Wordlab

I am in the process of launching a new tech-enabled health care services focused investment fund (venture capital and private equity) and am having a lot of trouble coming up with a creative name. In the long run we may not be purely health care focused so something that allows us flexibility would be very helpful. We would most likely add tech-enabled business services as a secondary vertical next. We are not a typical venture capital or private equity fund. Our capital is longer-term focused (not necessarily 3-5 year exits) and we believe in being a hands-on value-added partner. A lot of venture funds make these claims but rarely deliver. We will be thesis driven low volume investors that have built our own companies as well as invested at all stages of a company’s life and levels of the capital structure. Our new firm will invest in early to late stage companies and incubate both internal and external ideas / business plans. We don’t necessarily mind having capital, investor, ventures or investments in the name but arent trying to be like our competition and name it after our street or some obscure island. A tag line we toss around is “venture as a style not necessarily a stage” alluding to the first generation of venture capitalist that ran small nimble funds that were truly value-added partners not just money.

Value Add: Utilize active board of advisors that have vested interest in the companies and underwriting processes (this is not the norm in our industry – most take the advisory board on a trip once a year and if they have something to add to a portfolio company then they pay them for that. We have metrics they have to adhere to but they own part of all the companies we invest in / buy). On top of that our internal team is very hands on not in terms of micro managing but in terms of helping build infrastructure, business development, finance and strategy.

some of our competition in general:

http://www.idealab.com/

http://www.sandboxindustries.com/

http://flybridge.com/

http://www.scalevp.com/

http://generalcatalyst.com/

some of our competition in health care:

http://www.hlmventurepartners.com/

http://www.svlsa.com/

http://www.psilos.com/

http://www.healthevolutionpartners.com/

http://www.hepfund.com/

http://www.healthedgepartners.com/

http://www.lemhiventures.com/

http://www.ballastpointventures.com/

we need to have a need the appeals to forward thinking / innovative CEOs / founders and at the same time inspire confidence.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Nimble Niche

Agile Applecart

Vested Interest Vehicles

Catalyst for Curatives

Cathartech

Healthy Portfolio

Fit As A Fiddle Fund

Fine Fettle Fund

Tapestry

thanks for the thoughtful responses….any more ideas would be very helpful

i really like names like foundation ventures, general catalyst, scale venture partners, idealab etc…

I am trying to figure out a name that encompasses innovation, growth, partnership, building, launching, scaling the venture, solving the puzzle, linkage……..

thanks

Sounds like you’ve come up with your own creative contributions. Good luck!

Thoughts re: “Health Lab” ???? would have to use domain health-lab.com

‘Health lab’ will (in my view) probably conjure up the wrong picture in your target audiences’ minds; you know what you mean but they probably will not. I

Inside Dragon

yeah i hear you…..i also worried that it would conjure images of lab businesses or drug / device development versus health care services…….this is a lot harder than it looks