Category Archives: General Venture Capital

There are lots of myths about venture capital and biotech in particular, as noted previously on this blog.  Many of these myths are deeply held beliefs about returns, what works and what doesn’t, and the state of the industry.  Told

Biotech just takes too long, especially when compared to the overnight success of technology ventures, or so the oft-cited criticism of venture-backed biotech’s perceived longer holding period goes. Despite being a well-accepted belief  held by most venture professionals, LP’s, and

Last week, Atlas Venture closed Fund IX at $265M, as reported this morning by Dan Primack.  We set out to raise $250M, and closed above-target with great support from our existing LP’s and some great new ones.  With this closing,

Euphoria in the markets seems like a common theme these days.  In fact, this week the NASDAQ Biotech Index (NBI) hit its all time high, even higher than in the 2000 genomics bubble.  It’s up 49% since Jan 2012.  Add

Venture capital is often called an apprenticeship business in large part because experience matters and takes time to accumulate.  But successful firms are able to translate and transfer experiential wisdom through institutional memory, which involves codifying what works and what

As 2013 begins, and the JPM conference is behind us, it’s a great time to reflect on the state of the biotech industry and the sentiments around early stage investing in particular.  While pessimism abounds in many corners about the

Most of the news flow around the JPM Healthcare conferences centers around the main event: public companies presenting their earnings forecasts, R&D updates, new partnering deals, and the like.  There’s also a small private company track at JPM, and there are

The recycling of equity capital through realized returns is a critically important element of biotech investing.  When public biotech companies get bought, like Genentech by Roche, or smaller deals like Cougar by J&J, a large number of biotech-focused equity funds

The translation of cutting-edge science into new clinically-relevant therapeutics is the ultimate goal of many academic investigators, industry researchers, and investors.  This stage of R&D is the most challenging, and typically frought with scientific and technical risks: taking a new

Much of the public dialogue about venture capital returns is based more on myth than fact, which reinforces inappropriately limited views of relative sector attractiveness, underlying risk profiles, and the “business models” that work in venture.  A big part of

Like many things driven by human nature, venture-backed biotech boardrooms often swing between the emotions of fear and greed.  Fear of losing your shirt, or the greed of demanding more of the story than is warranted.  It’s the age-old imbalance

Correlation Ventures, a new analytics-driven venture firm, just came out with some interesting data on US venture capital returns over the past decade. Instead of taking a “birth” vintage approach to returns, which is the way venture fund vintages and

Biotech IPOs have long been viewed with skeptism, especially over the past few years in comparison to the high-flying media darlings in the Tech space.  But recently a number of the social media phenoms have fallen from grace: Groupon is

Pharma have been retooling their therapeutic strategies and R&D priorities considerably over the past decade, shifting in and out of various disease areas.  As they are the eventual home for many of the biotech programs we and other early stage

“We Have Met the Enemy… And He is Us” is the very fitting title of a recent report on the state of the VC market with a focus on the GP-LP relationship.  This thoughtful and thankfully analytical report highlights a

Twenty years ago the biotech world was in the midst of one of the best IPO windows in its history.  Nearly a hundred biotech companies went public from 1991-1994, including a number of the great companies that have become household

Over the past decade biotech investments made by diversified venture capital firms have outperformed those by healthcare-focused firms.  Its unclear why the difference exists, but the historical data suggest it’s a striking differential. Examining the NVCA Benchmarking Database powered by

Everyone has heard of the monster returns to some venture funds from high-flyng social media and technology companies: Facebook’s potential 800x for Accel, Google’s 350x for KPCB and Sequoia, Zynga’s 100x+ for Union Square, Foundry, and Avalon.  These single big

Having a highly functional and productive Board of Directors is a key ingredient for success for most companies, but its of particular importance for early stage startups. The web is full of advice around what are the “best practices” for venture-backed

Biotech pundits often talk about the challenge of raising an initial round of capital for drug discovery startups, highlighting the perceived “gap” in early stage funding.   And it certainly isn’t easy raising that first significant round of institutional capital.  But

Today’s headlines were replete with the customary quarterly whinging about biotech funding. Several pieces emphasize the doom and gloom in the startup biotech landscape, and include quotes from respected venture investors lamenting the end of early stage and the broken

Flying home from JPM 2012 and thought I’d share a few reflections from our early stage venture perspective on what we heard (or didn’t) around the year’s kickoff biotech event. While most of the attendees were focused on Inhibitex and

Happy New Year! Its another January and we’re taking stock of last year and pondering the one before us. Reflecting on the Life Science landscape, there are a number of good reasons to be optimistic about where things are today:

The sunk cost bias in venture capital is widely derided as a driver of poor returns in the asset class.  It’s the psychological root cause of why good money gets thrown after bad: VCs hoping for an unlikely outcome because they

Last week, late stage biotech Alimera blew up after the FDA sent it a Complete Response Letter (CRL) rejecting its Iluvien product for eye diseases.  The stock is off 80%.  This was supposed to be a derisked, late stage investment

The sky is falling.  The sky is falling.  Seems like every day there’s another piece of news about the drop in Life Science venture capital (and here), with bouts of flagellation around each new quarterly press release from NVCA/PwC MoneyTree, Dow