Bring out your dead
One of our favorite movies of all time is the classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This movie is filed with some classic scenes (The Black Knight) and classic quotes (It’s only a flesh wound) and stands out as a favorite to the millions of Python fans. Included in this classic is the bring out your dead scene https://youtu.be/GU0d8kpybVg.
We were reminded of this scene while reading an email about a recent conference which included the following companies:
Bigfoot Biomedical – which isn’t officially dead but isn’t exactly in great shape.
GlySens which was as listed as “Early-stage solution for long-term implantable CGM” now we aren’t sure how they define early stage but GlySens has been around forever and still has nothing much to show anyone.
Speaking of being around forever Intuity Medical yes, they are still alive was in attendance and no they still haven’t done anything either.
And finally Metronom Health one of the many Dexcom wannabees who keeps saying they have … wait for it .. a sensor which is just as good as Dexcom only … wait for it … cheaper – they keep saying it, but they can’t seem to get the damn thing to the FDA.
What these four companies illustrate other than wasting lots of good capital is how gullible investors can be and how little they understand our wacky world. Let’s take Intuity which makes an all in one conventional glucose monitor called the Pogo. Now back in the day before CGM this wasn’t a bad idea, and had they been able to get the damn thing to work it might have been something.
But like so many they couldn’t get the damn thing to work and like so many others they missed their window. Frankly it’s a miracle they are still around but what the heck it’s the holiday season.
GlySens and Metronom are both examples of we can build a better and/or cheaper mousetrap when all they really want is get bought by some larger company seeking to enter the expanding CGM market. Given the many issues facing Senseonics, a company that actually has an implantable sensor on the market, there is little need for anything GlySens could come up but then again, they haven’t come up with any but a very nice PowerPoint.
Metronom has gone beyond GlySens and actually has a nice office and some nice people working for the company but really nothing much in terms of a real working product. Which is too bad as other Dexcom wannabes are getting closer to bringing something to the market. So that window which closed for Intuity is quickly closing for Metronom and GlySens.
But our personal favorite is Bigfoot or as we sometimes call them Big Mouth. If there ever was a company in our wacky world which exemplified the phrase all hat and no cattle, it’s Bigfoot. Bigfoot promised everything and delivered nothing. The raised hope with their flashy social media posts only to deliver a lump of coal in the Xmas stocking.
There is something else all these companies have in common besides over promising and under delivering – at one time or another the West Coast mafia was singing their praises. Yes, the mafia just loves to fall in with way cool whiz bang with little regard to does the damn thing actually work or does the company have a sound business model. Nope if its way cool whiz bang it must be good.
It’s not like we needed more examples of the foolishness that goes in our wacky world, but this bring out your dead investment conference sure did give us a good laugh.
