From $7 to $43 million: 6 years using Ideals

Overview

Established as an R&D company in 1996, Aerolase is a worldwide technology leader for laser skin health. The company provides integrated solutions to most of the commonly seen aesthetic and medical dermatological conditions.

After more than two decades of R&D, product development, and early commercial success, in 2017, Aerolase set out to expand its global reach.

Recognizing the critical importance of safeguarding sensitive financial and commercial data to support their fundraising effort to raise capital, they started for the first time to evaluate data room options.

They found in Ideals the right solution to ensure data confidentiality, streamline the information-sharing process with investors, and save time and money.

As Gary Giblen, Director of Corporate Development at Aerolase, noted: “Once we completed the initial setup and uploaded documents, we estimated saving approximately $3,000 per month in man-hours compared to not having access to the VDR.”

The context

Inspired by the mission to “Improve Skin Concerns in a Whole New Way”, Aerolase is supported by skin health MD’s and professionals in 60 countries, including key opinion leaders in laser dermatology. 

The recent collaboration with Cardiovascular Systems Inc, entailed investment in Aerolase stock exceeding $5 million. 

Accolades include seven years of the “Top Laser” annual award by the membership of the Aesthetics International Association; a perfect score of 100 in the ratings of RealSelf, the leading patient forum; and Cosmopolitan Magazine’s “Best Facial Laser” and “Best Acne Laser” awards.

Key challenges

Before Ideals, Aerolase had never used a virtual data room. As they were preparing to begin a larger-scale fundraise for professional institutional investors, some of the company’s financial advisors suggested the necessity of a VDR for efficient and secure dissemination of corporate information.

Aerolase has long been a privately held company, so privacy and security were and remain a top priority to the founder and CEO.

After evaluating several VDR providers, Ideals proved to be the clear best in terms of user-friendly, intuitive, and thoroughly supported operation, which was key for them as neophytes in VDR land and as financial management executives untutored in IT. 

Solution

Ideals’ instantaneous 24/7 customer support was helpful a few times, particularly in structuring the uploading of the corporate data and documents, which Aerolase’s team often had to do on evenings and at weekends: “No matter how late into the evening we were working on our projects, we had access to support immediately if needed.”

Likewise, the ability and ease of access to different folders and even different individual files in a customized manner per investment firm helped streamline the fundraising process.

With Ideals, the Aerolase team could:

• Access training for the team and their external users
• Allocate different permission levels and monitor document and folder activity
• Sharpen internal security by tailoring access to the degree of commitment of each potential investor and degree of involvement with competitors
• Temporarily disable access and then reinstate it for returning users
• Rely on 24/7 customer care for the duration of the project

As a result of the benefits deriving from the implementation of the VDR, 10 out of the 30 interested institutional investor prospects Aerolase was balancing entered serious discussions.

Gary was convinced that Ideals’ intuitive interface shortened the learning curve, so “our users required little to no guidance, which allowed us to focus on the fundraise rather than training them.”

The future 

Relying on Ideals was a game changer for Aerolase: the use of Ideals’ VDR was key in catapulting Aerolase from the approximately $7M revenue/breakeven operating income level in 2018 to $43M/$13M today, with very visible hyper-growth momentum going forward. 

Beyond the numbers, the implementation of such a reliable VDR has improved the reputation of Aerolase throughout the institutional investor and lender ecosystem: “Thanks to the VDR being intuitive and user-friendly, we were able to increase investor dialogue, and the level of investor discussions was elevated immensely.”