Tag Archives: Rock Health

There Is No “I” in Team, But There Is In “Win”

Posted on May 5, 2013 by
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H5uWRjFsGc”

 “The team with the best players wins.”–Jack Welch, former Chairman & CEO, General Electric

Last week I had the pleasure of moderating a panel of accelerator and angel investor representatives in the course of teaching my healthcare venture capital class at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.  Together with my teaching partner, Dr. Jeff Rideout of Trizetto, our goal each year is to leave MBA students with a sense of what it is really like to work with entrepreneurs and how to evaluate and oversee venture investments in the healthcare field.   In this particular class last Thursday, Jenna Rose of HealthBox, Don Ross of HealthTech Capital and Geoff Clapp of Rock Health came over to help us talk to the class about the earliest of early stage endeavors and the issues that separate great young start-ups from the ones that go belly-up in the goldfish bowl before you can say, “What was your market entry strategy again?”

What struck me from this nearly two-hour conversation was how often the conversation came back to the importance of having the right management team, no matter where the primary topic … (read the rest)

Posted in General Business Issues, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 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

Your CEO May Be A Man, But Your Healthcare Customer is a Woman

Posted on July 22, 2012 by
80% of healthcare purchases are made by women

Women don’t want to hear what you think.
Women want to hear what they think – in a deeper voice.   – Bill Cosby

 

I recently saw a statistic from my friends at Rock Health that said that women comprise only 4% of healthcare industry CEOs.  For those of you who are slow at math, this means that 96% of the people running pharmaceutical, medical device, healthcare IT, healthcare service, provider system, health insurance and all of the other healthcare enterprises out there are men.  Despite 51% of the American population being female, this has been a persistent fact since anyone bothered checking.  In fact, I bet the number of women CEOs in healthcare has more than doubled—to 4%–in the last 10 or 20 years.  I don’t have a citation on that, but I bet I’m not far off.

Since it has been lamented and documented to death, I don’t want to talk here about how the above-stated statistic is either pathetic (which it is) or ill-advised for maximizing financial value (which it also is).  Rather, I would like to direct you to pay rapt attention to Women in Healthcare … (read the rest)

Posted in Consumer Engagement, General Business Issues, Girls Rule!, Healthcare, Medical Marketing and MediA, Uncategorized, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 22 Comments

You Say You Want a Healthcare Revolution

Posted on June 21, 2012 by
bulb-disruption

“You say you want a revolution,
Well, you know,
We all want to change the world”—The Beatles

I had the pleasure of attending a “salon” type dinner hosted by Xconomy and its chief correspondent and San Francisco editor Wade Roush last week (and graciously sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank and Alexandria Real Estate Equities). The dinner included about 24 people, all of whom in some way had a connection to the emerging field of digital health. In addition to the sponsors, the group featured many CEOs of newly minted companies, some highly experienced and at their second or third rodeo, and some very new to the big desk in the corner. Also present were a few industry thought leader and advisor types, including representatives of Rock Health and Singularity University, as well as a few venture investors, just to be sure all the air would get sucked out of the room. Because the dinner was meant to be “off the record,” I have not attributed points below to specific individuals.

The theme of the dinner was “The Quest to Disrupt Healthcare,” and at the beginning of dinner we started around … (read the rest)

Posted in Consumer Engagement, General Business Issues, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Venture Capital, Innovation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Never Let Anyone Make You a Carrot

Posted on May 28, 2012 by
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“The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.”  –Paul Cezanne

A couple of years ago my sister told me a story about how she came home from work to find her husband and then 5-year-old daughter playing “house” with her dolls and dollhouse.  They were deep into the imaginary play and her daughter was visibly annoyed to be interrupted by my sister’s arrival on the scene.  My sister asked if she could play with them and the daughter looked at her skeptically.

“I could be the mommy,” offered my sister.
“No, I’m the mommy,” said the kid. 
“How about if I am the baby then?”  says my sister, wanting in on the action.
 “No,” says the kid, “I’m also the baby. And Daddy is the daddy.” 
Kid pauses, thinks for a minute, then says,  “OK mommy, you can be a carrot growing in the garden.”
 

I love that story.  First of all, it’s damn funny (although my sister wasn’t amused at the time).  Second of all, it so reminds me of how I feel sometimes when I walk into the … (read the rest)

Posted in General Business Issues, Girls Rule!, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Uncategorized, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments