"This time last year, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers gambled big. Amid all the headlines and hand-wringing over fears of a looming flu outbreak that could kill millions of people, the prominent venture capital firm formed a $200 million fund to invest in new pandemic drugs and vaccines.
As the KPCB Pandemic and Bio Defense Fund marks its first anniversary Friday, this much is clear: Investing in pandemic prevention is enormously risky, with the promise of mega-returns offset by the highly uncertain odds that a pandemic, despite the predictions, will sweep the world.
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Kleiner Perkins won't disclose all of the companies that its fund has bankrolled, but at least two of them are publicly traded and offer a good look into just how stomach-churning pandemic investing can be."
What's giving investors the chills? Analysts say it's the queasiness over whether a pandemic outbreak will happen or, much like the widely-predicted Y2K computer meltdown, will prove to be much ado about nothing.
The likelihood of a pandemic flu "is anyone's guess," said Katherine Kim, analyst for C.E. Unterberg, Towbin. "It's not something you can predict."
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