Can you trust any VCs under 40?
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
Over the last 30 years Wall Street’s appetite for technology stocks have changed radically – swinging between unbridled enthusiasm to believing they’re all toxic. Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies.
You have to wonder: does… Continue Reading
Life-science briefing: Thursday, April 10, 2008
TODAY’S HEADLINES:
HealthExtras buys venture-backed PBM HospiScript for $100M (release)
Urological device-maker NeoTract adds $7.4M (VentureWire)
RNAi-drug startup Intradigm seeks $35M (VentureWire)
Israel’s Arbel Medical raises $3.5M for tumor cryotherapy (release)
HealthExtras buys venture-backed PBM HospiScript for $100M — HospiScript Services, a Montgomery, Ala., prescription-benefits manager, agreed to be acquired by HealthExtras of Rockville, Md. HealthExtras will pay $100 million in cash for the venture-backed firm, which services the hospice industry.
HospiScript had raised at least $4 million in funding, according… Continue Reading
Life-science briefing: Friday, March 28, 2008
TODAY’S HEADLINES:
VaxGen, Raven Bio terminate merger agreement (release)
Aerovance gets $20M in venture debt for respiratory disease (release)
EKOS raises $5M for ultrasound catheters (peHUB)
Intelligent Bio-Systems draws $353K for high-speed genome sequencing (peHUB)
Quintessence Bio takes in $5M for cancer-directed proteins (VentureWire)
7 Health Ventures adds three members to investment team (release)
Contract manufacturer Cytovance names Darren Head CEO (release)
VaxGen, Raven Bio terminate merger agreement – A weirdly structured, always hard-to-understand merger between the failed vaccine biotech VaxGen and startup Raven Biotechnologies… Continue Reading
Life-science briefing: Tuesday, March 11, 2008
TODAY’S HEADLINES:
Affinergy gets $3M in grants for biological “linkers” (release)
Specialty pharma EUSA raises $50M, spends $23M for public biotech Cytogen (release)
Calderome takes in $12M for cancer diagnostics (peHUB)
Pulse Health raises $2M for handheld free-radical device (release)
LifeMasters takes in $15M for wellness, disease-management programs (release)
Dubai Techno Park launched $300MVC fund for life sciences, other sectors (release)
Affinergy gets $3M in grants for biological “linkers” – Affinergy, a Duke University spinout in Research Triangle Park, N.C., received grants worth more… Continue Reading
Life-science briefing: Thursday, March 6, 2008
TODAY’S HEADLINES:
France’s TxCell raises €11M for cell therapy (release)
Healthcare IT firm TriHealix takes in $7M (release)
Healthcare-software provider Anodyne Health acquires Piedmont Healthcare (release)
CEO, CFO resign at inhaled-drug biotech Topigen (release)
France’s TxCell raises €11M for cell therapy – TxCell, a French cell-therapy biotech, raised €10.5 million ($16 million) in a second funding round. Investors included Auriga Partners, AXA Private Equity, Bioam Gestion, CDC Innovation and Seventure.
The biotech is developing a patient-specific cell therapy for the gastrointestinal autoimmune… Continue Reading
Precision Thera merger with “blank check” firm Oracle Healthcare collapses
(UPDATED: See below.)
Another one bites the dust.
The saga of Precision Therapeutics, a Pittsburgh biotech developing what struck me last August as a particularly crude type of cancer-chemotherapy diagnostic, continues apace. In a tersely worded press release, the special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, Oracle Healthcare Acquisition said it has terminated its planned merger with Precision. The release blamed “currently prevailing market conditions” for the decision, which carries some fairly ominous consequences for both sides.
Oracle’s plight is fairly… Continue Reading