Throughout the year Lake Whillans, with the help of MedCity News, has explored two key issues for healthcare investors and entrepreneurs: trust and reliability. We’ve helped bring to light some harrowing war stories of partnerships gone bad. We’ve also asked healthcare leaders in the trenches about the best ways to operate in the modern healthcare business world.
Perhaps most important, we’ve surveyed innovators in digital health and life sciences to share insights into one of the most exciting opportunities in healthcare investing: corporate venture capital.
Lake Whillans is excited to be part of the solution for healthcare’s next great companies. We learned that there are some big issues in the corporate VC-startup relationship. But it was exciting to see some funds have consistently earned entrepreneurs’ trust.
We reviewed our research on digital health and life sciences investors again, and are excited to present four corporate funds with the most overall positive feedback from medical innovators.
1. Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC Inc.
JJDC is the oldest corporate venture fund in healthcare. It was the fund life science innovators most trusted, would most likely worth with again in the future, and delivered the most positive experience.
JJDC also has one of the broadest missions of many corporate venture funds. It invests in medical devices, diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, biotech and consumer products. It looks at to the extremely early seed level to more advanced venture funding. Portfolio companies include ReVision Optics and ViaCyte.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
McKesson Ventures is not even a year old (it was launched in December). Yet, in a testimony to the new frontier of digital health, it was considered the most trustworthy and best digital corporate venture fund to work with.
The fund’s big-picture mission is to invest in companies that “catalyze and benefit from the key changes taking place in the healthcare system.”
More specifically, they invest in alternative care delivery models, as well as direct-to-consumer employer enablement and data supply chain businesses. Its portfolio includes Accolade, Carena and PipelineRx.
Lilly Ventures was the third most trustworthy life science fund and was tied for fifth among funds considered the best to work with. Ninety percent of entrepreneurs that worked with Lilly said they would do so again.
Lilly invests in biotechnology companies that leverage proprietary drug discovery and companies that focus on the convergence of devices with pharmaceuticals or diagnostics, among other areas. Its portfolio includes Forma Therapeutics, Lysomal Therapeutics and Numerate.
4. GE Ventures
GE Ventures is one of the few “all-around players” in healthcare that invests aggressively in the life sciences and digital health. It was ranked the fourth most trusted corporate VC in digital health, as well as the fourth-best fund to do business with. It was ranked only slightly lower in life sciences: seventh in trust and ninth as a fund companies would want to do business with.
GE Ventures’ healthcare team looks at companies that have a focus on analytics, therapeutics, genomics and care management, among other areas. Its portfolio includes Apervita, Iora Health, CardioDx, Omada Health and Veracyte.
We congratulate these funds on winning the trust of entrepreneurs across healthcare and hope they continue to build on that bond. Lake Whillans will also continue to work on behalf of the medical industry (we have plans to launch even more surveys with MedCity News and its sister publications in the coming months).
This post is sponsored by Lake Whillans, a distressed venture capital and litigation finance firm that helps companies facing litigation or arbitration. For more information, visit lakewhillans.com, follow the firm on Twitter and LinkedIn, or email [email protected].
