What Would Lisa Suennen Say?
The world is filled with great partnerships and terrible ones. For every Ben & Jerry or Ernie & Bert there is also an Ishmael & Moby Dick or a Batman & The Joker. In business, great partnerships can be the path to great success. Failed partnerships can be the path to ruin. Getting this right […]
I had the pleasure of keynoting the recent UCLA Medtech Partnering Conference, where they asked me to speak on digital health,* and particularly its current state and where I see the opportunities and challenges over the next few years. I was happy to speak at this conference in part because it creates a forum to […]
Few of you are likely old enough to remember “Who’s on First?,” the famous comedy bit from Abbott and Costello, but that’s a shame. If you haven’t heard it, you really should seek it out (listen here) because it’s one of the funniest comedy skits in history, at least in the view of me and […]
This article ran last week in STAT News – delighted to pass it along to my fellow space buffs and thank you to STAT for telling the story of TRISH. By Asha Collins, Lisa Suennen and Armen R. Kherlopian SpaceX Inspiration4, funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, recently orbited the Earth for three days with an […]
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ― Søren Kierkegaard A few blogs back I wrote about valuations, how they are determined and how crazy they have been. In that piece, called Unraveling the Magical Mystery of Valuation Math, I talked about how valuations of private companies are derived and, […]
In the venture capital class I teach at Haas, the one topic that never fails to confuse is valuation, or how a private company is valued in an investment transaction. I’m not sure if it’s because math is hard, because valuation is based largely on not exactly math, or because it’s hard to keep track […]
I got an email this week from a smart and well-meaning entrepreneur. Despite the entrepreneur’s fine personal qualities, the email’s first paragraph had a total of 6 lines and in those 6 lines, it featured the word data 13 times. In other words, this email was beating the previously set world email record of using […]
Matt Wilsey grew up wanting to serve. He spent his early career in government working for both blue and red administrations, but was eventually lured back to where he grew up–Silicon Valley—to join the tech scene, and helped start and lead several successful tech companies, including Zazzle and CardSpring (sold to Twitter). Along the way […]
Amy Emerson, CEO of MAPS Public Benefit Corp. (MAPS PBC), grew up in Kodiak, Alaska and fell in love with both animals and science as a child. Later in life, when considering veterinary school, she realized that she loved biology but hated math – she would rather live in the wilderness on a lake and […]
Stacy Feld had settled into a satisfying career in biotech business development when she accidentally found her way into a meeting with Genentech’s CEO and a tiny startup company called 23andMe. The moment sparked a sudden realization that the best life science innovation would be focused around the consumer and a career finding ways to […]
Lisa Suennen is a venture capital investor and the managing partner of Venture Valkyrie, LLC, which publishes the Venture Valkyrie blog and co-produces the Tech Tonics podcast. She is also co-founder of CSweetener, a women's healthcare mentoring organization.