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Category Archives: Venture Capital
11:59 and Not a Second Later
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 auld lang syne, healthcare private equity, healthcare venture capital, new year's songs, psilos, venture capital
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Newsflash: Grass is Green, Sky is Blue, VCs are White Men
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)
More on “Hey, Where Is Everybody Going?”
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.
Hey, Where Is Everybody Going?
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 advanced technology ventures, cmea, fda, healthcare private equity, healthcare venture capital, highland capital partners, medical device investing, morgenthaler, nvca, PPACA, prospect ventures, psilos, scale venture partners, versant ventures
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VC in a Box
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhwbxEfy7fg”
Today I saw a spoof video made by Foundry Group, a well-known technology venture capital firm, that just totally cracked me up so I thought I’d share it with those of you interested in such things. Nothing healthcare here, but a great send-up of how so many people see those of us in the VC world. It’s especially hilarious because it is a play on those funny digital short videos that Andy Samberg and his Lonely Island Productions does on Saturday Night Life…yes, that’s the one…with the box. Say no more. There are plenty of people out there that, when they hear “[rhymes with chick] in a box,” immediately think: “Oh, there must be a venture capitalist in that box!”
This video and it’s press release are so funny on their own that I don’t think I can improve upon them, so I will excerpt directly from the press release here:
Today, Foundry Group, a venture capital firm investing in seed and early stage US-based technology companies, premiered a documentary film illustrating through complex metaphors and stunning montages the secret lives of venture capitalists which has been … (read the rest)
Posted in Private Equity, Venture Capital
Tagged foundtry group, psilos, venture capital
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Man! I Feel Like a Woman!
Today’s post was generated as a result of a request by PE Hub’s editor, Jon Marino, who asked me to author a piece for his publication about how male venture capital and private equity executives could “redeem themselves” in the eyes of women in the field. As you can see if you read further, I took another tack with the story, as I am pretty confident that most of the men in my profession don’t view it as their job to redeem themselves for this purpose.
I have been fascinated by the feedback I get on the articles I write on the male/female interaction in my field, as nearly 100% of the emails and written comments I get are from men. Women colleagues will sometimes mention they have read them, but male colleagues take action and write—very interesting. The comments I get from my male fans and detractors range from telling me I am completely off-base and borderline insane (hard to argue with that one) to resounding apologies that men are, in fact, the root of all evil, at least when it comes to the gender-based tensions in the … (read the rest)
Peer Pressure Cooker
There was an article in the August 8th issue of Venture Beat entitled, “Do teens make good founders? 6 teenage teams make their debut to find out.” As the parent of a teenager, my immediate thought was, “yeah, sure, right after they clean up their rooms and set the table, they can be totally awesome founders, as long as they can tear themselves away from the latest installment of the Twilight series.” What do I know? As it turns out, some kids actually do get off the couch and take action to be the next Steve Jobs.
The VentureBeat article I mentioned above is about an entrepreneurial incubator put together by Teens in Tech. The Teens in Tech Incubator is an 8-week summer program which helped six teams of young entrepreneurs launch six products over the course of a summer. Teams come with ideas, get paired up with mentors and resources, and are guided through the process of bringing their ideas to life. At the end of the 8 weeks, the teams present their startups to a group of venture capitalists, tech influencers, members of … (read the rest)
The Second Coming of Healthcare IT
Once upon a time there was “ehealth.” That time was the late 1990’s and there was a temporary ripple in The Force when anything that combined healthcare and the Internet had a suddenly popularity in the venture capital investment community. Companies like the original WebMD, the original Medscape, Mediconsult.com, DrKoop.com, Medibuy, Adam.com, PlanetRx, and a host of other online pharmacies, healthcare group purchasing entities and online health portals were born and sought after by investors looking to capitalize on the collision of the Internet and the healthcare industry. The theory at the time was that you could take any traditional industry, add a soupcon of Internet, and “voila!” instant value creation.
Unfortunately, it turned out not to be so easy and by the early 2000’s, the ehealth industry died a painful death, leaving behind a few bedraggled companies, a mountain of cashed checks with venture capital firms’ signatures on them and thousands of vacant Aeron chairs. Healthcare technology became the Mike Tyson of venture capital investment: wistfully remembered for what it might have been but shunned for how it had behaved towards its fans. “Never again,” the VCs muttered, “never … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Private Equity, Uncategorized, Venture Capital
Tagged ACA, Allscripts, ehealth, Gibson Consultants, healthcare IT, healthcare reform, healthcare services, healthcare venture capital, HIT, HITECH Act, medical technology, PPACA, psilos, venture capital
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Board Games
As a venture/private equity investor, I have one of those jobs that is somewhat nebulous to most people. They ask questions like, “What the heck do you actually DO?” “How do you spend your time on an average day?” and “Do you actually, you know, work?”
For those of you who think that the life of the venture capital or private equity investor looks like a walk in the park and that all of us are sitting around eating pre-peeled grapes while getting neck rubs and rolling naked in cash, all I can say is, “I wish.”
It’s actually a pretty intense job, much more complex and nuanced than I expected when I first started at it 13 years ago. So much of it is about working in partnership with people in an environment where you personally have little control or direct authority to make things happen and yet where you feel you know the right thing to do (“so why aren’t they just doing it already?!”). You have to drink from a magical cocktail of knowledge, experience, guessing, and luck to figure out what needs to get done. … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Private Equity, Uncategorized, Venture Capital
Tagged board member, board of directors, corporate directors forum, jim sweeney, patient safe solutions, private equity, venture capital, women in private equity, women venture capital
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Striving for Obsolescence!
Sorry to those who saw this already; the post didn’t make it to most of my readers so I am reposting…
Well thank goodness. I have recently learned that I can be replaced by a piece of software. Work has been pretty taxing lately, so this is quite a relief, as long as they keep paying me. Apparently there is a new data analysis product called Quid that is able to detect what sectors in a given industry are ripe for innovation and direct venture capital investors towards the best opportunities. Since that is a key function of those in the venture capital biz, it is a relief to think that I can outsource it to someone (something?) who won’t bring their personal issues to the office or drink the last of the coffee without replacing the pot.
According to a recent article in Venture Capital Journal (excerpted in PE Hub), you can visualize Quid as follows:
But imagine plugging data into a computer, such as hiring trends and past rounds of funding for thousands of companies in a sector, and then having software that crunches the numbers and … (read the rest)