Burrill and Piper Jaffray
Posted on July 17th, 2009 – 11:41 AMBy Thomas Lee
Will Piper Jaffray invest in Steve Burrill’s $1 billion Elk Run fund?
Would seem to make sense. Burrill, a San Francisco-based biotech investor, is scouring the Twin Cities for capital and as Minnesota’s largest investment bank, Piper presumably has some.
To me, Elk Run also fits the “alternative investment” portfolio Piper hired Lois Quam to create before she quit in April after only two years on the job.
Under Quam’s leadership, Piper was supposed to invest directly in health care and green energy start-ups instead of just earning fees from managing IPOs and advising mergers and acquisitions. She even recruited Doug Cameron, a respected clean tech venture capitalist, to look for deals. But the cash strapped Piper never made any and Quam left to start her own incubator.
Cameron, as it turns out, knows Burrill pretty well from his days in Silicon Valley. On Thursday, Burrill, who was in town to court potential investors, swung by Piper Jaffray headquarters in downtown Minneapolis to chat with Cameron.
In an interview afterwards, Burrill said they only talked broadly about biosciences and didn’t directly discuss the venture fund.
Cameron himself was mum.
“I have known Steve for several years; we had a nice visit,” Cameron wrote in an e-mail. “Can’t comment on the fund.”
Hmmmm…..
