Over the last five years, Needham & Co. has been one of the top five underwriters of IPOs in the technology industry – specifically software. Needham’s sweet spot is emerging growth companies with market capitalizations below $250 million.
In the healthcare IT space, Needham follows about one hundred private companies and twelve public companies. Davis believes it’s a big opportunity as the healthcare industry remains largely paper-dependent and technically antiquated. He points to Athena Health and Phase Forward as two of the best performers.
Davis tells healthcare IT companies to 1) deliver a product that offers a hard dollar return on investment, 2) don’t force process change on the user – people are slow to adapt and 3) as much as possible, avoid products that require FDA approval.