Brook Byers (born August 2, 1945, Belleville, IL (Scott Air Force Base)) [1] is a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and the brother of Stanford University Professor Tom Byers and Atlanta, Georgia engineering entrepreneur Ken Byers.
Raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Byers earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1968 from Georgia Tech and an MBA from Stanford University.
Brook Byers has been a venture capital investor since 1972. He has been closely involved with more than fifty new technology based ventures, over half of which have already become public companies. He formed the first Life Sciences practice group in the venture capital profession in 1984 and led KPCB to become a top tier venture capital firm in the medical, healthcare, and biotechnology sectors. KPCB has invested in and helped build over 110 Life Sciences companies which have already developed hundreds of products to treat major underserved medical needs for millions of patients. [2] [3]
Byers was the founding president and then chairman, of four biotechnology companies which were incubated in KPCB's offices and went on to become public companies with an aggregate market value over $8 Billion. He is often featured on the Forbes Midas list and is currently on the board of directors of ten companies; CardioDX, Crescendo Bioscience, Inc., Genomic Health Incorporated, Five Prime Therapeutics, OptiMedica, HX Diagnostics, Pacific Biosciences, Inc., Tethys, Veracyte, Inc., and XDx, Inc. [4] Previously, he served on the board of directors of Idec Pharmaceuticals (chairman), Athena Neurosciences (chairman), Signal Pharmaceuticals, Arris Pharmaceuticals, Pharmacopeia, Ligand Pharmaceuticals (chairman), Hybritech (chairman), Genprobe, Nanogen, and others. These companies have pioneered the medical use of molecular biology, monoclonal antibodies, personalized medicine, molecular diagnostics and genomics. [5]
Byers is currently a board member of the University of California at San Francisco Medical Foundation, the New Schools Foundation, [6] Stanford's Bio-X Advisory Council and the Stanford Eye Council. He was co-chair of the five-year, $1.4 billion, UCSF Capital Campaign. In 2007, he was awarded the “UCSF Medal” as their honorary degree equivalent. [7] In 2008, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [8] In 2009, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Venture Capital Association.
Byers was president and a director of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists and is a contributing author of the book Guide to Venture Capital. He is currently a board member of the University of California at San Francisco Medical Foundation, the California Healthcare Institute, the NewSchools Venture Fund, Stanford's Bio-X Advisory Council, the Stanford Eye Council and TechNet. He is co-chair of the UCSF Capital Campaign.
He was formerly a director of the Entrepreneurs Foundation, the California Healthcare Institute, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Stanford University Graduate School of Business Advisory Council, UCSF's That Man May See Vision Research Foundation (chairman), and the Georgia Tech Advisory Board, and was a founder of TechNet.
Byers is also a member of the Environmental Defense Fund. [9]
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and it is dedicated entirely to health science. It conducts research and teaching in medical and biological sciences.
Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs in over 900 ventures, including America Online, Amazon.com, Tandem Computers, Compaq, Electronic Arts, JD.com, Square, Genentech, Google, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Nest, Palo Alto Networks, Synack, Snap, AppDynamics, and Twitter. By 2019 it had raised around $9 billion in 19 venture capital funds and four growth funds.
L. John Doerr is an American investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins in Menlo Park, California. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the President and his administration with advice and counsel in trying to fix America's economic downturn. In 2017, related to Forbes, he was recognized the 40th Richest In Tech. As of July 2017, Forbes ranked Doerr as the 105th richest person in the United States and the 303rd richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$ 12.7 billion as of March 3, 2021. Doerr is the author of Measure What Matters, a book about goal-setting, and Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now.
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CHI-California Healthcare Institute is a private, non-profit public policy research and advocacy organization, representing more than 250 universities, academic research centers, biotechnology, and medical device companies. Founded in 1993, and based in La Jolla, California, CHI has offices in Washington, D.C., and Sacramento, California. CHI publishes an annual California Biomedical Industry report, providing data on the scope and scale of academic and commercial life sciences research and development within the state. In 2008, the industry employed more than 270,000 Californians and produced revenues in excess of $75 billion.
The iFund is a US$200 million capital fund. Developers may enter into equity deals for the creation of applications, services, and components for Apple Inc.'s iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad platform. It is being offered and managed by venture capital company Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB).
The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) is a nonprofit research and technology commercialization institute affiliated with three campuses of the University of California in the San Francisco Bay Area: Berkeley, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz. QB3's domain is the quantitative biosciences: areas of biology in which advances are chiefly made by scientists applying techniques from physics, chemistry, engineering, and computer science.
Ivor Royston, M.D., is an oncologist, researcher, scientist, entrepreneur and venture capitalist, recognized for his efforts to develop treatments for multiple disease targets and to fund biotechnology companies with promising science, technology or medicines. He speaks regularly at healthcare conferences and symposia throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.
Sue Desmond-Hellmann is an American oncologist and biotechnology leader who served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2014–2020. She was previously Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the first woman to hold the position, and Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Distinguished Professor, and before that president of product development at Genentech, where she played a role in the development of the first gene-targeted cancer drugs, Avastin and Herceptin.
Trevor Fetter is an American businessman, the lead independent director of The Hartford Financial Services Group, and the former president, CEO, and chairman of Tenet Healthcare. He is a senior lecturer in the General Management unit of Harvard Business School (HBS), teaching Leadership and Corporate Accountability in its MBA program; his alma mater, where he is also a founding member of the HBS Healthcare Initiative Advisory Board, and a former member of the Board of Dean's Advisors. He has appeared several times on the “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare" list compiled by Modern Healthcare.
Duane J. Roth was chief executive officer and member of the board of CONNECT. He graduated from Iowa Wesleyan College.
Life Sciences Foundation (LSF) was a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that was established in 2011 to collect, preserve, interpret, and promote the history of biotechnology. LSF conducted historical research, maintained archives and published historically relevant materials and information.
Michael McCullough is an American investor in healthcare and life science companies, social entrepreneur, and emergency room doctor. He was a Rhodes Scholar. He lives in Palo Alto, California.
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Eric Xu Yong is a Chinese entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. He is best known as co-founder of Baidu, the largest Chinese search engine.
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William H.Rastetter, a scientist, entrepreneur and venture capitalist, is the chair of Neurocrine Biosciences, of Fate Therapeutics, and of Daré Bioscience, Inc. in San Diego, California. He is a founding board member and investor in GRAIL, Inc. in Menlo Park, California, and served for a period as the company's interim CEO (2017) and chair (2017-2018). Rastetter is also a director of Regulus Therapeutics. He was a partner in the venture firm Venrock (2006-2013), and a trustee at Caltech (2015-2018). He has served as a director (1998-2016) and as chair of Illumina (2005-2016). He advised SVB Leerink (2014-2019) and currently advises Illumina Ventures.
Frederick Frank CFA was an investment banker, with more than 50 years of experience on Wall Street. He is considered the first investment banker to have specialized in the areas of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and health care services.
Steven A. Denning is an American businessman and philanthropist. He is Chairman Emeritus of global growth equity firm General Atlantic. Denning has been with General Atlantic since its founding in 1980, leading the firm as CEO from 1995 to 2006 when he assumed the role of chairman. He helped build General Atlantic with a singular vision of supporting entrepreneurs as they work to grow their businesses.