Silicon Valley venture capital firm BlueRun Ventures LP has seen tremendous success with investments in companies such as Waze Mobile Ltd. and PayPal Holdings Inc. The firm has also been active in the expanding Chinese market, which was originally seen as a copycat to the United States model, explained Jonathan Ebinger (pictured), general partner at BlueRun Ventures.

“What’s happening more and more … you’re seeing Chinese ideas coming to the United States,” he said. “Businesses like WeChat are being copied as fast as they can. You’re seeing Snapchat, Messenger and so forth … are quickly trying to amalgamate as many assets as they can within their viewership, much like we’re seeing with a lot of the Chinese analogues.”

Ebinger spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Palo Alto, California. They discussed the latest trends in the venture world from deal flows and initial coin offerings, as well as the next wave of healthcare innovation.

Trends in ICOs and healthcare

BlueRun has benefitted from the increasing Series A round sizes, because the companies that enter their deal flow have established products and market opportunities. This lets the firm focus on rapid expansion rather than gaining early-stage traction and on the size of the market the company is targeting. Taking big data as an example, BlueRun tends to avoid the “internet of things” segment because companies that provide analytics services to others have a smaller accessible market.

“We tend to like to invest in companies that are big enough that you need to have analytics for them,” he said. “We like companies that have proprietary control of analytics versus necessarily running analytics for company X.”

A new alternative to the traditional Series A round of funding for companies is ICOs. Proponents of cryptocurrencies view the buzz around ICOs as a disruptor to the venture capital industry, because it democratizes the source of a company’s funding to any participant.

The venture capital world, on the other hand, views ICOs simply as an alternative financing method, the way one would think of debt, equity, or friends and family rounds, according to Ebinger. A potential drawback for ICOs is the lack of relationships formed with well-connected venture capitalists who aim to help their portfolio companies succeed.

“I think you have to be smart about it, because if you’re thinking that you’re gonna get the same level of attention from an investor in your ICO that you are going to get from a Series A investor who owns 20 percent of your company, those are two very different value propositions,” Ebinger said.

Asked about the next big wave in innovation, Ebinger quickly pointed to the healthcare industry as ripe for disruption. There are several large, legacy companies and processes in place that are being targeted for disruption from multiple angles, he explained. 

“It is just such a big market right now,” he said. “People have been nibbling all different sides of it right now. There’s been folks who are trying to expedite processing; there are actual innovations happening on the medical side.Technology is just now starting to get into that.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations.

Photo: SiliconANGLE