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Good One Bad One

In: Business and Management

Submitted By Naveen14
Words 2760
Pages 12
C A.$£~

3

Jack Brandon's initial idea has not panned out, and the cash is nearly gone. But he's got a new plan. Will you back him a second time?

HBR

CASE

STUDY

Good Money After
Bad?
by John W. Mullins

From a rocky perch overlooking the sparkling lights of San Francisco, Christian Harbinson gazed across the bay to the hills above Sausalito. "There's nothing like a vigorous hike;' he thought, "to clear the mind before a crucial meeting:' It was a mild March evening, and the
35-year-old venture capitalist was reflecting on the recommendation he would have to make to his firm's investment committee the next morning about Jack Brandon's young company, Seven Peaks Technologies.
Seven Peaks had developed an innovative device for cauterizing blood vessels during electrosurgery, and although the feedback from surgeons had been excellent, sales had been slow.
The Palo Alto-based venture capital firm where
Harbinson worked, Scharfstein Weekes, had invested $600,000 in Seven Peaks from its newly raised second fund of $100 million. SW's current investment strategy focused on early-stage medical technology companies, and Seven

Peaks was a typical investment for the firm, which liked to get in on promising ideas modestly and then follow with additional rounds of capital after technological and market milestones had been met. The $600,000 was nearly gone; Harbinson and his colleagues had to decide whether to put more into the struggling company. Seven Peaks was looking for another
$400,000 to develop a second product based on its proprietary technology, which enabled surgical instruments to do their work without sticking to tissue-a frustrating problem for most electrosurgeons. Brandon still believed in his technology and in his ability to commercialize it. Harbinson was impressed both with Brandon and with the technology's

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