Healthcare venture capitalists are no fans of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the regulatory challenges the agency poses for medical startups and device companies.
They blame many of the problems besetting healthcare investing squarely on the agency as delays caused by reviewers push investor pay day further out.
But at the MedTechInvesting Conference in Minneapolis on Monday, moderator Bill Harrington, managing partner at Osage University Partners, half jokingly cautioned that there will be no whining on the matter.
And at least one panelist on a session discussing where medical tech VCs are investing took him seriously.
After a short complaint about the FDA coming from another panelist — John Ryan of Onset Ventures — Juliet Bakker, founder and managing director of Longitude Capital, said that her advice to portfolio companies is to be always be respectful of the FDA.
“After all, they are here to protect us,” she said.
Bakker added that on many occasions companies and regulatory consultants don’t ” bother to answer the questions that the FDA has asked” or give the answers that they want to give. That, she said, creates delays. And delays are anathema to the venture capital and startup community eager to see a return on investment.
“The better part of valor is to respect the FDA” Bakker said.
“Great advice” said Harrington, before moving to the next question.
[Photo Credit: sippakorn]
By Arundhati Parmar
Arundhati Parmar is the Medical Devices Reporter at MedCity News. She has covered medical technology since 2008 and specialized in business journalism since 2001. Parmar has three degrees from three continents - a Bachelor of Arts in English from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India; a Masters in English Literature from the University of Sydney, Australia and a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago. She has sworn never to enter a classroom again.More posts by Author
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