General
We are a newly organized blank check company incorporated as a Delaware corporation formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses, which we refer to throughout this prospectus as our initial business combination or our business combination.
To date, our efforts have been limited to organizational activities as well as activities related to this offering. We have not selected any specific business combination target and we have not, nor has anyone on our behalf, initiated any substantive discussions, directly or indirectly, with any business combination target. We have generated no operating revenues to date and we may not generate operating revenues even after we consummate our initial business combination.
While we may pursue an acquisition opportunity in any business, industry, sector or geographical location, we intend to focus on industries that complement our management team’s background, and to capitalize on the ability of our management team to identify and acquire a business, focusing on early stage companies in the biotechnology and/or telemedicine sector of the healthcare industry in North America. In particular, we intend to prioritize companies in the life sciences and pharmaceutical services sectors where our management team has extensive experience.
Our Board of Directors, led by our founder, Robb Knie, has combined decades of experience in growing and developing areas of the healthcare industry. The team consists of Robb Knie, who is also our Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Financial Officer, along with Michael Reavey, Jeff Pavell, Jonathan Hale Zippin and Sundeep Agrawal as directors. We believe that the strong scientific background of our management and directors, combined with their financial and entrepreneurial expertise, will propel the company to identify a valuable acquisition target that can thrive in a public-listing environment.
Our Founder, Board of Directors and Management
Our founder, Robb Knie, has served as President, Chief Executive Officer and as Chairman of Hoth Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: HOTH), a biopharmaceutical company, since May 2017. From 2002 to 2010, Mr. Knie was a Semiconductor Analyst for PAW Partners. From 1993 until 1995, Mr. Knie served as Northeast Regional Manager of American Express Financial Advisors, a financial services company. He has been featured on Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and Forbes Magazine as an Independent Equity Analyst. Mr. Knie has over 20 years of equity markets experience. Mr. Knie has been a member of the American Chemical Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, as well as The National Alliance for Youth Sports.
Michael Reavey, our director nominee, is an established security executive with over 20 years-experience in security leadership spanning product engineering, incident response, security assurance, and risk management. At Electronic Arts (EA), a gaming company, where he is the Vice President-Enterprise Security since October 2017, he is responsible for the security of EA’s global enterprise. Since February 2020, he also serves as a technical advisor to Change Healthcare, Inc., a provider of revenue and payment cycle management and clinical information exchange solutions, connecting payers, providers, and patients in the United States healthcare system. Prior to joining EA, Mr. Reavey was a Partner at Microsoft (where he worked from 2003 to October 2017) and head of Program Management for Microsoft Azure’s core security services. He was in charge of developing, building and running services that provided Azure’s authorization, authentication, encryption, data protection and systems security. During this time, Mr. Reavey also brought several advanced security products to market as part of Office 365 and Azure Security offerings, which have saved countless customers from zero-day attacks. Before joining the Cloud and Enterprise division Mr. Reavey was a General Manager in the Trustworthy Computing Group at Microsoft Corporation. Most notably he led Microsoft’s response as to sophisticated cyber events such as the Snowden revelations, cyber-attacks like Flame and Stuxnet and developed new ways to help Microsoft’s enterprise customers get secure and stay secure with mature programs built around a predictable product servicing and data protection. Prior to joining Microsoft, Mr. Reavey served as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force, where he led mobile technical teams that secured and optimized Air Force networks at installations world-wide, and launched red-team efforts to validate Air Force cyber defenses as part of the 92nd Information Warfare Squadron at Kelly Air Base, TX.
Jeff Pavell, M.D., our director nominee, has over twenty years’ medical experience. Presently, Dr. Pavell acts as an off-campus site proctor for Rusk Institute residents training for Rehabilitation Medicine. He is board certified in physical medicine and rehabilitation, pain medicine, and sports medicine, as well as acupuncture, which he uses as complementary care for his patients. Dr. Pavell is currently the Chief of Rehabilitation Medicine at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center. Dr. Pavell acts as Race Director & President of the Haworth 5K (since 2009) as well as President of the Vikings travel soccer & football clubs (since 2011). He also teaches students and residents at Columbia University, where he is on the teaching staff. He has, along with two colleagues, co-authored a chapter, “History and Past Medical History,” in The Low Back Pain Handbooks First and Second Editions, both well-received texts for primary care practitioners. Dr. Pavell graduated from the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine with honors, and went on to do his residency and Chief Residency at the New York University Medical Center’s Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation and the Bellevue Hospital. He then completed a fellowship in Buffalo in the use of fluoroscopic injections for management of pain and immobility.
Jonathan Hale Zippin M.D., Ph.D., our director nominee, is an Associate Professor of Dermatology and Pharmacology and an Associate Attending Dermatologist at Weill Medical College of Cornell University since 2010, where he is the current Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Dermatology and is the Director of the Contact, Occupational, and Photo Dermatitis Unit. Following completion of his post-doctoral studies in 2010, Dr. Zippin joined the faculty of the Department of Dermatology at Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Zippin founded and is the Director of the Contact, Occupational, and Photodermatitis Service which provides comprehensive dermatologic allergy care for hundreds of patients a year. Dr. Zippin also serves as the Director of the dermatology course for the medical school. Over the past ten years, he has served on the general faculty council, which is responsible for approving medical college policy and promotions. Dr. Zippin is a fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology and member of the Society for Investigative Dermatology and the American Contact Dermatitis Society. He has served on the Board of Directors for the American Contact Dermatitis Society and multiple committees within the organization. He is currently on the Council for the Pan-American Society for Pigment Cell Research. For the past 18 years, he has helped to establish the role of distinct cAMP microdomains in mammalian cell biology and revealed new mechanisms in insulin release and cancer. Dr. Zippin has published numerous peer-reviewed papers, been awarded multiple patents, and written book chapters. He serves as a reviewer for multiple journals such as Cell Reports Medicine, Dermatitis, Journal of American Academy of Dermatology, Pigment Cell and Melanoma Research, and Molecular Carcinogenesis. Zippin has served as a consultant for numerous pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer and Cellgene. He is also the founder of CEP Biotech that is developing antibody based diagnostics for cancer. Finally, Dr. Zippin has been involved in the design and/or execution of multiple clinical trials testing both devices and pharmaceutical interventions.
Sundeep Agrawal, M.D., our director nominee, is currently a Managing Director at Colt Ventures, a family office focused on investing in private and public life science companies since 2019. He has experience across venture capital and public equity, healthcare investment banking, clinical medicine and research. Previously, he was a Vice President at Longitude Capital from 2017 to 2019, an approximately $2.0 billion healthcare investment firm focused on public and private investments in life sciences. Dr. Agrawal has served as a Board Observer at Recode Therapeutics since March 2020 and served as a Board Observer at Axonics Modulation Tech (Nasdaq: AXNX) from April 2018 to December 2018 and as a Board Observer at Venus Concept (Nasdaq: VERO) from July 2017 to December 2018. Prior to Longitude Capital, he was an Executive Director in Healthcare Investment Banking at Oppenheimer & Co. from 2010-2017 where he worked on public and private capital markets transactions in healthcare. Dr. Agrawal completed clinical training at Lenox Hill Hospital from 2013 to 2014. He has clinical and basic science research experience with publications in leading journals and has been the recipient of several national research awards and grants. Dr. Agrawal currently sits on the advisory board of APN Health (since 2016), a medical device company, and on the board of IndoUSrare, an independent non-profit organization focused on helping patients of Indian origin with rare diseases in the USA, India, and globally, since 2020. Dr. Agrawal holds an M.D. from the George Washington School of Medicine and a B.A. in Biology from George Washington University.
Industry Opportunity
While we may acquire a business in any industry, our focus will be on the early stage North American companies in the biotechnology and/or telemedicine sector of the healthcare industry where our management has investment and operational experience. We believe the healthcare industry, particularly the biotechnology and telemedicine sectors, represents an attractive target market with a large number of potential acquisition opportunities. We intend to focus on companies that have excellent management teams, strong growth potential, and that would benefit from access to capital to fund acquisitions or working capital for clinical development and/or organic growth.
Forward Looking Statements
The forward-looking statements contained in this prospectus are based on our current expectations and beliefs concerning future developments and their potential effects on us. There can be no assurance that future developments affecting us will be those that we have anticipated. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties (some of which are beyond our control) or other assumptions that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors described in the section of this prospectus entitled “Risk Factors.” Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of our assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary in material respects from those projected in these forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.