Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Tesaro Builds its Warchest
Kleiner Perkins leads a massive $100M Series B round at Tesaro. Now, Tesaro not only has the funds to push forward with Phase III trials for lead drug Rolapitant, but they'll likely be an active player in the licensing market as they look to build out their pipeline. Not bad for a company that's barely a year old...
Accelerators and Incubators
Over the past few years, startup accelerators and incubators have been popping up all over the country. Whether it's Y Combinator on the west coast or NYCSeedStart in Manhattan, these programs all follow a pretty standard format: they provide early-stage entrepreneurs with co-located work space, mentorship, and seed funding in exchange for a small equity-stake in the new company. As one would expect, the vast majority of these incubators focus on tech or media startups that have low capital requirements.
Most recently, Sandbox Industries announced the founding of Healthbox, a healthcare-focused incubator that will launch next year. To be clear, Healthbox will most certainly focus on healthcare IT or service-based offerings. While it would be great to see the formation of life sciences incubators, I won't hold my breath. The capital-intensive requirement alone make it a difficult proposition. Additionally, the highly specialized lab space and technology requirements make it unlikely that an incubator could properly support a group of companies.
This of course begs the question(s) - what can be done to help early-stage life sciences during their proof of concept and pre-clinical stages? How can innovative life sciences firms be better at showing early results without burning through piles of cash - particularly dilutive equity? Or more importantly, how do we continue to bridge the relationship between academic research and product commercialization? Over the next few weeks, I'll dive into some of the major drivers/issues of launching a life sciences startup.
Most recently, Sandbox Industries announced the founding of Healthbox, a healthcare-focused incubator that will launch next year. To be clear, Healthbox will most certainly focus on healthcare IT or service-based offerings. While it would be great to see the formation of life sciences incubators, I won't hold my breath. The capital-intensive requirement alone make it a difficult proposition. Additionally, the highly specialized lab space and technology requirements make it unlikely that an incubator could properly support a group of companies.
This of course begs the question(s) - what can be done to help early-stage life sciences during their proof of concept and pre-clinical stages? How can innovative life sciences firms be better at showing early results without burning through piles of cash - particularly dilutive equity? Or more importantly, how do we continue to bridge the relationship between academic research and product commercialization? Over the next few weeks, I'll dive into some of the major drivers/issues of launching a life sciences startup.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Let's Try This Again
Ripping off a line from my favorite morning radio hosts Mike and Mike - I'm "back and better than ever!"
A year ago, I decided to enter the blogosophere by launching Phase Zero. While things began with great promise, I quickly became distracted with the enormous amount of change going on in my life and thus it's been a little while since the last post (OK, it's been a whole year!). Nonetheless, I have decided to recommit myself to the project and I'm excited to see how it evolves over the coming weeks and months. Sticking with my original plans, much of the content will focus on life sciences and innovation. That being said, I'll be sprinkling in a nice helping of my other interests - mainly baseball, the wonderful world of food and beer, and anything else the that might be on my mind.
And on that note, I'm off to enjoy the sunny (partly) day in Chicago. Look out for new content real soon!
A year ago, I decided to enter the blogosophere by launching Phase Zero. While things began with great promise, I quickly became distracted with the enormous amount of change going on in my life and thus it's been a little while since the last post (OK, it's been a whole year!). Nonetheless, I have decided to recommit myself to the project and I'm excited to see how it evolves over the coming weeks and months. Sticking with my original plans, much of the content will focus on life sciences and innovation. That being said, I'll be sprinkling in a nice helping of my other interests - mainly baseball, the wonderful world of food and beer, and anything else the that might be on my mind.
And on that note, I'm off to enjoy the sunny (partly) day in Chicago. Look out for new content real soon!
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