Coming from the strategy and business development side of healthcare, Carrie Williams now applies her expertise to corporate venture capital (CVC). In her new role as principal for McKesson Ventures, she is aware of the value of fresh eyes to old problems, mixed in with operational experience.
She said: “While new to McKesson Ventures, I was previously at McKesson and spent five years in the company’s corporate strategy and business development group. That experience is already proving to be invaluable for quickly ascertaining a particular company’s relevance to McKesson’s strategy, as there is a lot of work to be done to effectively navigate the organisation.”
After leaving McKesson, Carrie joined digital therapeutic company Omada Health in 2014, before returning this year.
“I have been very warmly welcomed back to McKesson and find that having strong relationships that I built when I was last here help me tap into the appetite for investing in innovation in both traditional and non-core areas for the company.
“My role is to understand and develop informed perspectives about emerging innovations within healthcare, assimilate these perspectives in the context of McKesson, identify and evaluate compelling companies in these areas to determine relevancy for an investment, and support the founders and the teams we invest in.”
McKesson Ventures has had an active year. It was a part of Shyft’s series B round, a life science analytics software company; a part of cancer diagnostics Grail’s series B round that raised $900m in March before Grail merged with Cirina two months later; exited Carena after the virtual clinic developer was acquired by Avizia; and led Truveris’ $25m series D round in early September.
All of these were before Williams came on board, late in September. At the time, Tom Rodgers, managing director of McKesson Ventures, said: “Carrie’s lengthy experience throughout the healthcare ecosystem provides us with a diverse array of perspectives from the inside to deliver strategic and valuable investment guidance to pioneering companies.”
For Williams, the same rationale applied: “CVC was most compelling to pursue once the opportunity with McKesson Ventures came up, as I had an operational mindset and had become deeply entrenched within digital health and had previous experience within McKesson.
“I realised that my curiosity and passion for digital health was much bigger than what I was able to explore working for one company at a time. While I truly loved working for the portfolio company, I was very compelled by the prospect of taking a much broader view of the healthcare landscape.
“Doing this with the backdrop of McKesson helps to keep me grounded in the relevant questions to ask as it relates to all the key stakeholders that must be in sync in order for new services, products, and technologies to be widely adopted.“
New to the team, Williams cannot speak to past successes. Instead, she’s looking forward: “I am particularly interested in what I call the digital supply chain – how we get digital technologies and therapeutics to patients with seamless coordination across all stakeholders, meaning the digital providers, clinicians/care team members, patients, payers, and so on, at scale.
“Additionally, given my pharma/biotech clinical trials background, I am excited about the growing focus on improvements to and optimisation of clinical trial and drug approval processes. The list of challenges that I was grappling with 15 years ago are still largely unmet needs.
“Also, I am personally interested in innovation in women’s health. I will be on the lookout for emerging players with value propositions that are relevant to McKesson!”
While Williams is looking forward to the future, she knows getting up to speed now is crucial to any further success, all while juggling family life: “I am also a mother to a toddler, so my husband and I are learning how to navigate life with these new, ever-evolving and very rewarding responsibilities!”
Boston-raised but San Francisco-based, a young daughter and a golden retriever called Fenway all adds up but Williams knows what she needs to deliver.
“I am striving to become an integral player in the venture community both for other investors and entrepreneurs.
“I am working to combine my operational experience with my understanding of various components of the healthcare ecosystem to form a thoughtful and evolving perspective about where to place bets.
“As I demonstrate my capabilities in doing this, I aspire to a partner role within the McKesson Ventures team.
“I am open to where the venture path takes me, but am setting out to excel and deliver value both to McKesson Ventures and to the portfolio companies I have the privilege of engaging with.
“To accomplish this while being seen as a trusted and authentic leader and mentor is an essential component of achieving this success.”
New people bring valuable new perspectives, especially when combined with top-level operational experience. When asked about what CVC could do differently, Williams said: “It is probably a bit early for me to say too definitively, and I cannot speak for all CVCs, but from my early impressions, there is great importance for CVCs to demonstrate emphasis on financial returns just as much as the importance of strategic insight returns.
“Having come from the other side of the table, I see how CVCs could inadvertently consume portfolio company resources by either shaping commercial relationships in a way that more heavily benefits the corporation, by over promising on what their strategic value will be, or falling short in delivering what was conveyed during the funding process.
“I am not suggesting that any of this would be done intentionally. If there is an appropriate balance between the investment and portfolio development sides of CVC teams, the relationships formed with portfolio companies should be quite fulfilling relative to the expectations that are set.”