The gatekeeper: If you want to make it big in health care, it’ll help to get past Lisa Suennen first
MILL VALLEY, Calif. — Lisa Suennen is a unicorn collector.
Here in the seaside office where she takes pitches from health care entrepreneurs, she displays a children’s book titled “If I Were a Unicorn.” It sits behind a headband with a gleaming golden horn and a long trailing mane of hair in all the colors of the rainbow. She also sometimes wears a pair of 4-inch designer stilettos patterned with unicorns.
Why? Silicon Valley’s starry-eyed metaphor for privately held startups valued over $1 billion, Suennen explained, “is a silly construct — and so I have silly things.”
In an industry in which hype can often overtake reality, Suennen (pronounced SOON-en) is quicker than most to call out silliness. She has a reputation as an irreverent straight-talker and, as the lead health care investor for General Electric’s corporate venture arm, she has a knack for deflating doomed business models and bad ideas for improving health care.
She also doesn’t hesitate to make light of those who take themselves overly seriously.
In a recent interview in her office, her expression turned conspiratorial as she described the iconic five-star Rosewood Sand Hill hotel in Menlo Park, Calif., where she’d attended a business dinner the previous evening. “It is straight out of Central
