One of the old saws in journalism is to “follow the money” when you’re looking for a story. But sometimes you learn even more by following the people.
The people, in this case, are biotech venture capitalists. Regular readers of this column know that biotech VC has been going through a historic shakeout the last few years. The institutional investors who back VCs have gotten fed up with the long investment timelines, high degree of risk, and limp returns from this group of well-compensated asset managers. Not surprisingly, many VC firms have been unable to continue to raise new funds, and have turned into zombies.