Emergent Emerges

A $60 million Series D for any device company is interesting, but perhaps one of the more eye-catching elements of Evalve Inc.’s new round is the participation of Emergent Medical Ventures, the new firm founded by serial entrepreneurs and investors Tom Fogarty and Allan May.

In a phone call from Piper Jaffray’s health care conference, May confirmed our belief that this is Emergent’s very first investment, and it’s an atypical one at that.

As we wrote back in the spring, Fogarty and May hope Emergent Medical will redefine early stage medical device investing or at least--as Fogarty states--return the practice to its roots when the VC's focus wasn't on investing per se, but on "actually starting companies—to take them through the process of innovation and value creation."

In the phone call, May says the firm will make a handful of “one off” investment in later-stage companies intimately familiar to Fogarty. Evalve is the first. Fogarty invested in the company while he was with Three Arch and had remained a board member, although he is stepping down as part of this round.

Cyberheart will be the second. That round should close later this week, May says. (Check out our profile on the company here.) May asked that the third not be identified yet, but IN VIVO magazine readers will recognize the name.

Emergent—as the name suggests—will spend the bulk of its time and capital on starting medical device companies the ole fashioned way. May said he hopes to close on the first $100 million fund by the end of this year. (They’ve already secured two-thirds of it.) Emergent also added to its team bringing aboard general surgeon Ken Baker as an associate, May said.