Monthly Archives: November 2011

Coming Soon to an Eyeball Near You

Posted on November 27, 2011 by
terminator.eye

I have written lately about how venture investors who have had long traditions of investing in medical devices are abandoning this sector. Among the reasons given are the increasingly difficult regulatory and reimbursement environments, the lengthy time to liquidity and the anemic IPO market. But having seen a few stories lately about the newest medical technologies hurtling towards the market, I am beginning to think that the best reason to run from this field is that the inventions are getting crazier and crazier.

Exhibit A is a new type of contact lens that projects images directly onto the eye. According to its inventors at the University of Washington, this new contact lens “could enable wearers to read floating texts and emails or augment their sight with computer-generated images.” Well thank God because it was getting exhausting for me to look all the way from my eyes to my iPhone to read my email.

I hardly know where to begin on this one. First of all, I don’t know about you but damn near everyone I know is already so glued to their email device that they forget to participate … (read the rest)

Posted in Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation, Medical Devices, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Newsflash: Grass is Green, Sky is Blue, VCs are White Men

Posted on November 22, 2011 by
Flying Up The Partnership Track

 Yeah, I love being famous. It’s almost like being white, y’know?—Chris Rock

On Monday November 21 the National Venture Capital Association and Dow Jones VentureSource released the results of the 2011 Venture Census, which reported statistics about ethnicity, gender and other characteristics of the venture capital industry garnered from a poll that included 600 VC industry participants.  Not surprisingly, the Census reaffirmed what most of us already knew:  it’s good to be a white male.

Of the total 600 respondents, 87% were Caucasian, 9% were Asian, 2% were African American or Latino, and 2% were of mixed race.  This is pretty much exactly the same as when the survey was done in 2008, when 88% were white guys.

The only thing worse than being non-white when it comes to your chances of getting a VC job is being female.  While 79% of the survey respondents were male and 21% were female, it’s a misleading figure since so many of the women respondents were not in true investment roles. According to the NVCA, of those who identified themselves as investors, 89% were male and 11 percent were female. This is actually … (read the rest)

Posted in Girls Rule!, Private Equity, Uncategorized, Venture Capital, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

More on “Hey, Where Is Everybody Going?”

Posted on November 21, 2011 by

Last week I published a post called “Hey, Where Is Everybody Going?” which was about the many venture capitalists who are leaving the practice of life sciences.  It was, interestingly (to me anyway), my most popular post to date.  I guess there are a lot of us healthcare VCs that are worried that the next time we open the door there will be a new guy in a black hood holding a scythe–and he’s not the same guy that usually comes to the partners’ meetings.

Anyway, the Burrill Report called me and asked me to elaborate on the topic in an interview for their weekly podcast so here is the outcome of that endeavor for those of you just dying to hear my voice (hi mom!).  You can listen to the podcast by clicking HERE and following the link on the Burrill Report website.

 

 

 

… (read the rest)

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

Have a Coke and a Frown

Posted on November 18, 2011 by
Coca-Cola

“He has found out our dinner hour, that’s all, and chooses to interrupt us every time, in order to show his power.”   

That quote is from E.M. Forster’s classic book, A Passage to India.  The passage it comes from describes the Indian characters’ belief that the white colonists feel superior to the Indians and don’t hesitate to disrupt the Indians’ lives for their own gain.  It seemed to me a perfect allegory for this blog post, which was prompted by an article I received from David VanAvermaete, CEO of Psilos portfolio company VeraLight.

The article, entitled “Coke Plans $2 Billion Investment in India,” describes how the Coca Cola Corporation has become so enamored of the Indian market opportunity that they intend to invest $2 billion in India over the next 5 years on top of the $2 billion they have invested to grow their business there since 1993.  “It would not surprise me if India became one of the top five markets globally for the company by the end of the decade,” Coca-Cola Eurasia and Africa group president Ahmet Bozer said in the article.

As … (read the rest)

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

Hey, Where Is Everybody Going?

Posted on November 13, 2011 by
lightswitch

If you are simply reading the paper or engaging in any random cocktail party conversation these days, it doesn’t take long before you are reading or talking about healthcare.  Health and healthcare issues have been a dominant topic in the national media since the 2008 Presidential election and have been constantly in the news as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has taken center stage.  Even if PPACA weren’t always in the headlines, stories about employers who are grasping for solutions to their healthcare cost crises would still be.

Given the massive amount of change currently underway in the U.S. healthcare economy that has resulted from PPACA, the earlier healthcare IT stimulus legislation (ARRA) and the acts of employers saying that they’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, we have bona fide industry upheaval on our hands.  And where there is upheaval, there is opportunity.  Today more than ever there is a tremendous opportunity to find new ways of doing business in the world of healthcare through changing delivery systems, insurance models, technology solutions, drug discovery, device innovation and just about everything else that … (read the rest)

Posted in General Business Issues, Healthcare Reform, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation, Private Equity, Uncategorized, Venture Capital | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Are You Dense?

Posted on November 10, 2011 by
sykes

Sometimes comedy and healthcare collide. I caught an episode of the Ellen DeGeneres Show recently where her guest that day was one of my favorite comedians, Wanda Sykes. Sykes was there, in part, to discuss her recent battle with breast cancer, a disease she found out she had quite by accident. Apparently Sykes had gone in for a voluntary cosmetic breast reduction (this is the cue for men everywhere to gasp in horror) and after the procedure it was discovered that the tissue removed, which is routinely examined after such procedures, was cancerous.

If you have extra time, you can watch the actual 4 and a half minute Ellen-Wanda interview by clicking HERE.

In the interview, Sykes talked about how, given her personal risk factors for breast cancer and her unwillingness to live fearing it’s sudden return, she decided to undergo a prophylactic double mastectomy in order to ensure she would not end up with breast cancer in the future.  It is an extreme decision, but one that is being taken more often by women willing to trade off body parts to avoid living in fear and submitting to … (read the rest)

Posted in Diagnostics and Screening, Girls Rule!, Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthcare Policy, Medical Devices, Preventive Health, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Whose Side Is Mr Potato Head On Anyway?

Posted on November 6, 2011 by
Mr. Potato Head Goes to Washington

I happened to be in our nation’s capital on Halloween last week (everyone there was costumed as a Republican Presidential candidate–or maybe everyone walking the streets there IS a Republican Presidential candidate).  I had a bit of extra time that afternoon and a sign for a new exhibit at the National Archives caught my attention so I went to check it out. For a former political science major like me, the National Archives is like the Sirens to Odysseus, so I was looking forward to cruising by and revisiting the Constitution anyway–it’s getting harder and harder to see it in action in everyday life.

Anyway, the new exhibit (open now through January 2012) is called “What’s Cooking Uncle Sam? The Government’s Effect on the American Diet.”   What a timely topic, I figured, in light of all that is going on in healthcare and health policy lately. The exhibit’s own marketing brochure says the exhibit is intended to highlight the US Government’s “extraordinary efforts, successes, and failures to change our eating habits.”

The exhibit traced America’s food policy initiatives from the 1800s through today. The big overarching themes were … (read the rest)

Posted in Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthcare Policy, Healthy Eating, Preventive Health, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Well, Well, Well

Posted on November 1, 2011 by
hawaii

A couple of months ago the Gallup organization, together with Healthways, Inc., released a preliminary report from their upcoming 2011 Well-Being Index report.  The annual Well-Being Index score, which I have written about before (see prior post HERE), is an average of six sub-indexes, which individually examine life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities. The January through June 2011 aggregate, highlighted here, includes more than 177,000 interviews conducted among national adults, aged 18 and older.

The focus of this preliminary Well-Being Index report was to tell all of us which of the U.S. states’ citizens are feeling the best about themselves.  In a time when the economy is putting financial and emotional pressure on the nation as a whole, there are still some places where people are still feeling pretty good.  I am guessing these are places where it is hard to get the network news on TV.

As pretty much anyone with a brain could have surmised without a survey to prove it, the state with the highest Well-Being score, and the highest physical and mental health sub-scores, is … (read the rest)

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