GRAND RAPIDS — West Michigan medical device company Shoulder Innovations Inc. has raised $42 million from investors that will go to accelerate commercialization and distribution.
Shoulder Innovations’ InSet device. (COURTESY IMAGE)Netherlands-based Gilde Healthcare, which has an office in Cambridge, Mass., led the Series D financing round for Shoulder Innovations. Gilde was joined by returning investors US Venture Partners and Lightstone Ventures, both based in Menlo Park, Calif., and Grand Rapids-based Cultivate(MD) Accelerator Capital.
The round also featured new investors: San Francisco-based Gilmartin Capital and Aperture Venture Partners from New York City.
Shoulder Innovations developed components for an innovative orthopedic shoulder implant known as the InSet system that simplifies the surgical technique, leading to reduced complications and increased implant longevity.
“Over recent years, we’ve built a world-class product line which has begun to gain significant traction in the marketplace. This financing positions Shoulder Innovations with the resources and partners to accelerate our investments in our team and products to further establish our leadership position,” CEO Rob Ball said in an announcement about the capital investment. “We’re excited to have gained significant financial support from industry leading partners in what has become a challenging financial market, bringing products to market with greater access for patients.”
Geoff Pardo, general partner at Gilde Healthcare, credited Shoulder Innovations with demonstrating the effectiveness of InSet, strong demand from surgeons and “operational excellence needed to scale the business.”
“We are excited to partner with this veteran team to meet the demand in the market and build a market-leading shoulder replacement company,” Pardo said in a statement. “The capital of this round will fund the expansion of the commercial operations, the build out of instrumentation and implant inventory, and continued product development.”
A longtime orthopedic surgeon initially launched Shoulder Innovations in 2009 to commercialize a new kind of shoulder implant. Since then, the company has attracted tens of millions of dollars in venture capital investments, including from Grand Rapids-based Wakestream Ventures LLC, Michigan Angel Fund, the Biosciences Research and Commercialization Center of Western Michigan University, Detroit-based Invest Michigan, and Genesis Innovation Group, a fund founded by Ball to invest in medical device startups that first put money into Shoulder Innovations in 2015.
The new investments come as Ball noted that companies at the later stages of development were having difficulty finding funding in the current market.
In an August 2022 executive roundtable on West Michigan’s life sciences industry hosted by MiBiz, Ball said medical device companies were dealing with “a little more stratified” investment market where “there’s more stress in the later stage environment than there is in the early stage environment.”
“There’s this pretty healthy and robust availability of capital in relatively small check sizes — less than $5 million,” he said. “You see many, many more companies taking smaller checks from a larger number of sources to put together financing. In that environment, you can create a lot more competition and a lot more interest and momentum, frankly. I think early stage companies will continue to have a robust experience. Later stage is much more difficult right now.”
