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Startups in the Bay Area

Some of the most innovative healthcare providers and medical device companies are based in Silicon Valley, which leads the nation in venture capital funding for medical devices. The exact number of companies is difficult to quantify because there are many small private enterprises. However, the Lab Rat website, which has a pretty comprehensive list of bioscience related companies, states that there are about 240 bioscience related companies in the Bay Area. There have also been many University-business collaborations that are leading to new developments and growth within the bio-tech and medical device sectors.

The University of California, San Francisco–number two on the top 10 research institutions list with more than a half-billion dollars in funding last year from the National Institutes of Health–is a hotbed of research and development activity, most recently collaborating with MedImmune. They have an Entrepreneurship Center where students create business plans and test the plans at the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences. QB3 is a state-sponsored program that provides private incubator lab space for fledgling companies at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and UCSF.

At UC Berkley’s Graduate Program in Health Management (GPHM), students can enroll in the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship. The program was ranked #3 in the country by the Wall Street Journal in 2006 and the Lester Center won the 2006 Nasdaq Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence Award. There is also a BioFellowship program that combines academic fundamentals taught in the classroom with real-world experience in a VC-backed medical device startup. Three Arch Partners works closely with the Haas Healthcare and BioBusiness Club (H2B2) and the Lester Center to match passionate students in healthcare to companies at the forefront of medical technology. Three Arch Partners invests only in healthcare firms that specialize in medical device and healthcare services. It comes as no surprise why the Bay Area is a hotbed for medical device companies and start-ups.

-Leslie Tran
Intern at Ryzen Solutions

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