I first met Anthony Philippakis in 2009 when we were internal medicine residents at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. We had just finished rounds on a complicated internal medicine rotation and were in a conference room having lunch. We had been talking about the role of genetics in medicine, and given Anthony’s work in genetics, the group asked him to give an impromptu chalk talk on the history and future of the field.
Never one to shy away from an impromptu chalk talk, Anthony gave us a lucid review of the field and challenged us to think big picture about the future of genomics: We’ve sequenced the genome, now what? What infrastructure do we need to develop the next set of insights? How will these insights be turned into clinical care? How will genetics fit into medicine now and over time? It was striking — we were focused on refilling potassium scales on rounds, but Anthony saw the promise of marrying genomic sequencing, clinical medicine, and data science.
Around this time, a small group of us began discussing what it would look like to create a radically different kind of venture capital fund; we formed Google Ventures (now GV) to pursue this idea. Anthony was already wearing many hats at that stage of his career — an internal medicine resident, a cardiology fellow, a PhD-trained computational biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and a burgeoning entrepreneur. His passion and curiosity led him to take on even more, so he joined us as a venture partner in the early days of the firm's formation. He partnered with the founders of Foundation Medicine — one of GV's early investments — and was embedded at the company, helping them develop the genetic underpinning for their breakthrough diagnostic test for cancer.
Driven by his conviction that medicine and technology create better patient outcomes, Anthony eventually became a cardiologist and the Chief Data Officer at the Broad while continuing to advise GV and build our growing life sciences portfolio. He played a critical role in incubating and co-founding portfolio company Verve Therapeutics, tackling heart disease, the leading cause of death worldwide. Anthony has guided portfolio companies at the intersection of life sciences and machine learning, including Flatiron Health, Gritstone Oncology, Tenaya Therapeutics, and Maze Therapeutics. He also led our Hammer and Nail meetup in Cambridge, MA, alongside Alex Wiltschko, which eventually sparked the idea for GV's podcast, Theory and Practice.
Our life sciences team often thinks about GV as a vehicle for impact beyond what makes for a good business and attractive financial return: What are the clinical needs of society over the next decade? That's where Anthony is squarely focused. Whether investing in therapeutics for heart disease and cancer diagnostics or groundbreaking immunotherapies for infectious disease, Anthony shares our mission to support companies moving the healthcare system forward. He has tremendously impacted our firm, our life sciences portfolio community, and the founders driving the world toward progress.
Today, we're thrilled to recognize physician, genomicist, cardiologist, longtime collaborator, and colleague Anthony Philippakis as our newest general partner. We're delighted to work with him in this new role, where he will go even deeper to back life sciences startups going after healthcare’s boldest challenges with real-world patient impact. Congratulations from all of us at GV!