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Post by kc on Jan 19, 2019 11:41:22 GMT -5
I’m going with Nate’s 1-3b right now. As far as valuation. If there was ever a true leak, then the stock will run up. And then there would be a 35% premium on top of that, that’s just my speculation. And maybe a bidding war, I’ve been in stocks that’s happened to. I’ve been in stocks that have doubled on a buyout. After a big run up. The run-up most likely caused by the shorts getting out. Not always true. I was in a stock for about 24 months named Mazor Robotics. They went from about $15.00 a share up to about $78.00 a share. They had a partnership with Medtronics to sell their spinal robotic surgery equipment. Last year when the shares were trading about $45.00 a share Medtronics bought them at $58.50. Shareholders were not expecting a buyout that soon and at that low price. I would have thought a price closer to their high + a premium. But I was wrong. So much for a retail investor. The company was just starting to grow and monetizing their product and entering other areas of surgical treatment areas. I figured they would stay independent for about 5+ years but that was not the case. MDT purchased a 10% interest in that company in May of 2017. I made some money but was disappointed about the transaction as 6 months earlier they shares had been at $78.00. So a buyout situation might not get us where we want to be on MannKind. Today I would guess it would be about $10.00 per share. I would rather see MannKind stay independent but get a buy in of about 30% so that the company would be financially stable. Perhaps like the Regneron partnership. |
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Post by kc on Jan 19, 2019 11:30:53 GMT -5
Rumors, Murmurs & Buzz said, yesterday, that Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) are in advanced merger discussions w/MNKD CEO & wrapping up bid. Seems, RM&B might just be a rag that hits tickers w/a dart and arbitrary puts interchangeable post it notes on them for entertainment. Just a day it two before their last two tweets, they said, MNKD CEO, to detail significant partnership agreement w/leading U.S. big pharma. Maybe there is more to RM&B - have no idea what their accuracy rate is, if they even have one. In any case, without a lot of detail, just in simple terms, what are realistic opinions of - dollar amount per share, MNKD would receive if they really did sell or merge - based on where they are trading at today ($1.40 range). Thanks. I'd be curious if their thrown darts have ever hit a bullseye. Any knowledge of a bullseye? J & J thru their Janssen division does have some Diabetes drugs. Not sure if there is any fit. www.janssen.com/products/Cardiovascular-&-Metabolism |
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Post by kc on Jan 17, 2019 17:32:07 GMT -5
Other pharmas also have programs. Lilly Cares for instance provides free medications to many, and (AFAIK) does not limit it to 1000 patients. Aren’t those programs based on financial need? I just helped my 88 year old Mom get Eliquis from BMY, but she had to qualify based on her income and the total cost of all her other prescriptions. This MNKD direct purchase program does not have a financial need justification. It’s just trying to give cash buyers a lower cost by going direct, bypassing the middle men. My Mother is also on Eliquis and it is very costly. Hits the Donut hole and then she pays until out of the Donut hole. Big bugs for that drug. |
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Post by kc on Jan 17, 2019 17:27:43 GMT -5
If you order the book, be sure to get the latest edition. Earlier editions do not have chapters on Afrezza. Amazon has the December 2017 edition on their site. Is that the current one? |
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Post by kc on Jan 17, 2019 16:48:18 GMT -5
the price of Mannkind in the beginning..before any drug was created or approved or shown superior was..$125 a share...now at $1.37... Al doesn't start something historically that doesn't have a 10x to 100x factor..so $1,250 a share low end...to $12,500 a share high end..I find it staggering we are at $1.37..but..as long as analyst have their heads up their butts..might as well keep picking these diamonds up .. You been hitting the Real bong and not the RLS inhaler...... |
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Post by kc on Jan 16, 2019 23:17:54 GMT -5
What is greater than this! He gets it, he’s talking about it, and you can eat what you want when you want. And there seems to be some chapters in a book about Afrezza! Doritos ....perfect! Amazing commercial for Afrezza. The one thing he could’ve added in this video is that he’s been a four-year user. |
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Post by kc on Jan 14, 2019 17:05:48 GMT -5
Sports posted this in the MNKD twitter page, thought I'd put it in here too  Inhaled insulin can be boon to diabetes sufferers, says JDRFJan. 12, 2019 JDRF, formerly known as the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, is advising adults living with diabetes of the benefits of inhaling insulin close to, or even during, meal times. The medication, with the brand name Afrezza, is a fast-acting insulin that complements other ways of introducing the hormone into the body. Afrezza was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2014. It is prescribed only to individuals over 18. JDRF is supportive of the medication, which can reduce considerably the number of injections insulin-dependent adults need daily. Sanjoy Dutta, an assistant vice president at JDRF who specializes in research and international partnerships, said Afrezza is a product "very close to our hearts" because those with diabetes always need more options. While there have been advances and improvements in medications dealing with diabetes, injections have been used for 95 years, Dutta noted. "So Afrezza has advantages and we support, believe in [it]," Dutta told Patient Daily. "It is a very fast-acting insulin that can manage the meal-time high." The inhaled insulin can be taken just prior to a meal or, if someone forgets, during and even after one. An injection often lasts long after a meal is consumed, beyond the point when the insulin is needed. While most insulin-dependent individuals either have no issue with needles or have overcome their fears, inhaled insulin has the advantage of reducing the number of injections, Dutta said. Instead of injecting four or five times a day, it is possible only one shot would be needed, he added. Many insulin-dependent people use an insulin pump, which is designed to regulate and regularly introduce insulin into the body. But some people do not like to be tethered to a device on their body, and there are other challenges in maintaining a pump. In addition, the Associated Press reported in November that insulin pumps and their components were the subject of more reports to the FDA about malfunction, injury and death than other medical devices. And even for those using the pump, inhaled insulin can act as a complement to make the glucose control better, Dutta said. patientdaily.com/stories/511718551-inhaled-insulin-can-be-boon-to-diabetes-sufferers-says-jdrfThis is really a big deal when you read the article. Please repost it to any blog or facebook page you can.
patientdaily.com/stories/511718551-inhaled-insulin-can-be-boon-to-diabetes-sufferers-says-jdrf
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Post by kc on Jan 5, 2019 5:39:08 GMT -5
You are correct. Below is an excerpt from the transcript from yesterday.
“Thank you, Rose, and good morning everybody, and thank you for joining me for a quick investor update. We’re going to be very busy hosting investor and business development meetings around the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference next week in San Francisco. And because we are presenting, we thought it was prudent to update investors on our 2019 strategic imparitives.”
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Post by kc on Jan 4, 2019 23:49:58 GMT -5
Harry this is great stuff. I think they finally have figured out how to properly monetize technosphere. So many Pharma’s looking for their next big drug product. MannKind May hold the keys to a lot of new drugs. Or perhaps the paradigm shift in delivering in an old drug in new way. |
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Post by kc on Jan 4, 2019 21:13:15 GMT -5
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Post by kc on Jan 4, 2019 21:06:42 GMT -5
Mike said the Undisclosed molecule was consumer driven and is on hush due to competitive reasons. Sorry for being so crude but that might be better than sex if the consumer driven molecule gives some of us a stiffy.........  are there any board members who will volunteer for the stiffy trials? |
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Post by kc on Jan 4, 2019 15:59:30 GMT -5
Mike's Answer to MK....
Michael Castagna
Thank you, Michael and I appreciate the plethora of questions. I'll try to go through four key ones that I wrote down. The first one is on compensation. I would just say the board and the comp committee meet annually. They benchmark the compensation of all the top officers in the company through an independent third-party and every year that's looked at and will continue to be looked at as we go forward. I don't have much else to say other than that that is handled by the board in an independent way and benchmarked against peer -- peer type companies, and they look at everything that you see that we operate in.
On the second question on dilution, I just want to highlight when we had asked for additional shares previously, it was really get us to the next two, three years, and we weren't sure exactly at that time how much debt we’ll be taken on, how much equity we’d be raising. How we would fix the debt. If you remember the company had almost 200 – over $250 of debt two years ago, a little over two year ago, and now today we sit here with about $105 million. So lowest amount of debt in the last 12 years, that really takes out companies and shareholders unfortunately. And we've been able to navigate a very tight window with some pretty tough restrictions on our cap structure in our company. People don't remember we had anti-dilutive warrants. We had no shares to restructure the balance sheet last year. We were pretty much at a dead end and we were able to navigate through a very tight window and really get through that process.
And so in that when I think about where we are today we structured this deal in a way that would -- we weren't sure where that 230 [ph] warrant would come in April. Would our stock price hit there or not? And we don't want to be -- this goes back to your timing, we don’t want to be dependent on that offering. And we also did not want be dependent on it, right? So you could have waited till March and you could have saw how the stock was trading, but you know if you wanted to fund the pipeline, if you want to fund a major TV campaign, at the time to do that is in Q1 not in Q2 the most TV America watches as in Q1 all the new shows launch in Q1. And you want to keep DTC going and have we waited three months. We just would've lost three more months of window opportunity to drive expansion of Afrezza. And that's really when I talk to investors and I talk to retail people, they want to say, why Afrezza not growing faster. When I say 99% of people who aren't influent, don't even know this product exist. That’s the shame, right? It's a shame on our part. It's a shame on the doctors. It's a shame on the third parties out there that this should at least be an option.
When I talk to JDRF, what are they looking forth, a drug that have less weight gain, less hypo, better time and range. We proved all three of those points in our studies and yet you don't see that being offered consistently to patients. And so we feel it's time that our consumer efforts really spike up. And we spent a good year working through those channels to see which consumer effort will work better than another. And now we take a step back. If the shares expire in April, we'll get back 40 million shares in the last offering in April this year – last year I'm sorry. And by December I do expect our stock price to be above a $1.60 and then that could bring another $40 million which would solve any potential funding issues in 2020. And if it doesn't, worst case scenario we got back now 30, 40 million shares back in our office and we still another 20 some million backing our debt. So there's always ways to restructure debt to get those shares back. So I think from an overall share count we won't be in the position we were in. But we've been able to manage dilution in a way that cleaned up the balance sheet, provide a cash, we now seven compounds to be going down the pipeline and Afrezza is growing and continue to grow for the next 10 plus years. So see nothing slowing that down. So hope it explain a little bit about the dilution. On discount it was in -- the stock was trading at $70 and in a very volatile market. I mean, we were up down, up down and so being able to price that offering at about 8.5% discount for about 15% dilution with a very fair price that we thought balanced shareholder value and making sure we funded 2019.
But the reason and few may not appreciate it, but when we laid out our 2018 plan we expect to finish up the recap by February March timeframe. We scaled the territory to 100 territories. We held these plans. And then we didn't finish up the financial restructuring for lots of reasons until September when we did the United deal. And so then I got beat up on guidance. We got beat up on script growth and vacancies and how many territories are posted, but we couldn't we still think. We manage the budgets very tightly throughout 2018 to get through the year and that wasn't a really fun process to be in.
So this year now we're funded. We've got our plans. We're executing our plan. The team is fully aligned and I feel like we're in the best position between talent, product, positioning and new marketing campaign that’s launching next week, very excited about all that coming together at once. And then I want to add something I didn't talk much about and that's really around expenses. So we'll work with Amphastar, our partner to make sure our influent purchase commitment is consistent with our demand, so that will create some value for us this year to continue to invest in commercial growth. And we also we talked about RLS as one of the seven pipeline compounds because they just raised $30 million. But we didn't talk about as we look out over 2020 and 2021 and 2022 what starts to happen is the pipeline royalties will kick in, the milestone will kick in between India, Brazil, RLS, United Therapeutics, all these new revenue streams will start to pay off over the next 36 months when we look at the future.
And that that will ultimately require less capital raises, require less capital needs and we don't know how many additional pipeline assets we'll be able to fund over the next 18 months or deal that we'll be able to close that will bring in additional cash. So we look at that the -- we now have 18 months in front of us to run the company, to make prudent choices. And we think everything we’re doing will result in additional opportunities and who knows if there'll be another capital raise or not. I mean I can't presuppose what could happen, but I would say at least we're now in control of our destiny. We have no major debts due, and we now can choose to pay things off if we need to, and we can run the company where we have to.
So, I feel very good about the overall process and I feel very good about our future and our employees are very excited about where things are going. So hope you understand some of that. I know it’s not everything you want to hear, but I also want to be transparent and direct with where we think the things are going and the future of the company. So we're excited. We think the market is very volatile this year and we're just glad we don't have to be in the capital markets, it was a significant distraction on my end. I probably spent over 20 red eyes going to New York in the last year. So I don't have to spend time doing that. I do a lot of non-deal roadshows. I'll continue to invest my time with shareholders and listening to them. But most importantly what's important consistent what I hear is show me double digit Afrezza growth consistently quarter over quarter. And that's our main focus on our on our revenue driver. And the second one is can you get more deals done with the pipeline and we're moving those products forward to bring transparency to them as we go forward in 2019.
So I want to thank everybody for their time their patience and the questions. We are very excited we'll have earnings call probably late February and I'll look forward to sharing Q4 in 2018 results with you and any updates we have at that time. Thank you again
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Post by kc on Jan 4, 2019 15:53:31 GMT -5
Transcript from call this Morning.
Michael Castagna
Thank you, Rose, and good morning everybody, and thank you for joining me for a quick investor update. We’re going to be very busy hosting investor and business development meetings around the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference next week in San Francisco. And because we are presenting, we thought it was prudent to update investors on our 2019 strategic imparitives.
The three things I want you to walk away from today’s call is number one; the company is in a solid financial position with enough capital to get up to mid 2020 which will enable us to weather the market turmoil we started to see in December and expect to continue in 2019.
Number two, we will -- have a robust pipeline with seven Technosphere based molecules moving forward that I will share in greater detail. And number three; we are increasing our Afrezza’s position and consumer focus to drive Afrezza uptake in 2019.
Let me start first with financial. The capital raise was important to get done by year-end because we wanted to be able to execute our fully funded 2019 strategic plan. The next likely window that we haven’t yet opened would be March close to our Q4 earnings call which won’t allow us time to adequately fund and execute our plan with confidence given the market volatility we are seeing.
This capital raise was sourced from a strategic investor, existing institutional shareholders and new long term equity shareholders and we’ve had -- and we’ve met with and have been doing -- and will be doing our due diligence over the last 12 months. These investors were interested in making sure we’re able to invest in our 2019 growth plan and carry us in the mid 2020 or longer depending what happens with the outstanding warrants, a further sales trend as well as any potential business development transactions.
Additionally, we were able to work with and establish several new investment bank relationships that we believe will be important as we continued our transformation. We closed 2018 with the lowest amount of debt in over 12 years, and we started the year with approximately $70 million in cash from our balance sheet, the most in three years.
Additionally, we expect $37.5 million in milestones from treprostinil in the next 18 months in addition to further sales continuing to grow as December closed on our highest TRx and dollar sales numbers ever.
We are extremely excited about 2019 and beyond as we continue to see annual sales revenue and unit growth in an industry that is struggling for any growth. We now have the resources to balance the short and long term growth of the company as our capital allocation decisions we make today will go beyond 2019 just like the key decisions we made in late Q4, 2017 to fund the STAT trial, pilot TV and fund our Tret T through Phase 1, help bring us to a very strong close in Q4 of 2018. This resulted in the United Therapeutics deal of $105 million. Our STAT study helping change the recent ADA standards of care, and we now have the resources to move our product through the pipeline and today we are announcing the launch of a major TV campaign using our award winning commercial.
Second, let me talk about our Technosphere pipeline. At the start of the year, we have three products currently tied up through partnerships with the United Therapeutics for PAH and receptor life sciences in the cannabinoid space.
We are moving our own compounds forward throughout 2019. Tret T and recent and further STAT study results have validated our belief that Technosphere technology is a highly differentiated, innovative and unique delivery platform. We anticipate moving the following types of molecules forward.
Number one, a triptan for acute migraine, number two, a 5HT3 inhibitor for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. Number three, inhaled tobramycin for cystic fibrosis, and the fourth one is an undisclosed compound targeting a large consumer driven market that we are keeping confidential for competitive reasons.
These four molecules are within our current capital allocation for 2019. Our clinical development team is working hard to bring these molecules forward and the opportunity presents itself through partnerships to bring more things forward such as epinephrine that we believe serve an unmet need, but don't meet our screening criteria as I’ve previously talked about. Our website will be updated shortly to reflect these new additions.
Now let me shed some more detail on Afrezza. We believe mealtime is one of the last crusade in the optimal care for diabetes. And based on our recent data presentations and publications, we are confident Afrezza is the best solution for people requiring mealtime control. The continuing glucose monitoring market doubled in size in 2018 and now almost 600,000 people consider a current injectable insulin takes two hours to start to bring down their sugars.
The updated ADA standards of care in December highlighted some of the unique aspects of Afrezza around dosing leading to improved control, and stated we may reduce the rates of hypoglycemia, which has been the Achilles heel of insulin for 100 years. This is why we believe now is the time to invest and raise awareness of Afrezza as our market research and customer meetings confirm the combination of a more focused footprint, new clinical data, increased consumer awareness, ADA guidelines update and continued growth in the continuous glucose monitoring space to drive our success in 2019 and beyond.
We did some due diligence last year, and asked our customers why are we growing faster? And we hear three things. I want to see my sales rep more. Consumers aren't asking for it, and the repair coverage less access. So let me talk to you about these three things and what we’re doing to address them.
To ensure that we deliver on customers seeing the reps more, we exited 14 states at the end of 2018 which unfortunately resulted in a reduction in some of our MannKind employees who worked hard to help people living with diabetes.
Our commercial strategy in 2019 will focus on 30 states that drive over half of the rapid-acting insulin market. This will enable us to shrink the size of existing territories as well as add approximately 15 new cell territories in areas where we are growing. We anticipate positive payer coverage and or/are generally seeing faster uptake of Afrezza. This will provide more face time with the customers and increase top of -- mind awareness that currently drive over 90% of Afrezza sales.
Number two; we are taking a more aggressive approach at increasing
Number two; we are taking a more aggressive approach at increasing consumer awareness. By launching a direct-to-consumer TV campaign, we looked at sales recent product launches with smaller sales footprints with an aggressive DTC approach to benchmark our 2019 strategy. After testing several consumer TV pilots to see what worked best, we feel it's the right time to accelerate our efforts in this area.
We've elevated our strategic communications capabilities for Afrezza by partnering with WPP’s Premier Media health team. CMI Media is the largest healthcare media agency in the U.S. and works with over 50 pharma companies it won't be the lead strategic agency handling our media planning.
Their sister agency group and the world's largest advertising media company in terms of billings will lead media buying. A major television campaign is to launch on January 14th from 26 national cable networks as well as on local TV stations that align to our growing, but targeting salesforce strategy.
The third topic here I want address is payers/patient access. We are continuing to see positive payer coverage as we start out 2019 as evidenced by our recent signing of the contract with Kaiser [ph] and ongoing discussions with other key payers. We currently have 50% of commercial lives with no prior authorization and approximately nine out of 10 commercial lives, commercially insured patients have coverage with Afrezza with or without prior authorization according to fingertip formulary.
You will see and hear about a series of new programs aimed at making sure people who acquired mealtime insulin have access to Afrezza. Next week we are launching a two-in-one card that will enable commercial patients to fill their prescription in the retail pharmacy for as low as $15 despite any payer/competitor driven obstacles that often delay important dreamy [ph] choices as we believe patients should have open access for all unique products and diabetes. As opposed to restricting patient prescriber choice, which ultimately protect monopolies and drive up costs to the healthcare system?
Additionally, we read about the horrible stories of consumers rationing insulin and we could see there are thousands of prescriptions a month where people were paying a significant amount of cash for their injectable rapid acting insulin.
We’d be launching a direct purchase option for Afrezza that eliminates all the middlemen, so we can pass along the savings directly for these patients who are paying cash for the rapid acting injectable insulin, as we want to be part of the solution for the future of healthcare and healthy living.
Two final topics I didn’t address, that are now on top of my mind based on the questions I’ve been receiving are international expansion in pediatrics. We have been working diligently with our partner in Brazil and regulatory authorities to secure our first approval outside the U.S. and hope to have an update for you on this surely as the holidays slowed down our review unfortunately. We need to finish our part one of our pediatric program to file what is known as a PIP in the EU before we can engage in a meaningful filing application for Europe.
We anticipate filing in Canada in the first half of 2019 and meeting with the European regulatory authorities to start a [indiscernible] over there as these are the two most common places where we get requests for Afrezza from our international inquiries.
We know it takes time to gain regulatory approval in these markets and we’ll make appropriate call to look for one go-to-partner ex-U.S. or continue to find key partners in each market like we did with Brazil and India.
We anticipate our pediatric program to be Phase III ready by the end of 2019. We also expect a few additional readouts this year from our One Drop study as well as our investigator trial type 2 patients with Dr. Phil Levine in Baltimore.
We’re excited to see the interim analysis presented at the upcoming scientific conferences in 2019. We thought being able to raise $80 million at an average price of $1.55 when you include the warrants, decreases our dependency on the capital markets. This funds our efforts to continue to grow revenue, manage our expenses and bring on more institutional retail investors.
Additionally, this enables us to focus all of our energy on driving Afrezza growth, moving pipeline products forward as well as other BD opportunities as we continue to shape our culture by retaining our current talent and recruiting the best talent we can find.
In closing, we expect this capital raise will fund MannKind through mid 2020 and we feel confident that raising equity was the best solution for shareholders given the recent debt deals resulted in several companies filing for bankruptcy. And the volatility we see in the equity markets ahead will make it very difficult for companies to obtain funding throughout 2019 as there will be significant needs for capital and not enough capital to fund everyone.
I appreciate your patience and look forward to sharing our Q4 and 2018 performance with you in late February. I’ll now stop and take any questions.
Question-and-Answer Session
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Post by kc on Jan 4, 2019 14:13:13 GMT -5
Mike was not talking buyouts but making comments about deals that are in play or might happen. But that is like throwing chum in the water.
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Post by kc on Jan 4, 2019 13:44:39 GMT -5
More from the San Fran Business Times
Get a room: How to work around biotech's big conference space crunch
www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/01/04/jpm18-meeting-space-biocom-biotech-showcase.html
By Ron Leuty
– Reporter, San Francisco Business Times
Jan 4, 2018, 5:36pm EST
Only in San Francisco — and only during the week of the biotech industry's biggest conference — can simply sitting down cost so much.
Welcome to the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, where companies in a cash-flush industry are easy pickings as they try to complete critical connections from Sunday into Thursday with partners, venture capitalists or investment bankers.
The biotech industry, however, is getting savvier about finding space for one-on-one meetings between many of the roughly 20,000 people swarming to Union Square for the 36th annual conference and other events. But nailing down space depends on who you know — and even then, those friends must plan far ahead.
The California biotech industry trade group Biocom, for example, has converted a room at the Hotel Rex, about two blocks away from the Westin St. Francis, the host of the J.P. Morgan conference, that it is offering free to members in 30-minute increments for up to an hour a day.
"You used to be able to wait until October or November (to get a room), but now I have to reserve literally when I check out (the previous year)," said Biocom President and CEO Joe Panetta.
This is the second year Biocom has offered the space, which is fully booked from 8 a.m. Monday through 6 p.m. Wednesday.
"There's a premium on space. It's expensive," Panetta said.
Others are trying to find similar ways around the JPM space crunch.
Investment advisor TPP Healthcare, investment bank B. Riley FBR Inc. and financial communications firm Citigate Dewe Rogerson for this time this year reserved a conference room at the Parc 55 hotel that is available to their clients for free. It will have nearly 50 stations for one-on-one meetings.
"One of the biggest challenges during J.P. Morgan Healthcare week is securing meeting space for one-on-one meetings with investors and strategic partners," Vivian Chen, managing director at Citigate Dewe Rogerson, said in an email.
The space doesn't come cheap: Rooms during this year's 36th annual conference are going for about $1,000 a night. Smaller companies only a few years ago could book a room within walking distance of the conference for $300.
Those increased costs are consistent with a JPM premium charged since the biotech industry emerged from the Great Recession with science that has attracted billions of dollars in venture capital that have fed initial public offerings. Health care venture capital firms, for example, raised a record $9.1 billion last year, according to Silicon Valley Bank, a 26 percent increase from 2016.
Last year, the JW Marriott, a block away from the Westin St. Francis, charged $80 per hour — not including a 25 percent surcharge on all alcoholic beverages — for a table in its lobby lounge. Dining room tables at the hotel cost $60 with a per-person food and beverage minimum per hour up to two hours.
While some companies are able to plunk down the thousands of dollars it costs to convert a hotel room into a four-day meeting spot for executives, those prices add up for tight-pocketed small and midsize companies. While those ventures have raised tens of millions of dollars, research costs can siphon cash quickly.
As a result, many companies will continue to fight for a seat or two for meet-ups at restaurants, coffee shops and hotel lobbies in and around Union Square.
"We'll be going restaurant to restaurant, hotel lobby to hotel lobby," said Lisa Alderson, CEO of genetic testing and counseling startup Genome Medical Inc. "We looked into renting a conference room at a B-rate hotel a few blocks away, but it was $2,500 a day."
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