Let's stop thinking of it as an end to this life, and start planning a new life for for an exciting new life, in an exclusive new world, (with streets paved with gold.
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Dick Whittington was right. The streets of London really are paved with gold — and you can find it if you scrape hard enough. The Sunday Telegraph has collected quantities of the precious metal from cracks in the pavements outside the capital's most famous jewellers.
Streets Paved with Gold
Our quest was inspired by year-old New Yorker Raffi Stepanian, who crawls around on the sidewalks of Manhattan's "diamond district" looking for chips of gemstones and tiny pieces of gold. The pieces can be so small that they are only recoverable when Mr Stepanian pans the scraped-up dirt using a bowl of water, like a nineteenth-century prospector. High speed rail campaign mocks rich opponents of scheme. Wedding rings go down the pan. Armed with same equipment as Mr Stepanian — tweezers, butter knife and a plastic cup — we start to dig in Hatton Garden, the central London street that is home to dozens of jewellers.
The traders are initially suspicious and then — once appraised of our objective — sceptical. Workers who cut gold with power tools wear special aprons to collect fragments, their clothes are inspected at the end of shifts, and even the water they wash their hands in is collected in a tank from which gold can be retrieved.
Undeterred, we continue digging. The richest seam should be along the pavement kerbs, where a slight lip means that any detritus washed away by rain will be deposited.
A DEEP TALENT POOL
We also pick along cracks by doorsteps and under a bench. Much of the street has been repaved by the local council in recent years and it is a depressing thought that the mother lode could have vanished in the tonnes of rubble taken away.
Of more immediate concern are the street cleaners who patrol frequently, innocently sweeping away rubbish that could contain riches. A day's digging yields no obvious valuables, merely seven pints three litres - around 7lbs 3kg - of what we hope will be paydirt. It includes soil, moss, used chewing gum and human hair. For the next stage we employ the help of Malcolm Thomas, 67, president of the British Gold Panning Association, the world champion and three-time British champion.
The dirt is thoroughly soaked and shaken in a pan to get rid of soil and hair. The residue is tipped into a bowl of flowing water, which washes away lighter particles such as sand. Because gold is very heavy for its size, it will remain behind.
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After around half an hour, we are left with collection of mysterious-looking specks in the bottom of the whirlpool. One popular exit strategy is an initial public offering, selling equity stakes in the company to the public. But even more important than the access to the financial markets is New York's geographic proximity to big pharmaceutical companies, most of which have their headquarters in New York or in nearby New Jersey. The access to Big Pharma is important for two reasons.
First, small biotech companies have to get their drugs into clinical trials before they can release them to the market and make money from them. That fits with the second reason why the close proximity of large pharmaceutical companies is so important to the New York life sciences business. Increasingly, these large firms are buying out their smaller rivals, giving venture capitalists an alternative to an IPO as an exit strategy.
We expect to see the strong interest by large pharma to acquire small life sciences companies to continue.
Streets of London really are paved with gold - Telegraph
Life sciences companies in New York are focused on new drug development. Drugs for cancer and diabetes are among the most popular areas for research, but "cardiovascular is heating up," says Tracy Lefteroff, the global managing partner who runs the life sciences industries services consulting practice at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Instead, they are looking for companies with products under development.
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Meanwhile, VCs are trying to balance the riskier holdings in their portfolios with more stable investments. That way the risk is reduced from the toxicity angle; you simply have to test for efficacy. All told, most venture capitalists consider the present to be a very exciting time to be investing in the life sciences business.
Radius Ventures isn't the biggest venture capital company investing in the life sciences in New York. Likewise, Radius isn't the oldest or best-established venture capital fund in the city, having only been around since But in many ways, it epitomizes venture capital investing in the life sciences business in metropolitan New York. Unlike other venture capital firms, Radius focuses only the life sciences business, with a particular concentration on companies operating in and around New York City.
From my standpoint, New York has more scientific and clinical depth than in any other city. A glance at the backgrounds of the members of Radius' investment team shows exactly how this firm has selected some of the city's best minds. Lubin, for example, has an investment banking background, giving him the financial expertise to determine whether a particular life sciences company has a strong enough business plan to merit investment. He also has a health care background, having founded Cambridge Heart, a cardiology device company that went public in We get in at a very early stage — pre-clinical to clinical testing — but we make sure to invest at a point when important critical milestones are going to be achieved within a reasonable amount of time.