Category Archives: Venture Capital

Next Up On the Red Carpet

Posted on February 11, 2013 by
grammys-2

It’s awards season, as anyone who watched the Grammys or Golden Globes and is anticipating the Oscars knows.  The Grammys appeared on TV last night and were a great mix of old and new performers giving it their all for a wanting audience.  Much of the host talk was about the dress code requested by the Grammy’s producers (with a particular focus on women’s nether regions and how they should be a little less visible than, say, J Lo’s parts typically are), but the show was actually about musical excellence in all its many forms. If you missed the rendition of The Band’s song The Weight by Elton John, Mumford & Sons, Zac Brown, T Bone Burnett, Mavis Staples and Alabama Shakes you should go watch it (there is a video link HERE).  Fantastic music at its best resulting from the collaboration of many who would otherwise never be found in the same sentence, much less song.

I can imagine it is very difficult for these award show judges to pick out who is “the best” when looking at music or actors.  In a way that is kind of … (read the rest)

Posted in General Business Issues, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation, Private Equity, Uncategorized, Venture Capital | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Anatomy of a Venture Capitalist

Posted on January 9, 2013 by
homer_simpson_xray

This week I had occasion to make a presentation at a meeting of one of the investors in my fund, Jacobs Capital Group.  Awesome folks, the people there, and they specifically asked me to present the “Anatomy of a Deal” in which I would describe one of my portfolio investments and its associated twists and turns.

In addition to being asked to be professional and informative, I was told, “Be funny.”  No pressure.  So I decided to ditch the professional and go for funny and informative (the informative part being a description and demo of PatientSafe Solutions’ product and our investment in the company).  To kick off my Anatomy of a Deal discussion, I started with a little anatomy lesson for the crowd of 50 or so venture capitalists, strategic investors, lawyers (there are always lawyers!) and assorted other people in the Jacobs Fund community.

I am not a doctor, but a healthcare VC, so I had to focus my anatomy lesson on something I am qualified to describe, that being the anatomy of my esteemed colleagues in the field.  It was so well-received (so much for informative, funny … (read the rest)

Posted in Healthcare Venture Capital, Medical Comedy Relief, Uncategorized, Venture Capital, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

I’m On A Boat! The Rising Fleet of Incubators

Posted on October 1, 2012 by
Avast ye matey!

This post also ran in Health Care IT News on October 1, 2012

I was hanging out with Tom Rodgers of Cambia Health the other day and we were discussing the seemingly unrelenting trend of the formation of new technology incubators and accelerators, designed to help catapult the weird and wonderful ideas of entrepreneurs into actionable companies. The idea is to take these entrepreneurs and  the light bulbs that have formed over their heads, put them together with each other (often in a physical location with loft-like qualities), wrap them in a burrito of high quality resources and experienced mentors and cook for about three months until what comes out is one big yummy pile of companies ripe for gobbling up by venture capitalists.

This trend has been longer lived in pure technology and medical technology fields (YCombinator, Tech Stars, The Foundry) and more recently has come to the world of healthcare IT in a pretty big way with the formation of Rock Health, Blueprint Health, HealthBox, Janssen Labs, Start-Up Health and several others founded and in process. One can only imagine … (read the rest)

Posted in General Business Issues, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation, Uncategorized, Venture Capital | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Occupy the English Language!

Posted on September 12, 2012 by
Bucks_Woodside-02

A fellow finance friend, Jon Joseph, sent me this video on the day I wrote about jargon in healthcare IT.  I had been thinking I really had to write the same article over again for venture capital, but this person beat me to it with video and a perfect vibe.  I swear to God if you sit at any Starbucks in Santa Clara County this is exactly what you will hear.  And with the same inflection but probably not as good a head of hair.

We of Silicon Valley and related Annexes (SF, Marin, etc.) sound exactly like this and I am sure that we make everyone else in the country want to barf.

It’s like Pandora for cats…

It’s like Instagram for hamburgers…

I already re-blogged that and re-tweeted that….

It would be funny if it weren’t so true.  I saw another article this morning reporting some of the gobbledygook speak uttered at the recent TechCrunch meeting.   If you want to see English as a second language in action, read THIS and don’t forget to read the comments section too.  My personal favorite is this one:  “We don’t measure … (read the rest)

Posted in General Business Issues, Medical Comedy Relief, Uncategorized, Venture Capital | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Crowd Control

Posted on March 25, 2012 by
I cannot tell you how many of these I have kissed

On March 23,, 2012 the U.S. Senate, acting in bipartisan fashion, probably because they mistakenly thought it was April Fools Day, resoundingly passed the JOBS Act.  The JOBS Act, which stands for Jumpstart Our Business Start-ups, is primarily intended to create new jobs by helping small and very small companies have more ready access to capital to grow and thus hire more people.  The goals of the JOBS Act are very important to the growth of our economy.   There have been a million articles on it, but I am putting a few links in HERE and HERE for your convenience.

The JOBS Act has many different provisions.  It enables smaller companies, those with less than $1 billion of revenue, to go public while avoiding and/or postponing some of the more onerous and costly Sarbanes Oxley IPO regulations.  An existing law that required companies with more than 500 shareholders to undertake various SEC disclosures has been changed to enable companies to avoid this until they have 2000 shareholders.  And the law also makes it easier for companies to advertise private stock sales to potential investors.

One of the most significant … (read the rest)

Posted in General Business Issues, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Private Equity, Uncategorized, Venture Capital | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

11:59 and Not a Second Later

Posted on December 30, 2011 by
clock

Okay, I know it’s kind of cheating, but I am re-posting my column from New Year’s 2011 where I turned Auld Lang Syne into an ode to venture capital.  Why? you ask. Because I haven’t been able to come up with another decent New Year’s song to parody and I have been drinking far too much this holiday season to come up with something entirely new. Let’s hope that some of that cell regeneration stuff that my colleagues are funding will help me out in the year to come.

As for potential alternative New Year’s songs to work with, there is an unfortunate dearth of options.  Unlike Christmas, which is full of good music that everyone knows, New Year’s has been left in the dust.  There is, of course, Barry Manilow’s Just Another New Year’s Eve, but I deemed that too depressing; plus it has become remarkably unhip to admit you know the words to Barry Manilow songs.  There’s also Dan Fogelberg’s Just Another Auld Lang Syne; you remember–the one that starts, “I met my old lover in the grocery store…”  Had to ding that one for being … (read the rest)

Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Private Equity, Random Thoughts of the Day, Uncategorized, Venture Capital | 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

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