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The truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

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Re: The truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

#21
post #16

I've been inside the conference- I used to do due diligence and discovery for Google Ventures and they gave me a ticket one year. The "talks" were eminently forgettable ("we put this in X people and Y died") and the power meetings were... also fairly forgettable. A lot of it is just puffery, and a lot of the dealmakers have no real understanding of the area they are in (softbank seems to be the place where bad ideas…

All the action at PSB happens in the hot tub discussions. I didn't spend any time in them, as I was too junior and didn't know the right people, but PSB did get me some good post doc options!

Not much industry there though, unless it's changed in recent years. One of the more scientifically productive conferences because of the connections that people establish.

(Inside JPMorgan is so crowded and not so useful. I got a really really bad impression of 10X when I saw their debut at JPMorgan but that was an incorrect impression because they have done really well, mostly by not actually doing any of the products they touted at their presentation.).

Re: The truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

#22
post #16

I've been inside the conference- I used to do due diligence and discovery for Google Ventures and they gave me a ticket one year. The "talks" were eminently forgettable ("we put this in X people and Y died") and the power meetings were... also fairly forgettable. A lot of it is just puffery, and a lot of the dealmakers have no real understanding of the area they are in (softbank seems to be the place where bad ideas…

All the action at PSB happens in the hot tub discussions. I didn't spend any time in them, as I was too junior and didn't know the right people, but PSB did get me some good post doc options! Not much industry there though, unless it's changed in recent years. One of the more scientifically productive conferences because of the connections that people establish. (Inside JPMorgan is so crowded and not so useful. I got…

[deleted]

Re: The truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

#24

Reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut - what a wonderful and absurd article

What is the Vonnegut-esque in your view?

> The Sirens of Titan [1] is a comic science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., first published in 1959. His second novel, it involves issues of free will, omniscience, and the overall purpose of human history, with much of the story revolving around a Martian invasion of Earth.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirens_of_Titan

Re: The truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

#25
post #8

from my understanding, it's a healthcare investors conference where investors meet companies (both public and private), esp those looking to fund raise.

My wife was there last year. There are a lot of investment opportunities. Plenty of dinners and meetings away from the conference. It's the whole drinking from a fire hose as there is too much to see and do.

Makes me wonder if this how the creature under California feels.

Re: The truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

#28
The point of the conference is not the official conference itself, but the meetings that happen around the conference. This is not true of all conferences, but for the JPMHC, and many other major conferences, that is the entire point. It's just a way to get people all in one place at one time, so that there is an efficient gathering to do deals.

Funds pay thousands, often $10K+, per room at the nearby hotels, often spending hundreds of thousands to book over a dozen hotel rooms to use as makeshift conference rooms. The hotels often don't even allow people to sleep in the rooms, only to use them strictly as conference rooms.

All the real action happens in those hotel rooms, at private events, private receptions, etc.

Re: The truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

#29
Seems like a subset of enthusiasts - early stage VC types, people working in product, people who write lengthy healthcare posts on LinkedIn, have been trying to position it as another HLTH, but that’s not what it is. It’s an investor conference that you need to be invited to. Wouldn’t be surprising if JPM somehow had taken a stake or done a deal with your company, combined with some government insiders. The digital health community, however, has used it to start off the new year with a bang. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Re: The truth behind the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

#30

The point of the conference is not the official conference itself, but the meetings that happen around the conference. This is not true of all conferences, but for the JPMHC, and many other major conferences, that is the entire point. It's just a way to get people all in one place at one time, so that there is an efficient gathering to do deals. Funds pay thousands, often $10K+, per room at the nearby hotels, often s…

This is how RSA works, too.
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