Are Investor Conferences Worth It? Three Perspectives from the Same Week at LSI

Investor conferences are a meaningful investment for an early-stage founder: time, money, and several days away from actually building the company. So it’s a fair question: are they worth it?

I’ve been to LSI a few times now, and rather than just give a single perspective, I wanted to look at it from three angles: founder, investor, and ecosystem, to better understand how valuable these conferences actually are and how that value might compound over time. What stood out to me in reviewing each of my colleagues’ write-ups is how consistent the themes were: capital is tighter, M&A is active but skewed toward later-stage companies, and relationships matter now more than ever in creating traction for early-stage medtech companies.

Before getting into the perspectives, it’s worth a quick note on what LSI actually looks like. It’s held at the Waldorf Astoria in Dana Point, which creates a bit of a captive environment, with meals and programming built in. A lot of the real interaction happens outside the formal schedule: in the hotel lobby, between sessions, or running into the same people multiple times over a few days. There are strong panels throughout, but the center of gravity is clearly the 1:1 meetings. The 2000+ attendees are there to meet, and they take it seriously. The volume is high enough that even with over 100 tables set up for meetings and several private conference rooms and suites booked out by the strategics, there were multiple times the app couldn’t assign me a space because everything was booked. It’s one of the few conferences I’ve been to where the default behavior is showing up and engaging, and the environment and programming facilitate that.

Innovator / Founder Lens

1. What were your goals at LSI?

LSI has been a pretty consistent inflection point for us, just in different ways each year.

• First LSI: met up with R. Sean Churchill, MD, MBA at cultivate(MD), which turned into an investment within a few weeks. Also had the chance to present on a lung cancer panel alongside Hologic, Inc. and Maverix Medical, which gave us early visibility.
• Second LSI: deepened relationships with the team at Features Capital. We were able to work through several rounds of diligence questions in person, which is hard to replicate over email. They also got to meet and talk with our other investors. They ended up coming into the round later that summer.
• This year: less about pitching broadly, more about continuing conversations with people who already know the deal. Of course, I still made plenty of great new connections throughout the week. I also had the chance to speak on a panel about the future of the OR, which gave us another visibility boost with both strategics and investors. One of the biggest advantages was having daily feedback loops with our existing investors; being able to compare notes in real time, and make warm introductions in both directions while everyone was in the same place.

At this stage, for me and for Prana, LSI is not about maximizing the number of meetings; it’s about moving the right relationships forward.

2. What patterns did you notice?

A few things came up repeatedly:

• Investors are looking inward before outward. With limited distributions back to LPs, a lot of funds are focused on supporting existing portfolios. That means fewer new deals getting attention, and a higher bar for anything outside of an investor’s current portfolio.
• M&A is active, but skewed late. There’s still capital available on the strategic side, and groups like Medtronic and Boston Scientific are actively doing deals. But most of that activity is concentrated in later-stage companies where the revenue impact is immediate. This mirrors the continuous focus on tuck-in acquisitions at JPM earlier this year.
• The Series A/B gap is very real right now. A lot of founders are in that middle zone where traditional VCs are more selective, but earlier-stage capital can’t write checks large enough to carry the round. I heard this consistently from both founders and investors: companies need more capital than most early-stage funds or angel groups can provide, which puts more pressure on larger syndicate formation.

3. What surprised you?

How much more efficient things get when the person across from you already has context, and how much of a multiplier it is to have your existing investors and supporters working alongside you.

At earlier LSIs, a lot of the value came from new introductions. This year, the value was in:

• Picking up diligence threads in person instead of over weeks of back-and-forth; being able to physically hand your device over and let someone get a feel for it.
• Having more direct conversations because people already know our deal.
• Seeing how perception has changed as we’ve made progress, both on us as a deal and on the lung cancer landscape overall.

On top of that, we now have a growing group of investors and supporters actively advocating for us. As a founder, I’m not the only one telling our story. It’s getting reinforced in parallel conversations, often in rooms I’m not able to access. Investors and strategics are able to compare notes in real time, make introductions on the spot, and build conviction in the deal faster.

It’s a very different experience when you’re building on momentum vs. starting from scratch.

4. What does this mean for early-stage founders?

A few takeaways:

• Capital is a team sport right now. You, your investors, and your advisors are collectively building a syndicate. Use the relationships you’ve already cultivated over months or years to your advantage.
• LSI works best as part of a longer arc, not a one-off event. It’s a place to build and advance relationships, not close them on the spot. Warm intros and significant pre-work will pay off.
• In-person is an accelerant. My first raise for Prana was in 2022, and most of it was conducted over Zoom. Six years after the pandemic, it’s clear that in-person meetings are fully back. The ability to sit down, compare notes in real time, and move conversations forward in a few days is something sequential Zoom calls just can’t replicate.

So…is LSI worth it? The ROI can be real, but it’s earned. For us, LSI has been unequivocally worth it. Several of our key investor relationships started or meaningfully accelerated there, including investments that closed shortly after. But that outcome isn’t unique to LSI, it’s a function of how you approach these events. The same playbook applies broadly. LSI just happens to curate one of the best environments, both in setting and in attendees, to make that work.

Investor Lens: Emily Reiser, Director, Strategy and New Ventures Texas Medical Center

1. What were your goals at LSI?

A successful LSI is one where I deepen connections with investors in my network and meet a few new medtech-specific investors who end our conversation curious to learn more about our portfolio. As I heard repeatedly on the panel stages and in private conversations, MedTech investing is less about differentiated access to the best deals than about ensuring there is enough capital to propel companies to success. For the companies we have already invested in, we need investors who bring both capital and value to lead the next round. For companies in our pipeline, we cannot carry them alone and need strong co-investment partners around the deal. LSI is one of 3 times a year I have the opportunity to deepen and develop relationships with investors who can potentially enable the future success of our companies and bring differentiated value through their involvement beyond the check.

2. What patterns did you notice?

M&A deal activity; for example, Medtronic’s activist investors pressuring them to do more deals. There was a lot of chatter about this among the investors, and Medtronic ’s Chris Eso (VP, M&A, Strategy & Portfolio Management) discussed it on the Wednesday morning M&A panel, Strategic Investments, Structured Transactions and Creative Deals: Experts’ Perspectives and Lessons from the Trenches. He shared that Medtronic has been doing 5 deals a year in the last 3 years but not announcing all of them; so far, in just the first quarter of 2026, they’ve announced 4 deals and have closed a 5th yet to be announced.

There continues to be balance sheet capital available for many of the strategics to spend, so in theory there could be favorable conditions for M&A. Many of the M&A deals are with companies that are very late stage, which contributes to the widening of the gap of opportunity for early-stage exits we’ve been seeing the last 5 years or so. They are acquiring later because they need to drive growth via M&A, which means they need immediate revenue impact that is meaningful to the business.

Investment Activity:

It’s still a challenging environment to get medtech investment across stages. There has been some M&A activity, but it’s been concentrated in later-stage deals with multi-billion dollar outcomes into companies that have been operating for decades. The lack of returns for investors back to their LPs has made it harder to raise new medtech funds, though there have been some bright spots lately (Epidarex Capital, SANTÉ, Sonder Capital). This has made investors focus inward on making sure their portfolios can survive, which means they are taking fewer looks at new deals outside their portfolio. With many investors doing this simultaneously, it’s getting harder:

• “These companies need more capital than any one of us can provide” - Kate Garrett, Sonder Capital
• “We need more leaders and less followers” - Josh Makower, Founder and Venture Advisor

3. What surprised you?

LSI is special because people engage in the 1:1 meetings. They engage in the virtual matching platform and most of the time accept and show up to the meetings with founders. If you are looking to meet an investor or strategic, a specific cold outreach that demonstrates you know their strategic priorities can unlock a meeting via cold introduction.

The best route is to meet an investor or strategic before LSI and use LSI as a chance to solidify the relationship through an early in-person meeting.

4. What does this mean for early-stage medtech founders?

A repeated plea to founders from investors and strategics on stage: know your audience and ask questions, don’t just pitch us. For example, if M&A needs to drive growth, then the entrepreneur either needs to know or discover during their engagements with strategics how their product will fit in with the existing strategic priorities of the business and how and when that would impact the financial growth for that prospective partner.

From my perspective, I prioritize meeting with people I already know, because it’s rare I get the chance for an in-person meeting throughout the year. The founders who stood out and who I took meetings with had curated their outreach to my thesis and portfolio and focus on Texas, so they got one of three slots I saved for cold outreach. Other founders successfully used warm introductions from other investors or founders I trust to get that first meeting.

Prepare early: If you can set up introductory meetings with investors virtually in Jan-Feb, LSI becomes the perfect chance to get that first in-person meeting.

LSI is an expensive investment for an early-stage startup. I think it’s worth it, but planning ahead with initial virtual engagements, warm introductions, and curated outreach to high-priority targets will make it well worth it.

Ecosystem Lens: Lance Black, MD, MBID , Sr. Associate Dean of Innovation & Strategic Projects Texas A&M School of Engineering Medicine (EnMed), KOL Advisor, NAMSA

1. What were your goals at LSI?

For me, LSI is less about trying to stay up to date with the medtech industry and more about strengthening the fabric of relationships that define this industry. My goal was simple: reconnect with people I have worked with over the past decade while establishing a few new, meaningful relationships along the way. Increasingly, these conferences feel more like reunions than traditional networking events, and that is what I value most. There is something energizing about seeing the same founders, operators, and investors still pushing forward, often against long odds, to bring meaningful technologies to patients. It is a reminder that progress in medtech is not accidental. It is the result of sustained conviction. A successful conference, to me, is one where those relationships are deepened and where I leave more inspired than when I arrived.

2. What patterns did you notice?

While I did not attend enough panels to claim any real patterns, one theme consistently surfaced in conversations: AI. Not just as a feature or tool, but as something fundamentally different. There is a shared sense that AI represents a step change in disruption compared to prior waves of innovation. What stood out was how quickly conversations escalated from interesting use cases to broader implications around how medicine is practiced and even where this all leads long-term. It is rare to see a technology shift that simultaneously feels immediate and existential.

3. What surprised you?

As a first-time attendee, what surprised me most was how much LSI felt like an anti-conference. The panels were strong and well curated, but they were not the center of gravity. The conversations were. It felt intentionally designed to facilitate connection, with the traditional conference elements taking a backseat. That dynamic created a more organic and high-value experience. And it did not hurt that the setting itself was one of the most memorable I have experienced at a conference.

4. What does this mean for early-stage medtech founders?

If there is one clear takeaway, it is that medtech is, at its core, a relationship-driven business. Conferences like LSI reinforce that success is not just about the strength of your technology, but about the strength of your network. Founders need to actively build relationships with people who have navigated similar challenges, including investors, operators, and clinicians, because no one succeeds in isolation. The learning curve in this space is steep, and the ability to compress that curve by learning from others, even those just a few steps ahead, can make all the difference.

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