My involvement, watching healthcare pitches, listening to the questions by the non healthcare investors, and listening to the non healthcare investors express their reasoning for supporting or not supporting an investment in a healthcare startup has led me to strongly believe that healthcare investing will only be successful if the investors have deep, deep experience and insight into the most complex industry in the world, healthcare. It's no wonder they have failed.
It likely saves the larger, incumbent healthcare companies who are the eventual acquirers a lot of money in their own R&D departments; they can allow this Darwinian startup ecosystem to kill off the non viables and then they acquire the superior companies after serious traction is obvious, all without investing a dime in crazy ideas. May as well sit back and watch fools be separated from their money by 20-30 healthcare startup deals, and then swoop in and acquire that one crazy idea company that actually caught on.
@Dutch, this thesis would seem intuitive; however, (you knew there would be a semi-colon somewhere) MD VCs are EXTREMELY rare. I spoke with VCs about why this is and they bluntly said that doctors made "terrible VCs". Not my words, don't shoot the messenger.
I was looking for doctor VCs at the time and had to give up.
Certainly can't do worse than the VC investments in healthcare over the last decade. Their track record has been downright abysmal.
HC is tough.
Yes, I absolutely agree!
My involvement, watching healthcare pitches, listening to the questions by the non healthcare investors, and listening to the non healthcare investors express their reasoning for supporting or not supporting an investment in a healthcare startup has led me to strongly believe that healthcare investing will only be successful if the investors have deep, deep experience and insight into the most complex industry in the world, healthcare. It's no wonder they have failed.
It likely saves the larger, incumbent healthcare companies who are the eventual acquirers a lot of money in their own R&D departments; they can allow this Darwinian startup ecosystem to kill off the non viables and then they acquire the superior companies after serious traction is obvious, all without investing a dime in crazy ideas. May as well sit back and watch fools be separated from their money by 20-30 healthcare startup deals, and then swoop in and acquire that one crazy idea company that actually caught on.
Is that how you see it?
Is there a VC group that is exclusively Physicians?
@Dutch, this thesis would seem intuitive; however, (you knew there would be a semi-colon somewhere) MD VCs are EXTREMELY rare. I spoke with VCs about why this is and they bluntly said that doctors made "terrible VCs". Not my words, don't shoot the messenger.
I was looking for doctor VCs at the time and had to give up.