MPM's Challenge: Investing the Largest Health Venture Fund
• By Deborah Erickson, Roger Longman, and Stephen Levin
MPM has raised a $900 million fund. What's it going to spend it on in these troubled times, when valuations across all sectors of the life sciences industry are slipping? MPM plans to direct two-thirds of the fund to product and technology companies, and a third to applied platform firms. The fund will aim for an 80/20 between pharmaceuticals and devices. MPM is particularly keen to find quality-of-life investments for its portfolio. In the pharma sector, MPM may at times take a stripped-down approach to building companies, but it will also do some buy-outs and generally be prepared to invest more and support start-ups longer than VCs did historically.
With valuations across all sectors of the life sciences industry
generally declining, the timing hardly seems propitious to launch
the largest venture capital fund dedicated to health care. Yet that
is precisely what MPM Capital did on December 9, 2002, with the
announcement of the closing of its $900 million MPM BioVentures III
fund.
But what in the world can a VC spend $900 million on? Other venture capitalists speculate that MPM's strategy is...
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