Interview Fox Business

Transcript

KEY: M = Maria & J = Joe & R = Ryan

M: Welcome back. At just seventeen years old Joe Landolina created a gel that could stop life-threatening bleeding in seconds. Eleven years later he’s turned that idea into a company with fifty employees. This year Cresilon has raised nearly forty million dollars in venture capital funding. The product is only approved for animal use at the moment but the hope is to one day use it on humans to save lives. Joining us right now is the CEO of Cresilon Joe Landolina. Joe, great to have you. Congratulations on this! Tell me how it works.

J. Yeah, thank you very much Maria for having me. Cresilon has created a game changing product that stops bleeding on contact without the need to apply pressure. Our team here in New York has solved the riddle of being able to stop traumatic bleeds quickly and efficiently where the standard of care takes minutes or sometime more. That allows us to have a technology that is potentially game-changing and life-saving and we’ve launched this technology successfully into the animal health market already where over three million pets per year are treated for bleeding. And this parallels exactly the opportunity in the human markets where we’re prepping to submit for FDA approval by the end of this year.

M: Wow, so what’s the timing on that? You think you could get the FDA to look at this by the year end and perhaps approve it?

J: So- so right now our team is busy with putting together the application, but we’re hoping in next year we’ll be able to actually see our first in-human use.

M: I see. Joe, tell us about the process of raising the money needed to start this company. How did you do it?

J: Alright, so we were very lucky in the beginning to get quite a bit of attention around the technology that we were developing, especially since we were starting this at such a young age, and the amount of financing that we’ve raised to date is really a testament to the belief that our investor base, which is mainly private individuals that found us through that found us through things like social media and found the technology compelling and bought into our mission to save lives. It really again is a testament to their belief in this technology and what it can do to save lives.

M: So how much money did you start with? What was your initial raise? How did you get going?

J: Well, my partner Isaac Miller and I started with the money that we had in our bank accounts as college students so we bootstrapped this up to a point and then once we got it to a position where we could actually start raising some [seed] capital and prove “yes we could indeed stop the bleeds we said we would.” We started by raising a three hundred-thousand-dollar seed round and that snowballed. Those same investors reinvested and over five rounds of private financing and today Cresilon has raised over sixty-five million dollars.

M: Wow that is terrific. Real quick on Ryan [Pane?]

R: Yeah Joe congratulations on your success I’m just wondering post-pandemic her in New York you actually have a factory in Brooklyn. Who manufactures in Brooklyn anymore? That’s amazing. How do you find the environment in New York post-covid- really running your business?

J: So, I’m a life-long New Yorker. I’m incredibly bullish on New York. This is something where we’ve been excited to bring these types of jobs here to New York City and we were able to find really great partners willing to invest in New York, build with us in New York. We’ve found actually the number of the employees we’ve attracted have been displaced from biotech jobs in New York previously, so it’s great to be able to retain those jobs here and building.

M: alright Joe, we’ll be watching your story. Thanks very much for joining us this morning. Joe Landolina, joining us from Cresilon. Thanks Joe.

J: Thank you.