Follow Venture Valkyrie
About Lisa Suennen
Yes, it’s me
Most Popular Posts
- Government as an Engine for Innovation
- The Machine That Goes Ping!
- Smoke on the Water: Fireworks in Cleveland
- Hey, Where Is Everybody Going?
- mHealth: Hallelujah or Bah Humbug?
- Age is a High Price to Pay for Maturity
- Where The Boys Are…And Not The Girls: Tales from the 2012 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference
- Safe Travels?
- Sugar, Sugar
- Disney’s Habit Heroes: Evil or Evil Genius?
- SXSW: Woodstock for Geeks
- TMI, Dude!
- 96 Ways To Say “Bite Me”
- Man! I Feel Like a Woman!
-
Recent Posts
- Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
- What’s Done Cannot Be Undone
- Avengers Assemble! Prepare to Defend Your Healthcare Coverage
- War is Hell
- Breaking Research: Beer Makes Men Smarter, Women Make Men Stupider, World Achieves Equilibrium
- A Woman’s Work
- Friday Medical Comedy Relief: Crystal Clear
- Driving My Life Away, Looking for a Better Way…to Engage Consumers
- Choosing Elephantoplasty Wisely
- Give ‘Em That Old Razzle Dazzle
Categories
- Biotech and Genetics
- Consumer Engagement
- Diagnostics and Screening
- General Business Issues
- Girls Rule!
- Health and Wellness
- Healthcare
- Healthcare Information Technology
- Healthcare Policy
- Healthcare private equity
- Healthcare Reform
- Healthcare Venture Capital
- Healthy Eating
- Innovation
- Medical Devices
- Patient Safety
- Pharmaceuticals
- Preventive Health
- Private Equity
- Random Thoughts of the Day
- Real Science
- Uncategorized
- Venture Capital
- Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity
Archives
- May 2012 (3)
- April 2012 (8)
- March 2012 (9)
- February 2012 (6)
- January 2012 (7)
- December 2011 (8)
- November 2011 (8)
- October 2011 (9)
- September 2011 (8)
- August 2011 (7)
- July 2011 (12)
- June 2011 (7)
- May 2011 (7)
- April 2011 (6)
- March 2011 (8)
- February 2011 (7)
- January 2011 (10)
- December 2010 (9)
- November 2010 (9)
- October 2010 (10)
- September 2010 (13)
- August 2010 (12)
- July 2010 (10)
- June 2010 (4)
Monthly Archives: September 2010
We’re Women; We Have Double Standards to Live Up To –Ally McBeal
As I have written elsewhere, about 8% of all venture capital investment goes to companies led by women and fewer than 15% of all venture capitalists are of the female persuasion, despite women comprising approximately 37.5% of all MBA students (not the only route to venture capital and/or the CEO’s chair, but at least a partial correlate). As of one year ago, only 25 of the Fortune 1000 companies had a woman CEO, yet women make up about 50% of America’s labor force. Women also held only 11% of Fortune 1000 company Board of Director seats in 2009; 25% of Fortune 1000 companies have no women board members.
So the point is: women have some real challenges in reaching parity with their male counterparts in the executive suite. Yeah, yeah, heard it all before.
But a friend of mine who knows I am interested in such things sent me a New York Times article that pointed out yet another example of the lack of parity that women can experience, and this one is, shall we say, even more personal. The article, linked here, discusses how a … (read the rest)
Waiting for Elephants
A few weeks ago, right before the first California Senatorial Debate between Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina, I received a call from a local TV station asking me if I would be willing to be on standby to give an on-air quote about whatever the candidates said about healthcare and health reform. The producer’s theory was that since healthcare was one of the most vociferously debated topics at the federal level, surely this topic would be featured prominently in the debate. “Sure,” I said, and studiously watched the debate and sat by the phone like a 16-year-old waiting for a date to the prom.
Well guess what? That call never came. My 15 minutes of fame? Denied! I can hear my Father now, “If you sit by the phone, it isn’t going to ring. You have to play hard-to-get.”
Why did the call launching my TV career fail to arrive? Stunningly, not one single word about healthcare was uttered during the Senatorial debate. Not one. Hard to believe given that healthcare is allegedly one of the most critical issues our nation faces, consuming an ever-increasing portion of our gross domestic … (read the rest)
Would Corn By Any Other Name Taste As Sweet?
It’s an interesting time in the public discourse around healthy eating. While the First Lady has made healthy eating her personal policy issue, those that make and sell food to the American public have been all over the map on how they will deal with the pressure to change America’s major export from fat people to healthy people.
It’s not an easy transition. Some food manufacturers have just said, “screw it” and gone rogue with products like the Baconator, trusting that the American public just can’t help themselves and will eat junk food no matter what. Other food manufacturers have embraced the opportunity, removing trans fats from their products and touting the benefits of whole grain and flax seed oil. Toddler parents everywhere can seek solace in the fact that the fistful of goldfish crackers that lives on the floor of their car can claim both of these attributes.
And then there are the fringe-dwellers….those that use language to appear healthy while not actually doing anything to make their product more wholesome. These are those same marketing cynics that brought us cold raw dead fish dressed up as “sushi”.… (read the rest)
Posted in Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthcare Reform, Healthcare Venture Capital, Healthy Eating, Venture Capital
Tagged baconator, corn subsidy, corn sugar, food manufacturer, healthcare, healthcare reform, healthy eating, high fructose corn syrup, nutrition, psilos, trans fats, venture capital
Leave a comment
Tell Me A Story Redux: TGIF!
The other day I wrote a post about how to pitch effectively to venture capitalists. Subsequently I came across this example of Ali G pitching a deal to many very notable such people (EarlyBird Capital, Starvest Partners, Gaspedal Ventures, even Donald Trump) and it was so funny I thought I’d share it with you for a weekend laugh. Best part is the market sizing exercise: company will be worth…wait for it…34.6 million billion dollars!
Posted in Random Thoughts of the Day, Uncategorized, Venture Capital
Tagged business plan, donald trump, venture capital
2 Comments
When Worlds Collide: Healthcare Hijacks People Magazine
Everyone has their guilty pleasure. Mine is People Magazine. I love it. I look forward to it every week. At our house we fight over who gets to read it first. I know that I should spend my limited reading time perusing something more weighty that advances my career-related knowledge, like the New England Journal of Medicine or Health Affairs. But given the choice, I pick People every time. I mean seriously, how can I function if I don’t know who is dating Jessica Simpson or which child star is in jail for shoplifting? Sean Penn punched a photographer? Ooh, tell me more!
So imagine my surprise when I picked up last week’s People magazine and my two worlds collided. Rather than the fluff I look forward to (Britney not caring for her kids? No!), two of the three cover stories were focused on celebrities facing cancer. Healthcare: you can’t escape it.
Michael Douglas has it pretty bad, suffering from a tumor at the base of his tongue. He is undergoing chemo and radiation. People do survive this, but it’s a long haul. One of the things he says in … (read the rest)
The Universe is Made of Stories, Not Atoms
I spend much of my life listening to other people talk. I know what some of you are thinking: those people in your head are not real; consider a stronger medication.
But seriously, a large part of my job is to host a parade of entrepreneurs through my office as they pitch me on their business plans. When I am not doing that, a portion of the remaining time available to me is spent sitting in Board Meetings hearing those entrepreneurs my firm has backed tell me what is going on in their businesses. The rest of my waking hours are spent listening to my daughter ask me for things that she is not allowed to have, but that is only approximately 72% of my week; the rest it’s all about the entrepreneurs.
When I tell people that our firm invests in fewer than .3% of the companies we hear from in a given year, they are shocked that the number is so low. Sometimes I am shocked that the number is so high. There is a stunning lack of communications skills out there in the free world and this … (read the rest)
Jamais Vu–Who the Heck Are You?
Every once in a while you learn something new from the field you work in that is completely unfamiliar and raises your eyebrows just a little.
Despite 22 years in healthcare, many of which were associated with the field of psychology, I learned of a concept yesterday called “jamais vu”. Maybe you knew this, but I learned that it is a psychological condition where a person looks at or experiences someone or something that should be familiar but which they believe they have never experienced before. Basically, it’s when a person’s current perceptions become disconnected from their long-term memory and that which they should recognize seems new and unknown. We have all experienced this at least once or twice, but who knew it had a name?
The term “jamais vu” itself comes from the French for “never seen.” It is considered the opposite of deja vu, the feeling that something you are seeing for the first time is actually familiar. My favorite use of the term deja vu is in the movie Top Secret, where Val Kilmer is introduced to a character named Deja Vu who turns to him and says, “haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” … (read the rest)
Posted in Uncategorized
1 Comment
Girls Rule! Amy Belt Moves to Covidien
Quick update on a great female VC pal, Amy Belt. Amy left Advanced Technology Ventures and is about to become the face (and body too I suppose) of Covidien Venture Capital on the West Coast. Amy has a great background in the medical device world, having worked at Guidant, Bristol Meyers Squibb and elsewhere. She is also a Cal grad, which makes her extra worthy of course. Congrats to Amy! She will henceforth be reachable at amy.belt@covidien.com.
Social Networking: I knew there was a catch!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgDxWNV4wWY”
Please! it’s all about popular.
it’s not about aptitude,
it’s the way you’re viewed,
so it’s very shrewd to be,
very very popular like ME!
-lyrics from the song “Popular” from the musical Wicked
That song is about how it’s great to be popular, but a study released this week was all about when popularity is a decided disadvantage. Entitled Social Network Sensors for Early Detection of Contagious Outbreaks, researchers Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler of Harvard and UC San Diego demonstrated that individuals near the center of a social network are likely to be infected by contagious epidemics such as the influenza virus sooner during the course of an outbreak, on average, than those at the periphery of the social network. In other words, you may have the most friends, but they are not going to be happy to see you when the flu bug gets you first. A corollary: loneliness has its privileges.
This research was further discussed in 9/15/2010 Reuters article called, “Popularity can come at a price: getting flu first”. In the article, the study’s authors describe something they call the friendship paradox. … (read the rest)
You’re Not Hallucinating–There is a Snake in Your Bed
As a healthcare venture capitalist, I see a lot of, shall we say, interesting ideas for how to treat patients. But today I really hit the jackpot in the “you’ve got to be kidding me” department. Unfortunately I didn’t see this in person, but on-line in a story that ran in the “Bad Ideas” (who knew?) portion of the Time Magazine Internet newsfeed entitled, “New Line of German Stuffed Animals with Mental Issues“. So many things wrong with that sentence I hardly know where to begin. It’s a short article so I am going to include it in its entirety below:
For your gift giving consideration: Dub the severely depressed turtle? German toymaker Paraplush has designed a controversial new line of toys with an assortment of psychiatric disorders. The company advertises stuffed animals who suffer from a range of mental illnesses (bipolar disorder, depression, multiple personality disorder) and even come packaged with a personalized medical history and treatment plan. ”‘Patients’ from the Paraplush toy company include Dub the turtle with severe depression, Sly the snake who suffers from terrifying hallucinations, Dolly the sheep with a multiple personality disorder and a … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Venture Capital, Medical Devices, Random Thoughts of the Day, Venture Capital
Tagged alternative medicine, brian williams, healthcare, healthcare services, healthcare venture capital, kimochi, medical technology, paraplush, psilos, stuffed animal, teddy bear, venture capital
Leave a comment