Roger Smith and his bankers from Wells Fargo’s Special Industries Group brought their experience in tech lending to Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). According to Smith, Bank of America (BOA) was the first bank to take warrants for the right to purchase shares as part of the loan cost that they charged tech companies who were backed by Venture Capitalists (VCs) in Silicon Valley’s early days. After both Bank of America and Wells Fargo exited tech lending, SVB became the sought-after bank for lending to tech companies. SVB perfected its tech lending practice to startups that were VC-funded entities. This practice would later be called venture lending, venture loans, or venture debts in the United States and overseas.1

Early-stage drug development efforts for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) therapeutics often occur within academia and start-up companies and are often supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. The National Institute on Aging’s (NIA’s) seed funding through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs provide innovators with non-dilutive funding that supports key early-stage drug developments. Since 2015, the NIA small business funding programs have become a valuable source of seed funding available that enabled start-up companies to reach critical value inflection points. This chapter includes examples of five companies that received NIA small business funding at the preclinical stage of development and advanced their innovations to clinical trials: AgeneBio, Alector, Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, Cognition Therapeutics and Tetra Therapeutics. The NIH and NIA have launched several strategic initiatives and funding opportunities to enable small businesses to reach key value inflection points.