October 2024

We are excited to announce that Nafise Masoumi, Ph.D. has joined the RiverVest team as a senior associate based in the San Diego office. Nafise will focus on deal sourcing, due diligence, and analysis of prospective investments and provide operational support for RiverVest’s portfolio companies.

Nafise brings extensive medtech and biopharma experience both in academia and the investment industry, most recently at Novo Holdings Venture Investments, where she engaged in discovery and due diligence for early- and late-stage biotech companies. Prior to Novo, Nafise worked at Takeda and Boston Consulting Group. Earlier in her career, Nafise completed fellowships at Flagship Pioneering and the Wyss Institute at Harvard.

Nafise earned a Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering at the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences & Technology (HST) and Penn State. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in Robert Langer’s Lab at MIT and at the Department of Cardiac Surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Nafise holds MSc and BSc degrees in Chemical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Iran and was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME) at Oxford University, where she analyzed energy metabolism in the brain. Nafise has co-authored 21 peer-reviewed journal publications.

Please join us in welcoming Nafise to the RiverVest team. We look forward to her contributions as RiverVest continues to grow and advance promising technologies in the biopharmaceutical and medical device sectors.

Huddling at the Home Office

Since the founding of RiverVest in 2000, our management team has been intentional in the growth of our firm, cultivating a strong, cohesive team and maintaining a firm culture where each member is expected to be transparent, strategic, dependable, results-driven, collaborative, and grounded in purpose.

Battling for Bragging Rights: River Raiders vs. Blue Chips

While in town for our third-quarter portfolio reviews, the RiverVest team (along with their significant others) had some weekend fun, playing mock game shows and enjoying dinner together. We are proud of the RiverVest team and the culture that we have fostered, and we are more excited than ever about the firm's future.

An Experienced Management Team Helps To Mitigate Portfolio Risk



RiverVest Co-Founder and Managing Director Tom Melzer ranks a portfolio company’s management team as one of the top five risks in life sciences venture capital investing. Accordingly, working with experienced management teams who have previously led a startup company to an exit is highly desirable. From the outset, the sense of urgency across the team must be high in order to achieve particular milestones in specific timeframes and on a limited amount of capital.

As a company evolves, so too does the optimal type of management. In the early stages, when the focus is usually on developing the technology, the CEO will likely have a scientific or medical background. As the company advances, the focus shifts toward commercial expertise. At all times, the ability to build and retain a strong team is an essential quality of a CEO.

Sometimes, the founding CEO can lead a company all the way to an exit; often however, a change is needed. While venture-backed company boards might recognize that new leadership would be in the best interest of the company, they typically are not quick to act. Someone on the board, often the RiverVest representative in our experience, must build a consensus for making a change, communicating with the current CEO, and initiating a search process. Ideally, the momentum of the company can be maintained with minimal disruption.

RiverVest portfolio company Avalyn Pharma reached such a leadership inflection point in 2022, following the successful completion of a Phase 1b clinical study of its lead product. It was time to bring in an experienced leader to drive the portfolio forward, and Avalyn’s board of directors, chaired by RiverVest Managing Director Niall O’Donnell, recruited one of the best.

Lyn Baranowski stood out not only for her experience across big pharma and venture capital, especially in the respiratory therapeutics space, but also for her intellectual curiosity, genuine enthusiasm, and passion for building great teams.

Since joining Avalyn as CEO in October 2022, Lyn has led the company through an oversubscribed $175 million Series C financing, expanded its executive team, and advanced two programs into their next phases of clinical trials.

We invite you to learn more about Lyn and her passion for building great teams and great companies by reading our latest Expert Insight: Meet the Leader: Lyn Baranowski. 

For this Expert Insight, RiverVest spoke with Avalyn CEO Lyn Baranowski about who she is, what brought her to Avalyn, and what fuels her passion for building great companies.

During our interview, Lyn lauded the team she’s built at Avalyn. In her words:

“I think great teams can take a good portfolio and make it amazing. And that’s the kind of team we have at Avalyn. Patients are at the center of our work, and we are all trying to make a difference for them. That’s genuine for us.”

“When I say I’m proud of the team we’ve built, that includes our board of directors, who provide so much support. Niall (O’Donnell, RiverVest managing director and Avalyn board chair) is the most effective chairman I’ve ever worked with. He makes himself available whenever I need him as a sounding board and thought partner.”

👉 Be sure to watch the five SHORT video clips embedded in the article to hear directly from Lyn. For example, here she is talking about the value of having a trusted board chair as a thought partner.

“I think the best investors are those who have operational experience, and Niall has a ton of it. He’s someone I can always count on to ask me tough questions – good questions, the right questions – which makes me better at my job. He always has ideas. I value the relationship we’ve built over time. I feel that the company would not be where it is without Niall.” - Lyn Baranowski



Avalyn is currently evaluating its lead program – an investigational drug device combination of a pirfenidone solution for inhalation (AP01) in a Phase 2b (MIST) study in people with progressive pulmonary fibrosis (PPF).

In August 2024, the company initiated a Phase 1b trial of its second program – a novel inhaled nintedanib solution (AP02).

Avalyn’s focus for the next few years is to move these programs forward, hopefully generating the data the company needs to continue advancing these potentially life-saving medicines and getting them to patients with rare respiratory diseases who desperately need them.

To stay current on portfolio company news and announcements, be sure to visit the RiverVest website and follow us on LinkedIn.

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RiverVest Venture Partners is a leading life science venture capital firm focused on improving the lives of patients, supporting entrepreneurs, and earning the trust of investors through science, strategy, and innovation.