What Would Lisa Suennen Say?
Two weeks ago my blog post was directed to investors (and by implication, to entrepreneurs) and encouraged them to ask three essential questions before making an investment in a healthcare company, particularly a digital health company. Note that I don’t think my post was entirely applicable to biotech investments since most of them are intended […]
Born and bred in Mill Valley, Marin County, California, home of the Tech Tonics recording studio, Sam Brasch saw himself as a modern-day Alex P. Keaton – he just wanted to be a business man. He was “that kid” who was reading the Lee Iacocca biography in 4th grade while the other kids played soccer […]
Physician, scientist, patient, advocate: Glenn Pierce inhabits all four roles, and seems the physical embodiment of the translational impulse, driven by his own experiences coping with severe hemophilia to advance the science – and the policy – he hopes will eventually cure this condition for patients across the globe. While other kids enjoyed carefree childhoods, […]
This week I had the good fortune to return to Dublin, Ireland and see many of my international colleagues and friends who are associated in one way or another with HealthXL, the digital health intelligence platform and expert community, and Health Beacon, a very cool medication adherence company focused on specialty pharma. Health Beacon hosted […]
Yesterday on Twitter I not only saw, but got challenged to respond to Mark Cuban’s 12 Rules for Startups, which ran in 2012 in his column in Entrepreneur and got re-circulated yesterday. I have to say I agree with pretty much all of his rules as it applies to all startups, regardless of industry, with […]
In graduate school, Karen Hong’s dream of becoming a biologist crashed into the inconvenient reality that she couldn’t stand working in the lab. Undaunted, Karen, pivoted into venture capital, and hasn’t looked back. As befits a future geneticist, Karen chose her own genes extremely wisely: her dad was a legendary wunderkind in Taiwan who had […]
An unlikely pair, Brian Smith and Jerry Harrison came together over their shared passion for music and science and helping entrepreneurs succeed. Together they are helping healthcare startups find their rhythm and chart a path to success through a new expert crowdfunding platform called RedCrow. Here’s the backstory and it’s a good one: Brian Smith, […]
As everyone in healthcare knows, and also every single San Francisco-based Lyft and Uber driver, the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference (“JPM”) was held last week. “JPM” has become a shorthand for the ritual amassing of healthcare life forms in San Francisco that occurs right when your New Year’s Eve hangover is wearing off. It is […]
In the last couple of weeks I have had two vigorous healthcare conversations that I am having trouble figuring out how to reconcile with each other. Both were related to how we best predict cardiovascular disease and both were incredibly compelling and engaging and involved super smart people – experts at the top of their […]
In the last month I have spoken at an event about digital therapeutics and been invited to speak at 5 more unrelated events on the same topic (note: I am not doing them all). In my world view, this constitutes a trend, particularly since I haven’t been asked to speak on this topic repeatedly before. […]
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.