Two-year-old Hotspur Technologies Inc. landed three Food & Drug Administration clearances in less than four months, all with the relatively modest backing of $5.5 million.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company, which was incorporated in 2008, claimed its first three 510(k)s, one in 90 days and two more in 110 days.
Hotspur designed the devices — the PTA-Duo balloon catheter and the Embo-Plus embolectomy catheter — to open blocked blood vessels in dialysis patients or in the arms and legs of other patients, according to a press release.
Hotspur raised a total of $5.5 million in a $1.8 million Series A and $3.7 million Series B round, according to filings with the Securities & Exchange commission. The company’s backers include Onset Ventures, Bio-Star Private Equity Fund, Finistere Partners, Saratoga Ventures, Three Arch Partners and Versant Ventures, according to the peHUB blog. Serial entrepreneur Amar Sawhney is listed as a company director on Hotspur’s Series A filing, along with frequent collaborator Farhad “Fred” Khosravi.
Five-and-a-half million is a paltry sum to bring a device to market, let alone three. Venture investor and Hotspur board member Rob Kuhling told the peHUB blog that normally a similar firm would raise $20 million to $30 million before it was ready to sell its products.
In the second quarter, biotechnology received the most venture funding of any sector, with $1.3 billion, or 59 percent, going into 139, or 34 percent, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report out this month. The report said the total funding fetched by life science firms is the highest tally since Q3 of 2008 and the medical device industry fetched $755 million in 95 venture deals, 40 percent in both dollars and deals over the first quarter.
Kuhling told peHUB that Hotspur is likely to begin selling its devices later in 2010 and may raise another small round of financing in 2011 to support a growing product line.