The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 20 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
No New Major Pharma Companies Will Be Built From Biotech VC
“There are very few, there won't be any new major pharmaceutical companies created out of biotech VC money anymore. Really all about creating companies that can exit to these people.”
BioInnovation Capital Targets Gains on Two-Thirds of Portfolio Companies
“I'd like to see a portfolio with two thirds of my companies being gains for us. And so not relying on the 50 to one winner to Drive the whole portfolio. I think that's just too hard to do.”
BioInnovation Capital Requires Unanimous Partner Consensus to Invest
“We passed on deals where one partner had just serious reservations and four would have voted for it. And that was true at Ampersand. It's true at Bioinnovation Capital as well.”
VCs Are Middlemen and the Cult of Personality Is Unwarranted
“My view of the world is we're middlemen. It's their capital, and we're finding great places to put it. That sounds pretty pedestrian. I really don't like the cult of Personality that sometimes accrues to very, very big names in the venture business. I'm not su…”
If You Cannot Pitch in Four Slides, You Haven't Mastered Your Story
“If you can't tell the story in four slides, you know, you just haven't really got your pitch down well”
BioInnovation Capital Converts 100% of LPs Who Visit Their Lab Space
“When we can get an LP there, meaning this may say the second meeting is at our shop, I think we've gotten a hundred percent of those people to invest in the funds.”
VCs Should Not Invest in Their Own Internally Created Ideas
“I was sort of raised in the world that said, don't invest in your own ideas. Wait for the guy with passion to come in the front door and really sway you that this is an important idea.”
BioInnovation Capital Targets Portfolio Exits Under $50M Total Funding
“So we like to say the companies have to be able to exit by the time fifty million dollars of venture money has gone in.”
Venture Capital Takes Ten Years to Begin Doing Well
“This is a hard business. I mean, I think it takes 10 years to even begin to do it well.”
No VC Firms Called Themselves Life Sciences Funds in the Late 1980s
“So back in the late eighties, there were very few specialized firms at all. None that I knew of that would call themselves, for instance, life sciences firms.”
High-Performing VC Firms Rely on Detailed Systems and Process
“I think process is almost everything in good venture firms. If you get under the hood of any firm that you really respect, I think you'll find a very, very detailed process. Even though it looks chaotic, they have a pretty set system.”
Every Portfolio Company Inevitably Faces Major Trouble
“It's not a question of whether these companies are going to get into trouble. It's just a question of when.”
Startups Cannot Effectively Focus on More Than 10 Annual Objectives
“So beyond 10 objectives, we don't feel they can really be focusing on things that we think will change the outcome of the company.”
Failing Top Three Annual Objectives Indicates Serious Startup Problems
“Yeah, if companies aren't hitting their top two or three objectives, and if they're reasonable objectives, yeah, something's wrong.”
Peter Parker Has Replaced Approximately 15 CEOs Throughout His Career
“I mean, I've changed probably 15 CEOs in my life.”
CEO Goals Are Company Goals, Making Sustained Underperformance Impossible
“There's no difference between the CEO's goals and the company goals, and if they really are just lagging behind dramatically, then it's just not something you can sustain.”
Pharma Internal Research Headcount Dropped 5-6% Annually Over the Past Decade
“If you look at the last 10 years, the research headcount in pharma has gone down by five or six percentage points per annum, so they're half as big internal research, but now what they've done is created external R&D groups, so they're out shopping, and we hav…”
Investors Make Money in Winners, but Friends in Losers
“One that's kicking around in my head recently is, you know, back in September, Fred Wilson, in his blog, he quoted Brad Feld, who said that, you make money in winners, but you make friends in losers. And, you know, it's absolutely so true, and it's been very t…”
3M Post-It Note Was Invented to Communicate With CEO
“Three M is a great example of this, where the post-it note was famously invented by someone who just needed a way to communicate with the CEO on a piece of sticky paper.”
The VC Industry Had Only 200 Firms Worldwide in the Late 1980s
“There were probably, we thought, maybe 200 venture firms in the world, and in those days, the U.S. Was the predominant player in venture capital. Now, this is early stage venture capital. A lot of these were efforts that spun out of investment banks or other e…”