Category Archives: Uncategorized

Pharma corporate venture was back in the biotech news today with the release of Burrill & Company’s June 2012 report.  An interesting article by Vinay Singh evaluated the impact of Pharma corporate venture capital (CVC) investing, and the key takeaway

Biogen just announced its acquisition of Stromedix for up to $562M. Another solid M&A exit in biotech emphasizing how innovation matters. With a very different model than Avila Therapeutics, an exit we announced in January, Stromedix is a biology-focused, asset-centric

Like many technologies that move from hot discoveries on the cover of Nature to the practical ugly sausage-making of drug development, RNA-based therapeutics have been widely derided of late.  It seems everyone from Wall Street to Pharma to venture capital

Amidst talk of the need for renewed economic stimulus and the desire for America to invest in innovative industries, I thought I’d highlight two practical tax policy ideas for how to accelerate biotech sector growth: enabling NOL tradability and creating

Most of Big Pharma have been trying to reinvent themselves as nimble Biotechs, at least in the eyes of Wall Street, in order to be perceived as being innovative R&D-driven companies.    Despite the restructurings, Big Pharma is struggling with that

Compensation in startups is a subject where vague notions of the right comparable benchmarks (“the market rate”) and organizational inertia (“that’s what we’ve done before…”) come together to prevent useful transparency. Mountains of data are thrown at comp committees to

Last week’s news about Orexigen’s Contrave obesity drug and its struggles with the FDA’s Division of Metabolic and Endocrinologic Products has left me puzzled.  Obesity is such an enormous epidemic, one has to wonder why the FDA is taking such

Lots of great advice exists for tech entrepreneurs trying to pitch to VCs, but very little for the aspiring life science entrepreneur, especially for therapeutics startups.  Since that’s the type of deal we invest a good portion of our fund

Two recent observations prompted me to think about a topic broader than just the life sciences: the information intensity of the world we live in and some of the unhealthy behaviors it has fostered. I met with a biotech entrepreneur

There’s been talk about a “bubble” in venture capital recently.   If there is one to debate, its not in the life sciences. While we’ve been relatively steady on an annualized pace in 2009 and 2010, we are down considerably

I just met with an entrepreneur who was the founding CEO of a company created around an academic lab’s discoveries. It was fascinating new approach to drugging hot receptor targets.  To protect the innocent I won’t mention the names, but

I’ve decided it’s time to experiment with blogging about the biotech venture ecosystem.  I’d like to call it a “pilot study”.  If it ends up being safe and effective over the next few months, I’ll continue.  If not, I’ll terminate