Sanovas raised $6.5 million in a Series A1 round co-founder & CEO Larry Gerrans told MassDevice.com will go toward commercializing its Vas Zeppelin pulmonary device.
Sausalito, Calif.-based Sanovas closed a Series A round last summer consisting entirely of friends and family, Gerrans told us.
"A lot of the Series A investors came back and said, ‘Can I invest more?’ We’re at about $15 million just through friends and family," he said. "The goal is to bring in about $20 million through friends and family. To be able to fund this company through their assistance, and to be able to insulate them from the dilutive force in the capital markets, has been gratifying. We absolutely refuse to take in any venture capital. We would not do it. In fact, we’ve turned a couple away."
The proceeds will go toward getting the Vas Zeppelin device and other devices on the market next year, Gerrans said.
"We’re using the proceeds for commercialization efforts in 2014," he said. "We’ve got a number of products were moving through the FDA clearance program."
Apart from the Vas Zeppelin platform, designed to combine lung imaging, physiologic metrics, in vivo diagnostics, recannulation and in vivo drug delivery, Sanovas is developing an endoscope it calls the MicroCam that Gerrans said will prove revolutionary.
"Our MicroCam initiative will fundamentally change the landscape of surgical cameras," he said.
