Monthly Archives: April 2011

MC VC

Posted on April 26, 2011 by
Hammer Then

I am definitely intrigued by collisions between pop culture and venture capital.  It’s pretty weird to see your profession turned into entertainment, particularly when the average board meeting is about as entertaining as watching paint dry.  Despite that, there have been numerous forays into the field by athletes and entertainers, who apparently have secret market research demonstrating that term sheets are sexy enough to attract a prime time audience.

As one example, there has been a recent parade of reality TV shows where entrepreneurs pitch their deals to panels of venture capitalists and wealthy angel investors.  These shows include American Inventor, Shark Tank, Dragon’s Den (aired in the UK and Canada, among other places) and Money Tigers (aired in Japan), which may well have been the first.  Amazingly, a variant of these shows runs in countries all over the world, including such non-obvious places as Afghanistan (combo pork product/burkah anyone?), Turkey, the Ukraine and Nigeria.  I’m guessing the Nigerian deals arrive by email and involve wire-transferring $10 million dollars to a wealthy ex-royal who promises a hefty profit later.

Of these venture reality shows (as if reality ever enters … (read the rest)

Posted in Private Equity, Venture Capital, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cause of Death: Stubborness

Posted on April 22, 2011 by
Poster Child for Stubborness

This week I had the occasion to be at UCLA for a very interesting meeting (more on that in a future post).  As I arrived at LAX to return my rental car, I drove past a huge billboard at the corner of 96th Avenue and Airport Blvd (just across from the Renaissance Hotel)  that made me do a double take.  The billboard, said in gigantic white letters on a red background:  “This year thousands of men will die from stubbornness.”

Naturally, my first thought was this:  Why thousands? If men can die from stubbornness, aren’t they all doomed?  If stubbornness is the proximate cause of death, we are looking at a wipe-out of society on a pretty imminent basis.  The bad news:  no more future generations.  The good news:  no one will hassle us women about buying too many shoes and all the top-paying private equity jobs will soon be available.

So figuring that I had misread this billboard, I actually made a U-turn and drove past it again (not sure what made me do it:  alarm or wishful thinking). What I noticed on my second pass was the … (read the rest)

Posted in Diagnostics and Screening, Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthcare Venture Capital, Preventive Health, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hair of the Dog

Posted on April 19, 2011 by
Spiritual leader of Delta Tau Chi

In the category of “duh, do they really need to spend money to study the obvious?” an April 2011 study in the Archives of Surgery reports that surgeons who are hung-over from excessive alcohol intake make a significantly higher number of medical errors as compared to those who do not drink to excess the night before.  News flash:  grass is green, the sky is blue, and people who can’t remember where they left their underwear last night but know it was somewhere after last call shouldn’t do surgery.

I hate to point out the part of this study that begs the politically incorrect question, but I got a little laugh out of the fact that it was led by Professors at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland and Queens University in Belfast, Ireland.  I know it is totally inappropriate to say it, but I wonder if they remembered to control for the fact that study participants might be Irish and thus might skew the results?  Okay, I know…it’s wrong.  Sorry, just couldn’t help myself.

In any event, the researchers began by taking eight surgeons and sixteen medical students … (read the rest)

Posted in Health and Wellness, Healthcare Policy, Patient Safety, Random Thoughts of the Day, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Baby Got Back Pain

Posted on April 12, 2011 by
fortune-150x124

Ben Franklin once said that the only things that are certain are death and taxes, but a close runner-up is this:  in your lifetime, you will likely experience at least one incident of serious lower back pain.  In fact, over 80% of Americans have a major lower back pain event during their lifetime and it is the second most common reason to go to the doctor in the U.S.   Stand down, Star Spangled Banner; our new national anthem, sung as you try to get out of bed in the morning, is, “Oy, my back is killing me!”

Considering that back pain is nearly as common as the common cold, and despite the fact that over $85 billion is spent in the U.S. every single year on diagnosing and treating back pain, the state of medicine in this area hasn’t come much further than crossing your fingers and wishing on a star when it comes to effective outcomes.  Truth be told, most physicians will tell you that whatever the cause of your pain, the odds are that it will resolve itself within about 6-8 weeks with some combination of rest, basic … (read the rest)

Posted in Diagnostics and Screening, Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Venture Capital, Medical Devices, Uncategorized, Venture Capital | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

TGIF! Healthcare Woes Invade Comedy Club

Posted on April 8, 2011 by
tgif

Tonight I went to the Punch Line in SF to see comedian Jake Johannsen, who I think is one of the funniest comedians working out there.  Even he is thinking and talking about healthcare and a healthy (no pun intended, ok maybe slightly intended) part of his act was about wellness and health care topics. My favorite was this:

“I have to buy my own insurance…$8000 for the family (he and his wife and 6-year old) PLUS a $5000 deductible for each of us separately.  One of us better get cancer or I’m getting ripped off.  I mean, I don’t want to get cancer, but one of them better get sick or I want my money back.”

I realize it’s not as funny in the translation, but live and with his deadpan delivery it was pretty damn funny.

Also liked,”Not a single person alive today has died.  Let’s keep it going people!”

If you need a laugh after a hard week, it’s worth checking Jake out on YouTube or his website.  I couldn’t find the health insurance bit, but I do love this one about emergency rooms.  Happy … (read the rest)

Posted in Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Random Thoughts of the Day | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Workin’ 9 to 5…

Posted on April 6, 2011 by
Now where was the note I left myself?

Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance? ~ Edgar Bergen

So I’m just returning from a week’s vacation and I’ve definitely got a serious case of vacation re-entry disorder.  In theory it isn’t fatal, or so I thought.  A recent study I read suggests that returning to work just might give the Baconator a run for its money when it comes to risk-taking behavior.

Writing in the Annals of Internal Medicine,  researchers found that people who work 11 hours or more per day were far more likely to develop coronary heart disease than those who knew when to call it a day.  Worse yet, those workaholics were 66% more likely to have a heart attack or to die of one.  I knew work was overrated, but this gives laziness a whole new patina.

Granted, the 7095 study subjects were all civil servants, so it is possible that just working for the government leads your heart to harden like cement.  Additionally, all of the study subjects were Londoners, so it is also possible that fish and chips are the true proximate cause of said heart disease, the … (read the rest)

Posted in Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthy Eating, Preventive Health, Random Thoughts of the Day | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment