Last week Steve Case wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post called Give entrepreneurs room and they will grow the economy. For those not familiar with him, Case was the original founding CEO of AOL and he has been an active healthcare investor, among other things, for the past 7 years. My firm, Psilos Group, is a co-investor with Case’s Revolution Health Fund in a health services company called Extend Health.
Anyway, it was a very good editorial and one of the statistics within it particularly stood out to me in light of my venture capital role: firms less than five years old have produced 40 million American jobs over the past three decades–accounting for all of the net new jobs created in that period. That is a pretty stunning fact and also one that really makes a person scratch their head about current U.S. policy towards start-ups. It is worth watching this Kauffman Foundation 3 minute video which is very instructive about start-ups and job creation.
Nowhere is this issue more relevant than in the healthcare industry, which conveniently happens to be the only thing I know anything about. In a world where there is no way out of the healthcare crisis except through the innovation of new ideas to solve our healthcare problems, young companies are the golden ticket to new employment.
