Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Did You Have VC for Breakfast?

You did have VC for breakfast today if you went to the CBSA’s Venture Capital Bio Breakfast, sponsored in part by Cooley Godward and Amgen. Kyle Lefkoff of Boulder Ventures graciously moderated an incredibly distinguished panel which included Mike Raab of New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Christopher Kersey of Cogene Ventures and Jay Hagan of Amgen Ventures.

How to acquire the green enzyme was served up on the buffet. Tremendous insight was provided among other things regarding the evolution of the bio-pharma business model and the space that is being allocated to project based financings. This new trend is beginning to emerge due to the low burn rates afforded by a more virtual organization yielding single products which may lead to a platform technology.

A stat was highlighted – today there is as much as $50 to $85 billion in venture financing to be deployed, but this capital must be managed in a way to balance both the "greed and fear" behind it. The investor seeks interesting and exciting points of convergence and, clinical outcomes that are understandable to the public…all the while creating diversity in the portfolio which is often a fiduciary responsibility of the stewards.

Perhaps the take home lesson for having a biz-plan examined is network, network and then network. Having a respected reference introduce a biz-plan to a VC will truly prove to be an incredibly more efficient method than the cold call or blindly (e)mailing.

Build it and they will come. I hear a cacophony of hammers banging away in labs from the Springs to Ft. Collins. What a beautiful sound it is...

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