Re:The Fertility Implosion
by ebiester on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @01:39AM
(#3697180)
The real moral of the story? Health care startups in the next 20 years will be hot, as most of our world transitions to taking care of an increasingly elderly generation, robotics fill highly repeatable labor, and the resource crunch makes goods last longer.
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I can already see the reaction to acqui-hires. The sick should love having their services sunsetted.
Ah, but direct to consumer isn't necessarily the right play in this market. HIPPA is still a major pain, and the sick (and families of the sick) tend to have less cash. (Though, they have a lot of points where their lives could be made better by software. The low hanging fruit has been done in the app store, of course.)
Further, if you go B2B, the aqui-hire might be more interesting if you have multiple hospital groups that like your product. (for example) In fact, it makes you more likely to be acquired for your technology.
Or you may be acquired by a bigco and your product killed to eliminate nascent competition. Frankly, I'm not convinced the usual VC-funded startup ecosystem is a great match for healthcare. If you think consumers might be afraid of companies going out of business, you should see how some of a) large businesses that make all decisions for five years at a time or b) small practices that still use Access and macros from 2001 because they work feel about the situation.