Next week kicks off the biggest healthcare investor meeting of the year in San Francisco.  It’s a giant circus of activity revolving around the Westin St Francis in Union Square, with more than 10,000 people gathered from biotech, pharma, startups,

Tis the season for reflecting and predicting, so I figured I’d follow the custom and share some of my thoughts about the state of biotech in 2013 and the year to come. Reflections on 2013. The Biotech IPO Returns.  This

Seed-led venture creation is our focus at Atlas, and, with the closing of our new fund, 2013 has been a very active year for us.  As part of a year-end reflection, it’s a good opportunity to present a quick sketch

The past year has certainly been the most exciting one for Biotech IPOs since 2000, with dozens of new offerings and compelling therapeutic narratives.  But focusing on these new IPOs misses an equal if not more exciting story: the significant

In the tech-dominated venture capital world, 2013 could be called the year of the crowd.  With the JOBS Act and the emergence of credible platforms like AngelList, crowdfunding has come into the mainstream in a meaningful way. Social media, software,

The broad underperformance of the venture capital asset class during the past decade is widely discussed; there’s a frequently-cited assertion that U.S. venture returns trailed the overall public equity stock market in the 2000s. Few if any published analyses have

Scientific reproducibility hit mainstream this month with a feature article and editorial in The Economist; they highlight issues around the failure to replicate peer-reviewed research, academic biases found in science, use of scarce resources in national science budgets, and even share a primer in statistics

Six months ago the biotech industry was on the verge of a sizzling season for IPOs, and since then, on average, we’ve seen one new biotech IPO per week.  Valuations of many of these offerings have been impressive, and this

For the past 2.5 years I’ve been experimenting with this blog, covering topics about biotech startups, the pharma industry, and venture capital – so I thought it would be a good time for reflection. In my first blog post in

Last month legendary investor Vinod Khosla commented that 95% of VCs add “zero value” and 80% probably “add negative value” in how they advise startup companies in their portfolio.  This is a stunning indictment of the VCs that Khosla has

As you might expect given the strong IPO market, biotech venture investors are doing less of the heavy lifting in support of their portfolio companies during this receptive climate than in the past few years. Biotech insider participation was the

Biotech is back with a vengeance in this IPO window.  After a decade drought, we’ve witnessed over 30 new biotech offerings this year and more than $2.5B raised – the best IPO market since 2000.  In fact, it’s already the