I read a few daily e-mail blasts on recently closed venture capital deals. The juxtaposition of two deals reported today really struck me. And made me nervous. The first item reported that a scrapbooking website had just raised $100 million and the company was valued at $1.5 billion (yes, with a “B” as in “Bruce”). The second reported that a company developing a novel heart valve for patients with heart disease raised $35 million. The blurb did not report the valuation of the heart valve company, but that’s my business and I happen to know some of the investors in that deal and trust me when I tell you the valuation of the heart valve company was a few zeros shy of $1.5 billion.
So, here we are, an aging population with a shiny new healthcare law and we value scrapbooking 100 times more than we do heart valves.
Maybe it’s not such a bad thing. At least we can all sit around and do really efficient, high-tech on-line scrapbooking of our old photos as our hearts give out.
The invisible hand of the market speaks: we’d rather have something fun to do while we live than prolong our lives.