Some thoughts on the struggling tech economy and where it might be headed that didn’t make my latest story:
Biocom CEO Joe Panetta acknowledged the drop-off in venture capital funding in biotech last year, but said he has talked with several companies in recent weeks who say they are attracting interest from venture capitalists. But, he said, they are being very selective.
“The idea of crafting the public company that grows to become the fully-integrated biotech is shifting,” Panetta said. “The new paradigm is a small company that is lean and mean.”
Panetta also offered an explanation that I had heard from a couple others as to why venture funding dropped off a cliff at the end of last year. He said the overall market crash caused the investment portfolios of wealthy people and institutional investors to become unbalanced, and venture funds were taking up a larger-than-usual percentage of overall portfolios.
So, investment managers cut back in this area and rebalanced in others. As a result, venture investment dried up.