Monthly Archives: March 2011

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

We’re excited to be presenting the University Research & Entrepreneurship Symposium 2011 (URES) next week – it’s one of the premier seed-stage and academic startup conferences in the country.  As chair of the Life Science track, I thought it would

Lots of folks have been talking about the demise of Pharma R&D spending, especially with the recent cuts at Pfizer, GSK, and others.  But the truth is far from that, as they still spend an enormous sum and dwarf the

Our friends at HBM Partners in Switzerland have just published their 2010 Biotech M&A Survey based on a reasonably large set of deals last year.  A few observations I’ve gleaned from their analysis: Acquisitions of VC-backed biotech companies were up

We’re in an era of consolidation in our country’s biotech clusters.  The few regions with critical mass are accelerating their leadership in terms of both ‘mindshare’ and market share, and appear to be increasing the gap between themselves and the

Bill Gates has just backed one our new startups – Nimbus Discovery LLC – as part of an extension to the seed tranche. Here’s the press release. It might come as a surprise to some, but Bill Gates has been a long-time

Slate’s piece on drug costs has really caused some fun and excitement in the life science community.  For those that haven’t followed, Tufts Center for Study of Drug Development published a widely cited number in 2003 of $800M+ to bring

Everyone in biotech talks about capital efficiency these days. Doing more with less financing, more disciplined tranching of rounds, leaner organizations, lower expenses, etc.  But paradoxically, as a sector, there’s universal praise and admiration for those individuals and companies who

As my first post of real content, I thought I’d tackle the question of what are the actual return distributions of venture capital investments in biotech startups (e.g., how many losers, how many winners) to set some context.  And it

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