Our Founding Story: A Journey of Entrepreneurship

In 1991, while consulting at Accenture, our founder, Dr. Kingsley R. Chin was struck by Goldman Sachs’ approach to mergers and acquisitions and the insight that building a company could create outsized value—often culminating in mergers or acquisitions. He carried that perspective into Harvard Medical School, where he began exploring how a company focused on solving spine-surgery problems could generate meaningful impact and value. Around that time, orthopedic spine surgeon Dr. Art Steffee built AcroMed, later acquired for $325 million—an example that reinforced Dr. Chin’s conviction. Noting both the innovation and limitations of the Steffee plate, and inspired by the Rogozinski brothers’ hinge system, Dr. Chin set out to merge the best attributes of each. His solution—the X-plate—featured a central hub that allowed adjustments to spinal curvature. In 2000, during the Harvard Combined Orthopedic Residency Program, he filed his first patent. While progressing that work, he examined the Archus Total Facet Arthroplasty System, which informed his second patent for a facet replacement system. By 2002, Medtronic’s Sextant system had entered the market but was limited to single-level use. Seeing another opportunity, Dr. Chin developed the MANTIS percutaneous pedicle screw system to enable multilevel procedures. With multiple patents in hand, he realized he wanted to do more than build devices; he envisioned a private equity platform capable of anticipating technological trends and investing in breakthrough innovations. In 2004, he founded Kingsley Investment Company (KIC), incorporating it in 2005. That same year, he sold the MANTIS system to Stryker, a Fortune 500 company—an early validation of his strategy. Buoyed by this success, he launched SpineFrontier Inc. in 2006 to develop frontier technologies that could shape the future of spine surgery. Backed by a group of like-minded surgeon investors, he established a Strategic Advisory Board with a single mandate: “Innovate—no ‘me too’ products.” That insistence on originality led to systems such as MISquito and FacetFuse, laying the foundation for KIC’s enduring innovation journey.

By 2013, as our surgeon-investors sought measurable returns, we shifted back to an investment-firm mindset. KIC Ventures was formally incorporated as the venture arm of Kingsley Investment Company, focused on opportunities where technology, clinical need, and business model innovation intersect. We first recognized the unmet potential in total disc replacement. While AcroFlex had limitations, we believed advances in materials could solve them. The AxioMed Disc—developed by Cleveland Clinic surgeons in 2001—had not yet been fully appreciated by the market. We saw its promise and acquired AxioMed in 2014 to advance motion-preserving spine solutions. We also anticipated the global constraints of human biologics and the need for synthetic alternatives with long shelf lives. That thesis led us to acquire NanoFuse Biologics in 2018—the only FDA-cleared combination of 45S5 bioglass with DBM—to expand regenerative options in spine care. We observed a gap for interventional pain management (IPM) physicians, who often had tools to manage pain but not to correct underlying pathology. With the rise of physician-owned ASCs, we developed LESS (Less Exposure Spine Surgery) technologies and created NANISX to empower IPM doctors. Launched in 2022, NANISX now anchors our outpatient spine portfolio, growing by over 40% with positive EBITDA. As we look forward, we are preparing new product launches and strengthening our position as leaders in outpatient spine surgery. With assets under management between $1 and $3 billion, more than $300 million in cumulative revenue, and an approximate 400% increase in equity value for early investors, we continue to pair breakthrough technologies with disciplined investing to transform spine care.