What Would Lisa Suennen Say?
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 […]
Since Crick and Watson figured out the structure of DNA in 1953, there has been a constant effort to make genomics meaningful to medicine in a broad scale way. Here we are, a mere 65 years later, and it seems that genomic sequencing has finally hit the big time. And by big time I don’t […]
When 23andMe veteran Linda Avey pitched her new start-up, We Are Curious, which focuses on integrating patient-reported symptoms and experiences, she thought she’d emphasize a condition that seemed like an easy win: menopause-associated symptoms. VCs, she reasoned, would be immediately grasp the size (and associated economics) of this market, the need to better understand the […]
I’m completely fascinated by ResearchKit, Apple’s new program for encouraging people to contribute their data to clinical trials. This program was announced at the same time as the Apple Watch and, it seems to me, was a total scene-stealer. An expensive watch that allows you to track your steps and use your watch like Captain […]
Back in September 2010 I wrote about the controversies associated with home-based genetic testing companies and their products. This topic remains much in the news, as the FDA has declared their intent to regulate these products and several companies have withdrawn from the direct-to-consumer market. Reuters reported this week that in a survey of over […]
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.