Stockwatch: an internal examination of venture capital
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
These are comparatively uncomfortable times for life science venture capital (VC) investors. In the 1990s, VCs could bring a life science company to the public markets, recover their cost by divesting part of their investment at the IPO, and see their remaining holding rocket in value as generalist shareholders clamoured for the next hot biotech biotechnology IPO. A few months after the IPO, and with a little luck, many companies were also able to complete secondary offerings of stock from their VCs, CEOs and CFOs, putting most of the company’s shares in public hands.