Hambrecht & Quist
18th Annual Healthcare Conference

Reprise from 1999
On the road for Info.Resource, publisher of WisconsinLifeScience.com

From the Buena Vista to the Hambrecht & Quist Healthcare conference:
a crossroads of two constants

By Lorraine Ruff and David Gabrilska, Partners
Milestones, the critical thinking company
Seattle, WA

The 18th Annual Hambrecht & Quist (Chase H&Q) Healthcare Conference will get underway next week in San Francisco. During the four days more than 250 biotech, medical products and life science service companies will present their stories and progress to an expected 3,000 attendees, most of who actively invest in the life sciences industry.

Attendance at the H&Q healthcare conference is a bit of an art form and requires planning. We traditionally take the opportunity to plot our strategy by pouring over the 300-plus page conference book at the legendary Buena Vista, a pub famous for its Irish coffee. Located at the foot of Hyde Street at Fisherman's Wharf, we learned from Roberto, one of the pub's veteran bartenders, that back in 1952, it took Buena Vista owner, Jack Koeppler, months, perhaps years, to perfect the recipe that would faithfully mimic Shannon Airport's offering, including the mystery of cream that floats atop the high-test coffee elixir. It was discovered that when "the cream was aged for 48 hours and frothed to a precise consistency it would float as delicately as a swan on the surface" of the now famous beverage.

So it is with Chase H&Q. For years the conference has represented an annual starting bell for the New Year, this year a new century. Some even say that the conference tends to set the healthcare industry agenda for the upcoming year and many companies plan to make major announcements coincidental with conference week to appeal, no doubt, to the 100 or so reporters that attend from all over the world. Attendance is by invitation-only. Were it just as simple as let's present our clients to institutional investors who are invested or may invest, the H&Q healthcare conference would be like the others. However, conference planners and managers sweat the details. Cues are consistent from year to year: four concurrent sessions on the half hour from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Big companies present in the largest meeting rooms, with emerging technologies reserved for the smaller.

There are breakout sessions for publicly held companies following their 30-minute general presentation that are open only to institutional investors, closed to the press. Last year a .com company announced that it was raising $40 million, starting in five minutes and closing in 30. They were successful.  Attendees are compelled to pass by each other every half-hour on their way to the next presentation. There's lots of opportunity to keep track of old friends and acquaintances, make a date to talk some business, maybe do a deal. The St. Francis Hotel provides a virtually endless array of nooks and crannies for private conversations that are often prelude to major announcements made in ensuring months.

The H&Q sales message is almost non-existent. The conference has been designed to underpin the notion that H&Q shapes leaders and markets. It's a recipe that works. And oh, by the way, the cream floats.