Everyone knows about the Pharma industry’s R&D productivity woes, but few seem to have solutions that work. Part of treating the problem requires an accurate diagnosis, and this winter’s work in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery by Scannell et al from

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

Debating the merits of various biotech business models is in vogue today, in part as a response to the proliferation of experiments around the right form and function of the companies themselves.  An often asked question: are we supporting CEOs

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

In recent years, acquisitions of early stage private biotechs have frequently included an upfront value coupled with significant future milestone payments. These earnouts resemble the “biobucks” common to product licensing deals: stretching out over 5-10 years, they get ravaged by

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

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 Celgene announced the acquisition of Avila Therapeutics for $350M upfront and up to $575M in future milestones.  Congratulations to the Avila team!  For those of us involved in the story, we certainly think Celgene’s got itself a great deal.

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

Corporate venture capital’s role in the new biotech ecosystem couldn’t be understated today.  They are a major syndicate partner for those of us in the early stage arena, and we couldn’t power up our startups without them. I’ve written on

It’s certainly not Breaking News that M&A deals are an important source of liquidity in biotech VC today.  But last year did mark an important milestone for biotech over the past few years: in 2011, the capital returned to investors