Alta Partners
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
Alta Partners, a spin out of the former Burr Egan & Deleage venture capital firm, has a contrarian view of health-care in this age of Internet enthusiasm. It continues to invest about half of its funds in health care on the assumption that investment preferences are cyclical and health care will see a rebound within 3-5 years. Guy Nohra, a partner at Alta, bases this prediction in the unprecedented discoveries going on in the human genome, as well as the increase in NIH funding for R&D. Alta has made a number of investments since incorporating three years ago, including the high-profile deCode Genetics Inc., which did a major deal with Roche. Other investments are Radiant Medical Inc., BioInterventional, Aclara Biosciences Inc., and Ilex.