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In defense of life sciences venture investing

Nature Biotechnology volume 29, pages 579–583 (2011)Cite this article

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An Erratum to this article was published on 09 January 2012

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Contrary to widely held perceptions, data on venture returns show that life sciences startups have outperformed other sectors over the past decade.

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Figure 1: IRRs for venture capital in different sectors.
Figure 2: Distribution of investment multiples across different sectors.
Figure 3: Post-IPO performance of technology versus life sciences companies backed by venture capital.

Change history

  • 11 July 2011

    In the version of this article initially published, the x axis in Figure 1 should not have contained the category “Technology.” In addition, on p.579, col. 3, paragraph 1, the last sentence should have read “comparative realized performance” instead of “comparative performance.” The errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

References

  1. Booth, B.L. Nat. Biotechnol. 27, 705–709 (2009).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Austin, S. Venture Capital Dispatch (26 February 2011) <http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/02/26/facebook-groupon-zynga-off-the-chart-revenue/>

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the NVCA and J. Taylor.

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Author notes

  1. Bruce L. Booth is with Atlas Venture, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and Bijan Salehizadeh is at Highland Capital Partners, Menlo Park, California, USA. Both authors focus on early stage healthcare and life sciences investments. Both also blog about healthcare and venture capital at http://www.LifeSciVC.com and http://www.thebij.com, respectively.

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  1. Bruce L Booth

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  1. Bruce L Booth
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  2. Bijan Salehizadeh
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Correspondence to Bruce L Booth.

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Competing interests

B.L.B. and B.S. participate in partnerships that invest in both LS and Tech venture capital, and have a pecuniary financial interest in the success of those investments.

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Booth, B., Salehizadeh, B. In defense of life sciences venture investing. Nat Biotechnol 29, 579–583 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.1908

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