MedTech Winners of 2013: Foreign Investors

Foreign Investors
A increasingly challenging regulatory environment coupled with the uncertainty around the impact of healthcare reform in the United States sent many life sciences venture capitalists running for the hills—and likely toward the software industry. But this risk aversion from U.S. VCs, particularly toward early-stage companies, has allowed some savvy European life sciences VCs to swoop in and land investment opportunities with truly innovative startups rather than picking at U.S. VC's leftovers. “Because the U.S. market has been depleted from players that are no longer there - some of the blue-chip medtech VCs are no longer there - this has left a vacuum for innovative technologies that normally would have picked up immediately by a venture guy,” according to Antoine Papiernik, managing partner of Paris healthcare VC firm Sofinnova Partners. “[As a result] we are seeing dealflow today that we would have never had five years ago.”

 [image courtesy of m_bartosch, DIGITALART/FREEDIGITALPHOTOS.NET]