Another year has gone by since I last updated my list of healthcare venture capital funds with money to invest. Better late than never, I guess.
Today, I’m happy to post an updated list, complete through November 2014. Good news: lots of new funds have been (or are being) raised!
Continue reading “List of Active Healthcare Venture Capital Investors – 2014 Q4”
At Fractyl we’re building an amazing team – the best I’ve ever worked with. Our team is super smart, highly productive, and absolutely dedicated to our mission. We see the big picture but we aren’t afraid to sweat the details. We also know how to have fun.
Great teams start with great recruiting. Recruiting best practices are important, but not enough. Read on to learn how we’ve built best team in medical devices.
I’ve been writing about physician owned distributorships (PODs) for a while. See my previous posts here and here. Whether or not there is improper behavior, physician owned distributorships create the appearance of impropriety and give the medical device industry a bad name.
Earlier in September, the Justice Department finally took action against a physician owned distributorship. It took time for the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to build its case against PODs generally (see the OIG activities here), and against this distributorship in particular. My guess is that the Justice Department will try to use this case to set a precedent, so the Continue reading “US Justice Department Takes Action on Physician Owned Distributorships”
While you might be sick of Amazon telling you that customers who bought product X also often bought product Y, Amazon knows what sells more products. I’ve used the same technique in medical device markets. Last year I wrote about medical device market segmentation using procedure data – finding prospects for your procedure X based on customers who perform procedure Y. Why target interventional cardiology as a whole, or so-called “early adopter interventional cardiologists,” or community hospitals versus academic medical centers, when you can specifically target sub-segments based on actual device use, e.g. IVUS users, chronic total occlusion specialists, or high volume stenters?
In 2014, big data powers marketing in consumer and tech, and it’s coming to medical device marketing and sales. Applied well, big data can focus sales efforts on the likeliest adopters, identify prospects that you never knew existed, and uncover market segments with unique product needs. If you don’t already know the power of big-data-driven marketing in the consumer world, read the recent (chilling) US Federal Trade Commission report on data brokers.
Medical device customers are consumers too. Here’s how I used big data at Candela in 2009 to re-imagine our marketing and sales approach.
Continue reading “Big Data Is Coming To Medical Device Marketing and Sales”
It’s been almost exactly one year since I updated my list of healthcare venture capital funds with money to invest. I posted updates nine times between late 2010 and late 2012, so a new version is way overdue.
Today, I’m happy to provide an updated list, complete through 2013. While 2013 was no 2003, there are still lots of new funding sources looking to invest in great healthcare startups. Further, Bruce Booth of Atlas Venture predicts that “several other high profile life science funds are ramping up for 2014 fundraises.”
I’ve again included some non-VC firms in the list, as financing can sometimes come as debt, private equity and/or sales-of-future-royalties. I’ve also included some announcements from firms that are no longer investing, as it’s best to identify those firms early.
Continue reading “List of Active Healthcare Venture Capital Investors – 2013 Q4”
According to PWC’s recent quarterly MoneyTree report, no new medical device companies achieved Series A fundings in New England in either Q2 or Q3 2013. Zilch, zip, zero, nothin’, no, nada.
I’ve been tracking first-time venture financing of medical device companies in Nw England since 2005. You’ll find the link to my latest list of these companies at the bottom of this post. I wish I had a better update to offer.
What’s causing this New England drought?
Continue reading “New England Venture Funded Medical Device Startup List 2013 Q3”
Every once in a great while I read something so well stated that I put down my book/ipad/kindle and just reflect.
So when I recently read a post from Mike Sellers on Quora, I had to share it with you. Mike was responding to the question “As first time entrepreneurs, what part of the process are people often completely blind to?”
Mike wrote beautifully about software companies (read his original post here).
I’d tweak his words slightly for medical devices. Here’s my modified version of Mike’s post: Continue reading “Engineering Is Not Product Development”
My blog has gone pretty quiet for the last couple of months – an effect of the pace of a high-performance startup. After all, extraordinary achievement requires extraordinary effort.
We start new medical device companies to achieve extraordinary outcomes:
For patients, dramatic improvements in mortality, morbidity and quality-of-life.
For physicians, new and better options for patient care.
For providers and payers, meaningful reductions in the cost of care.
For our investors, healthy returns on investment.
For our families, providing for our future.
For ourselves, the exhilarating experience of extraordinary achievement.
And it truly is exhilarating. Continue reading “Medical Device Startups: Extraordinary Outcomes, Extraordinary Effort”
About two years ago I noted “The Looming Impact of Healthcare Service Consolidation.” That consolidation ramped up this week, as the second-largest U.S. hospital chain, Community Health Systems, announced it would buy Health Management Associates (which operates 71 hospitals) in the largest hospital acquisition since 2006.
Consolidated systems standardize practices across hospitals and centralize purchasing of new technologies. Yesterday’s physician-champion-decision-maker is being replaced by tomorrow’s hospital-exec/technocrat-decision-maker. Medical device companies can learn a lot from enterprise IT sales. Will your medical device sales methodology adapt?
Pitchbook released their “Second Quarter 2013 U.S. Venture Capital Data” last week, and the outlook for medical device venture deals continues to be difficult. Based on first half actual data, Pitchbook forecasts that the total number of early stage device deals in 2013 will hit a six-year low – a steep drop from 2012 and about half of the 2008 peak. Pitchbook forecasts that the number of late stage deals will drop, but not as far – slightly down from 2012 and only at a five-year low. Unfortunately, I can’t say I’m surprised.
Source: full report here.
Jay Caplan on Medical Devices 