Venture Capital Returns

At a recent event was recently asked about investment outcomes for venture capitalists. I didn’t have any recent data, so I said that VCs generally expect that 1/3 of their investments will see great returns, 1/3 will see modest or no returns, and 1/3 will not be profitable.

VC Fred Wilson as Union Square Ventures recently analyzed his career in venture capital and posted his results. He’s got an enviable record of only 20% of deals failing to deliver, and more than 1/3 delivering a greater than 5x return.

Fred’s not into biotech, so I’d be hesitant about applying these numbers to biotechnology investing, and I’d be interested to see what the trends are in biotech VC.

Rethink PCR

Bio-Rad’s got an interesting website up: RethinkPCR.

The company’s name isn’t posted on the front page, but is readily available in the contest terms and conditions and privacy policy. It’s an interesting strategy to acquire consumer intelligence. Of course, consumers don’t always ask for what they want — they tend to ask for incremental improvements rather than revolutions, and they may not even accept the changes they ask for — but it will be interesting to see if any innovative new PCR products emerge.