Interview: Canaan Partners outlines funding priorities

After raising its 10th fund in 2014, Canaan Partners has been actively investing in early stage US biopharm, medtech and digital health opportunities. Having already committed about a quarter of the fund to six companies, with plans in place to invest in up to another 12 businesses, Dr. Stephen Bloch, a partner at the VC, tells Mike Ward how assets that are ready for commercial development fall into his company's sweet spot. And while the VC tends to invest in assets that it knows pharma and medtech companies are interested in acquiring, Canaan Partners is not averse to sometimes taking an ahead-of-the-curve punt on opportunities. Indeed, a decade ago, the VC was prepared to invest in infectious disease assets when pharma had all but exited the area and can boast having a key role in the development of four of the 10 most recent FDA approved antibiotics.