Bait and switch is a tactic often used by automobile dealers to attract customers with one vehicle, then redirect their focus to another vehicle that brings the seller more profit. Investors need to be wary of these same tricks. Always pay attention to the value proposition you originally signed up for. One example is Desktop […]
Many moons ago, famed venture capitalist Marc Andreessen described the term “product-market fit” as “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” To prove that you have product-market fit, just sell a meaningful amount of your product and service to end customers – no subsidies, no free trials counted as […]
Regular Nanalyze readers often hear this refrain from us: We invest in companies, not stories or stocks. That means we don’t allow ourselves to get caught up in the hype or volatility that accompanies retail investing. And that’s why we’ve worked hard to build objective metrics and processes for investing in disruptive technologies, because we […]
Someone once said it’s easier to fool people than convince them they’ve been fooled. For those who invest with conviction, nothing damages one’s pride more than accusations of being conned. Investors must be wary of letting such emotions get in the way of objectivity. Anyone who dismisses an entire short report as biased one-sided tripe […]
Software quality assurance engineers know there’s no such thing as “defect free” software. It’s all about making a judgment call as to when none of the outstanding defects qualify as showstoppers. Even the miraculous system that makes up the human body makes mistakes. “A genetic disorder is a disease caused in whole or in part […]
Anyone who remembers the days of Flamel and Sky Pharma knows that the promise of nano drug delivery never really panned out for retail investors. These two firms promised to transform healthcare by using nanotechnology to deliver drugs more effectively. The technology moved on, while the supposed pioneers didn’t. The first nanotechnology-based cancer drugs to […]
When you’re managing a portfolio of tech stocks with a limit on the number you can hold, you need to start making difficult judgment calls. Perhaps you find two compelling companies addressing the same theme and you need to pick “the best one.” This is the Palantir vs. C3 problem. Or you might be holding […]
Don’t invest in stories. Don’t invest in a company before they have meaningful revenues. Don’t invest in drug developers that have a great deal of regulatory risk. These are all rules we need to break if we want exposure to a technology that allows mankind to start playing with the recipe of life – gene […]
When we first encountered the exciting world of synthetic biology, we couldn’t wait to invest in the leader at the time – Intrexon. Then, when the company’s fearless leader spent an earnings call talking about how much money they planned to make selling apple slices, we exited our position and realized that most synthetic biology […]
Synthetic biology is the single most exciting technology we know of, but execution has been problematic. From Intrexon to Zymergen, synthetic biology stocks have punished investors for believing that harnessing the most powerful technology known to man – nature – was going to be easy. While we couldn’t be more excited about the potential of […]