Article preview reprinted from Start-Up - June 2008
These days, medtech investors need to be much more selective about how they spend their capital. In pursuit of steady streams of early-stage opportunities with a high likelihood of success, VCs are establishing closer ties with entprepreneurs and executives they feel can do it again. Find out what they are looking for?
Institutional Innovation in Devices
Venture capital firms, in pursuit of steady streams of early-stage opportunities, are establishing closer ties with the entrepreneurs and executives they feel can do it again.
- Eager to secure stakes in early-stage deals, venture capital firms increasingly are establishing formal ties with proven entrepreneurs.
- VCs largely have forsaken incubator models, preferring less permanent—and therefore less expensive—accelerators.
- Or they're bringing folks in-house as venture partners or entrepreneurs-in-residence.
- Can too much structure kill the entrepreneurial spirit?
Innovation isn't an accident. By the time a medical device start-up raises a seed round, the concept upon which it's built has been devised, doubted, reconsidered, debated and finally validated by a scrum of entrepreneurs, inventors, and, finally, investors brought together by the notion that this idea might someday be a medical device that both saves lives and makes money.
Yet there's something serendipitous about the process of creation. Often, these professionals have worked together before on earlier projects, but sometimes connections, networks, and chance meetings bring these parties together for the first time. It's almost democratic, the notion that anyone, anywhere can develop an idea that might someday cure disease while, hopefully, return capital to its inventors and investors.
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Companies mentioned in this article:
Abbott Laboratories Inc.
Integrated Vascular Systems Inc.
AccessClosure Inc.
Acclarent Inc.
Anulex Technologies Inc.
Apnex Medical Inc.
Aspire Medical Inc.
Boston Scientific Corp.
Embolic Protection Inc.
BridgePoint Medical Inc.
CVRx Inc.
CardioMind Inc.
ExploraMed Inc.
Innovation Factory
Johnson & Johnson
Cordis Corp.
Ensure Medical Inc.
Medtronic Inc.
Paracor Medical Inc.
Seattle Medical Technologies Inc.
Spine Wave Inc.
VERTx Inc.
Stanford University
SyneCor LLC
Synvascular Inc.
The Foundry Inc.
START-UP: No publication reviews leading edge companies and technology better than START-UP. Each issue of START-UP profiles the most important new product companies, identifies the hottest technology areas, reviews funds flowing into private companies and investment trends, and reports on university tech transfer licensing. Industries covered: pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, hospital supply, medical equipment & devices, and in vitro diagnostics.
