will follow. In terms of this particular conference, I've been out here doing interviews all day. So what, what's been any programming or anything else that you care to comment on that you found interesting? I think the, the entire process of explaining or actually be about the various Securities related matters, you know, one thing about the life sciences space, especially in the former, in the smaller companies, micro cap and small cap is there, they don't have revenue, so they're constantly out looking to raise the capital necessary to move their products forward and hopefully, hopefully get approved and get to market. So, you know, the, the programming here was targeted towards that. Oh, I, it's, you know, entrepreneurs and other people who are interested in understanding how the capital markets work and the various phases of capital development. Yeah, I'm a fan of the life sciences niche, I'll say, and I'll tell you, I do a lot of interviews. So when I'm interviewing people and otherwise, The founders, the people that have these big ideas, these big plans and dreams and visions that they have to go forward and and to see them build a year after year, I've had some people, they were on my show five years ago that I see them again. And I'm like, what's been going? No, it's amazing. You know, the tenacity, you know, I joke, you have to be crazy to go into this b

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