What Would Lisa Suennen Say?
About 4 ½ years ago I wrote a piece called “Medical Devices: Pigs Have Flown, Hell Hast Frozen Over – and It’s a Good Thing.” The focus was how I was at a medical device conference, and, for the first time, there was an actual, legit conversation being had about the integration of digital technologies […]
Along with 9000 or so of my closest friends, I went to the HLTH conference right before Thanksgiving week. As that conference came to a close, Canary Medical, the company I recently joined, had its own conference (about implantable sensors) and some subsequent meetings. The net result: I spent 6 whole days in Las Vegas and […]
I am writing this on a break from packing to attend the HLTH show. While I have made a few forays outside of my home and donned my bubble boy suit to interact with the occasional work colleague, this is the real deal. Starting tomorrow I’ll be wading into the throng of digital health has-beens, […]
I have advised (and continue to advise) a number of companies large and small about go-to-market strategies and how to think about launch and market entry. There are, as you can imagine, huge differences in how to approach these depending on whether one is a pharma/medical device company, a health services company or a digital […]
You know how you accumulate stuff in your office until it feels like a time capsule? Well, that was my office until last week. I decided it was high time to dig a trench between the door and the desk and, in the process, to move whatever was in there taking up space to that […]
Ever since the stock market realized that gravity was a real thing, people have been asking me, often multiple times a day, what this may mean for the world of venture capital and startups. And because this is my third rodeo (I was in venture capital during the 2000 stock market mini-implosion (aka the Dot […]
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 […]
You know how they say life imitates art and, also that art imitates life? Well, I have recently seen a great example of both: the Netflix movie “Don’t Look Up” demonstrates this concept to perfection. For those who haven’t seen the movie, it’s about what might happen if a giant asteroid were headed towards the […]
Another year, another COVID-driven cancellation of the mayhem that is usually happening this week in San Francisco, generally known as the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. As I thought about the negatives (missing friends, missing opportune key meetings, missing major news events), and the positives (no $200 coffee klatches, no sweaty crowds, no foot pain and […]
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.