By Laura Layden – September 7, 2016
A Naples-based investment fund has bet its money on the success of a local orthopedic medical device startup.
The fund, Tamiami Angel Fund II, or T2 for short, has invested nearly $1 million in Catalyst OrthoScience to help the company ramp up the production of what it describes as a “breakthrough product” for shoulder-replacement surgery.
“The product we feel is revolutionary, not evolutionary. And we liked the progress that the management team had made,” said Tim Cartwright, chairman of Tamiami Angel Funds.
Steven Goldberg, chief of orthopedic surgery at Physicians Regional Healthcare System in Naples, founded Catalyst OrthoScience in December 2014. He started developing his product, called the Catalyst CSR Shoulder System, about four years ago. He has several patents for the device and others pending.
The device, which can fit in the palm of a hand, is made of two materials: a metal alloy, cobalt-chromium-molybdenum, and ultra-high molecular-weight polyethylene. It’s in the shape of a shoulder. Used with a new surgical approach, the implant requires less bone removal than other procedures for arthroplasty, or joint replacement.
T2 invested $930,000 in Catalyst OrthoScience. The fund was the lead investor in a $3.3 million Series A capital raise. Series A refers to the first significant round of capital raised from outside investors, and it’s the largest such raise in Southwest Florida this year, according to the MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
Other investors in the new company include IrishAngels, a Chicago-based group whose members have ties to the University of Notre Dame.
Catalyst OrthoScience is one of two Naples-based companies T2 has invested in, and it’s one of the fund’s largest investments in a first round.
