From entrepreneur to investor
Why there’s never been a better time to invest in biotechnology
I was first introduced to the Innovation Endeavors team and ethos several years ago when I was a guest at Curiosity Camp. I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived at my first Camp. What I found was the most positive and thoughtful group of technical and scientific founders who were trying to solve some of the most difficult challenges in climate, energy, medicine, and beyond. I also found a community of people willing to generously share their knowledge and experience with anyone willing to ask deep questions about their area of technical or scientific expertise. In other words: my kind of people. Most recently, I’ve spent time with the team as a Venture Partner.
Today, I’m thrilled to introduce myself as the newest Innovation Endeavors Partner. The timing is perfect: biotechnology is poised for a Super Evolution.
A new era for biotech
The next decade will be one of the most interesting and significant inflection points for biotech in all of human history. In the same way that the last 10+ years of technological advancements ushered in a new era for digital technology and IT, the next decade will bring similar transformations in biology and medicine. I believe we will soon see an unprecedented convergence of technologies developed for molecular profiling, imaging, machine learning, AI, synthetic biology, and more. Recent advances in chemical biology, bioengineering, computation, and many other disciplines have already begun to reshape our world — from new medicines to the food we eat to the physical inputs in our global economy.
It’s never been a better time to invest in this field of study and discovery.
Much like my colleagues, I come to venture capital through entrepreneurship — and academia! I co-founded NuMedii, a biotechnology company applying machine learning and big multi-omic data to drug discovery back in 2008. I later co-founded Onegevity Health (acquired by Thorne) in 2018 to leverage multi-omic artificial intelligence for preventative healthcare. Most recently, I served as the Chief Scientific Officer at Tempus Labs, a technology company focused on bringing the power of data and artificial intelligence to precision medicine. Before joining Tempus, I was an Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and founding Director of the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. There, I managed a large research team and developed research programs in systems biology and precision medicine. My former academic teams and I published novel methods and research studies to integrate and interrogate complex types of molecular and real-world clinical data.
Each of these ventures (academic or entrepreneurial) was fueled by my research into biomedical informatics (the focus of my Ph.D. studies at Stanford University) and my belief that technology will only continue to augment medicine.
I’m sharing all of this because Innovation Endeavors is a great fit for those who approach entrepreneurship and investing with the same thoughtful rigor that they would their research. Its culture is one of collaboration, curiosity, and excitement to fund the discoveries that lie just beyond our horizon. We’re here to tackle the big challenges facing humanity over the next decade — and biotech is poised to offer many of the solutions. I look forward to lending my expertise to the team just as much as I look forward to learning from them.
We recently announced our investment into deep real-world drug discovery with Character Biosciences. And I will share more in the coming weeks. And of course, Innovation Endeavors has made many investments in biotech already, including Color, Eikon Therapeutics, Freenome, and GRO Biosciences Vicarious Surgical, Viz.ai, — to name a few.
So if you are a founder obsessed with the intersection of technology, computation, biology, machine learning, or synthetic biology, please reach out.
