Monthly Archives: June 2010

I’m just a person trapped inside a woman’s body. -Elaine Boosler

Posted on June 29, 2010 by

So yesterday I decided to send a quick email out to all the women VCs I know (probably about 40) to ask them to send me input for my blog, specifically ongoing reports of great accomplishments by their female VC brethren.  I got a lot of nice notes saying they will keep it in mind, but only one note with an actual “input”, which was from Heidi Huntsman, now of Portola Street Advisors and previously of Utah Ventures.  Heidi’s note to me said, in a nutshell, that the blog is going to be hard to fill with stories since the only story that came to her immediately was that 8 different women she knew had left the VC world in the last year.  Thanks Heidi.  Not.

We all know about how the field of venture capital is contracting generally (estimates are 15%-30% declines), but I hadn’t really stopped to think about how this is likely to disproportionately impact female partners, since so often they are at newer, less established firms, which are unfortunately the ones closer to the abyss.  For those older, more established firms that decide to downsize, the … (read the rest)

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Life, Do You Hear Me?!!

Posted on June 27, 2010 by
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b4bGAoVR7g”

In May 2010, Craig Venter and his team at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), a not-for-profit genomic research organization, announced that they had successfully constructed the first self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cell.    To grossly oversimplify it, what they did was take a series of computer-generated DNA sequences, stitch them together into a genome (the genetic instruction set to create life) and stick the genome inside an essentially empty cell.   I’ll be damned if the thing didn’t start reproducing and creating a new “living organism” that was derived from the genomic “instruction set” that had been implanted.

The result, according to Venter, is, “… the first self-replicating cell on the planet to have a computer for a parent.”

I can see it now:  MacBooks everywhere are preparing themselves to ring out with a hearty chorus of, “no you can’t borrow the car” and “clean your damn room.”

This story has amazing implications scientifically, ethically, and in every other adverbial sense.  If we can design genomes to create new life forms, we can, theoretically, develop organisms that will cure disease, solve the energy crisis and establish a whole new next generation of … (read the rest)

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Girls Rule: Karen Talmadge

Posted on June 26, 2010 by

Saw today that my colleague, Karen Talmadge, has been given the Charles H. Best Medal for Distinguished Service in the Cause of Diabetes.

I am really happy for her.  Karen is a first-class professional and brilliant and I have the honor of working with her as a fellow Board Member of Veralight, a non-invasive diabetes screening company in which we are also fellow investors.  She was the founder of Kyphon, which is a major success story in the medical device world.

I love working with Karen because she is no-nonsense, smart and experienced, and has a great sense of humor.  Congrats to Karen on the well-deserved recognition.

… (read the rest)

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So it turns out "blog" is a verb….

Posted on June 25, 2010 by

The final straw was Jeff Bussgang’s article in PE Hub today encouraging more healthcare/life sciences VCs to blog (see link below).

More VC Bloggers Needed (Seriously)

I’ve been thinking about this whole blogging thing but desperately trying to stay out of the way of the Facebook/Blog/Twitter information superhighway in an effort to remain firmly aligned with the ghost of Internet past.  I know, I know, it’s lame.  But this whole digital thing kind of gives me a rash.  If everyone wanted to hear what I had to say, they would ask me, right?  Twitter?  Seriously.  I don’t even care what I’m thinking minute to minute.

But it was kind of a harmonic convergence thing.  First I saw the Bussgang post, then I clicked through to this: Global Venture Blog VC Directory Ranked by Monthly Uniques which is a list of purportedly all of the VC-authored blogs out there in the universe today.  I’m sure it is not a complete list, but it does include 137 VC blogs and, of those, only 3 (!) are authored by women.  For you math fans, that’s less than 2%, which is roughly equal to … (read the rest)

Posted in Random Thoughts of the Day | Tagged , , | 1 Comment