Team

Rick Berenson  Managing Director

Rick is Managing Director of Venzyme Catalyst, LLC.  He acts as a fractional CEO for different companies, providing executive services and strategic guidance to early-stage companies.  He has raised or helped raise more than $99M in private and non-dilutive capital.  A former McKinsey & Company consultant who started his post-graduate career as a member of technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Rick received a J.D.-M.B.A. from Harvard Business and Law Schools in 1984 and is a magna cum laude graduate in Economics from Harvard College.

In addition to advising several life science companies seeking funding, Rick currently serves as Chief of Strategy for Portal Diabetes Inc.  (implanted automated insulin delivery system), Chief of Strategy for SimulConsult Inc. (diagnostic decision support software for rare diseases), fractional President of Cardathea Inc. (electric field imaging for pacing lead guidance), and fractional CEO of HeartLander Surgical ((robot for minimally invasive beating heart surgery).  He is a member of the boards of iQure, Inc. (novel antiepileptic), Massachusetts Medical Angels (premier early life sciences stage investment group in Boston), and the Freedom Trail Foundation (history tourism).  Rick also served as the CEO and co-Founder of Thermalin Inc., a biotechnology company that developed novel, insulin-based therapies for diabetes.  Over 10 years at Thermalin, Rick assembled a world-class team of scientists that created clinical-candidate novel insulin molecules and invented disruptive insulin delivery devices. To support this effort, he consummated industry partnerships with Sanofi and Eli Lilly and raised $63M in equity and non-dilutive support.  Rick has also served as CEO or COO of ten other companies in consumer products manufacturing, knowledge management, new media, entertainment industry technology, manufacturing software, healthcare information and services, healthcare market research, anti-infectives drug discovery, diagnostic reference laboratory services, and cancer immunotherapeutics.

Particularly experienced with helping life science companies refine their investor pitches, Rick has  won the Innovators Pitch contest for two different companies at the Reimagining Early-Stage Investing (RESI) life sciences conference.  

Get in touch: [email protected]