June 17, 2021
Juneteenth 2021:
GV Champions of Change
Introducing Ten Leaders Pioneering Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Just over a year ago, tens of millions of people in an estimated 60 countries protested for racial equity in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in police custody. Reactions ranged from resigned anger - but not surprise - at yet another Black American’s death just weeks after Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor; to shock and outrage.
Read moreJune 17, 2021
How Verve's 'One Shot' Triggered a Remarkable Breakthrough in the Fight to End Heart Disease
In early 2016, Anthony Philippakis found a brave new idea. A former cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and adviser to the American Heart Association, Anthony has dedicated his career to helping patients and their families manage heart disease. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the world, and in the United States, one person dies every 36 seconds from the affliction.
Read moreJune 17, 2021
Neo4j: A Quest to Make Better Sense of Data
In 2000, Emil Eifrem knew that graph technology could make better sense of data. On a flight to Mumbai, he sketched out the concept for a graph database on the back of a napkin and quietly began working on a prototype along with Johan Svensson and Peter Neubauer.
Read moreJune 17, 2021
23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki on Radically Transforming Access to Genetic Information
In February 2001, Nature published the first draft sequence and initial analysis of the human genome, a project made possible by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium. It's fitting that on the 20th anniversary of the first draft sequence, 23andMe — a pioneer in direct-to-consumer genetic testing — announced its intent to become a publicly-traded company.
Read moreJune 10, 2021
Bonus Episode of Theory and Practice: The Patient Perspective
When I was going through my medical training, one of the senior clinicians I most admired made a point to teach us how much doctors can learn from their patients. I can think of no better exemplar of that than today's bonus episode of Theory and Practice, where we talk with Julia Vitarello, the mother of a child with a rare genetic disease.
Read moreJune 03, 2021
Genentech’s Aviv Regev on the Promise of Single Cell Genomics
It’s rare to meet a true visionary, someone who sees where the world can go before anyone else sees it. And it’s even rarer to meet someone who not only recognizes the opportunity, but also has the conviction and energy to make it a reality.
Read moreJune 03, 2021
Freada Kapor Klein on Increasing Diversity Across Venture Capital
Freada Kapor Klein is a force of nature. As co-founder of Kapor Capital and the Kapor Center, she applies her experience as a venture capitalist, social policy researcher, and philanthropist to her mission: making the tech ecosystem more diverse and inclusive.
Read moreMay 27, 2021
Ex-FDA Lead Amy Abernethy on Closing the Gap Between Clinical Practice and Clinical Research
I first got to know Amy Abernethy when I was an observer on the board of Flatiron Health, and she was the company’s chief medical officer. Both of us were physician-scientists with a special interest in the data sciences, and we instantly developed a deep friendship.
Read moreMay 26, 2021
Autonomous Aircraft Startup Merlin Labs Takes Flight
As a frontier technology investor, my search for startups at the cutting edge of food, space, and robotics has taken me to some pretty unique places. That’s why last fall, I found myself in the middle of the Mojave Desert, squinting into the sun to witness a fully autonomous flight made possible by Merlin Labs.
Read moreMay 20, 2021
Dr. David Altshuler on Translating the Human Genome Project Into Benefits for Human Health
When I think of the mentors in my life who have most shaped my career, David Altschuler is at the top of the list. I first met David when I was a medical student, and I spent my last year of my MD-PhD working in his lab at Massachusetts General Hospital. At the time, a new type of DNA sequencer (Solexa, soon to be acquired by Illumina) had just arrived at the Broad, and I raised my hand to be one of the people in his lab to get it up and running.
Read moreMay 13, 2021
Dr. Tim Yu on Running the First “N of 1” Drug Trial
Every so often, someone comes up with a new idea that is truly visionary. The first time you see it, you may not immediately appreciate how transformational it might become. Dr. Tim Yu’s work in running the first “N of 1” drug trial falls in that bucket. As an attending physician in Boston Children’s Hospital’s Division of Genetics and Genomics, Tim was caring for a young patient with a devastating genetic mutation.
Read moreMay 13, 2021
The Pill Club: Driving Women's Health Forward
I first crossed paths with the formidable Liz Meyerdirk in the early days at Uber. I was a product manager, and Liz was the head of strategy and business development for Uber Everything, its merchant delivery program. At the end of last year, Liz moved from Uber to the CEO role at The Pill Club, a digital health platform for women offering better access to reproductive and contraceptive care.
Read moreMay 06, 2021
Theory and Practice Podcast: Dr. Krishna Yeshwant on Exploring the Intersection of Technology and Life Sciences
I went to medical school and did my residency with Dr. Krishna Yeshwant, our managing partner at GV and a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. We first met after a talk I’d given on human genetics, when Krishna approached me and said, “Hey, could we have lunch? I want to hear more about this.” Little did I know that my relationship with Krishna would grow into one of the defining elements of my career!
Read moreApril 29, 2021
Dr. Caroline Uhler on Harnessing the Power of Machine Learning to Drive New Discoveries in Biology
Caroline Uhler and I are co-directors of the new Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center within the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, which seeks to catalyze research at the interface of the life sciences and the data sciences. While Caroline is someone I now talk to every day, we had actually never met until June of last year.
Read moreApril 26, 2021
Biotech Leader Dan Lynch Joins the GV Life Sciences Team
I'm very excited to welcome Dan Lynch to GV as an Executive Venture Partner and senior member of the life sciences team. I first crossed paths with Dan many years ago at Wesleyan University and have continued to hear his name in biotech circles throughout my career.
Read moreApril 22, 2021
UC Berkeley’s Dr. Jennifer Listgarten on Solving Biological Questions with Creative Machine Learning
This week on Theory and Practice we speak with Jennifer Listgarten, a professor in UC Berkeley's Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department and the Center for Computational Biology.
Read moreApril 15, 2021
Sir Rory Collins on the Power of Math and Biomedical Data to Solve Today’s Health Problems
In addition to his early work running cardiovascular trials for statins and streptokinase, Professor Collins is perhaps best known for his more recent work: setting up and managing the UK Biobank, the largest, most detailed, and most accessible biomedical database in the world.
Read moreApril 08, 2021
Theory and Practice: A Conversation with the Broad Institute's Anne Carpenter
GV Podcast Theory and Practice talks to Dr Anne Carpenter, inventor of CellProfiler, who designed a method for coloring and analyzing cells. She works at the Broad Institute as the Senior Director of the Imaging Platform and is an Institute Scientist.
Read moreApril 07, 2021
Facebook Veteran Julie Zhuo: Lessons from High-Growth Startups and How to Hire Exceptional Designers
I first met creative entrepreneur Julie Zhuo at Facebook when the company had just a few scrappy offices in Palo Alto and we were celebrating a couple hundred million users. Julie started at Facebook as an engineering intern, worked her way up to Vice President of Design, and then made the jump back into the startup world with her new company, Sundial.
Read moreApril 01, 2021
Women of Color, Board Service, and the Value We Bring
Boards of directors are the people who determine business decisions that shape many aspects of society. Prominent efforts to increase gender diversity on boards are making a difference, albeit slowly — in 2020 more women were in the boardroom in both private and public companies. However, in a country in which women of color are nearly one in five Americans, under 5% of Fortune 500 board directors are women of color...
Read moreMarch 31, 2021
Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann: Leadership, Gender, and Impact
Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann recently spoke with our GV Impact List 2021 leaders, openly sharing the stories and insights she has gained over four decades of breaking glass. In our chat, she explores what it’s like to upend cultural norms, the importance of learning from — and learning to negotiate with — fierce leaders, the art of advocating for yourself, and tackling key issues like pay disparity and discrimination in the workplace.
Read moreMarch 25, 2021
Leyden Labs’ Unconventional Approach to Pandemic Preparedness with Intranasal Medicine
During the first lockdown in Amsterdam last May, biotech leader Koenraad Wiedhaup met safely outdoors with a small handful of concerned virologists and healthcare executives. "We asked ourselves one question," Koenraad recalls. "How can we ensure that this pandemic will never happen again?"
Read moreMarch 16, 2021
Plexo’s Lo Toney on Diversity and Equity in Venture Capital
I first met Lo Toney seven years ago when we teamed up to develop GV’s first diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Part of our mission was to find ways to increase investments in startups founded by women and people of color, not just at GV but across venture capital.
Read moreMarch 10, 2021
Adagio Therapeutics' Tillman Gerngross on Bringing Covid-19 Antibodies to Clinical Trials in Record Time
As COVID-19 began to spread rapidly across the world in March 2020, Tillman Gerngross and a team of highly regarded scientists founded Adagio Therapeutics — a spin-off of Adimab — to tackle the pandemic and related coronaviruses that may emerge in the future.
Read moreMarch 08, 2021
Introducing the GV Impact List 2021
25 Leaders Changing the Face of Tech and Life Sciences
In honor of International Women’s Day today, our annual GV Impact List pays tribute to 25 leaders who are changing the face of technology and life sciences.
Read moreMarch 04, 2021
Doppler: Keeping Secrets in Sync for Modern Developers
At just 26, Doppler CEO Brian Vallelunga knows a lot about keeping secrets. This former lead software engineer at Uber and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree has made it his mission to take the headache out of secrets management for developers.
Read moreFebruary 23, 2021
“Anything Is Possible”: How Multiverse Apprenticeships Create New Paths to Career Success
In 2019, more than 7.2 million job openings in the U.S. could not be filled, due to the growing skills gap in the workforce. According to the World Economic Forum, closing the skills gap by 2028 could boost global GDP by $11.5 trillion...
Read moreFebruary 22, 2021
Nanit: Investing in Better Sleep for Families
As a mother of three, Nanit CEO Sarah Dorsett knows firsthand just how important it is for parents and babies to get proper sleep. "On average, parents lose 44 nights of sleep in just their first year of parenting," she says. And living through COVID-19 hasn't made sleep routines easier on families."
Read moreFebruary 17, 2021
Dandelion’s Kathy Hannun On Why Geothermal is Heating Up
As climate change has increasingly become the most pressing issue of our generation, sustainability presents the kind of opportunity we're especially excited about at GV: a problem of global magnitude, and solutions that require both creativity and engineering.
Read moreFebruary 08, 2021
Dialpad’s Craig Walker on His Entrepreneurial Journey: “Work Isn’t a Place You Go”
Eleven years ago, when I set up GV with three other general partners, we began with the thesis that we’d bet on people as much as companies. Serial entrepreneur Craig Walker was one of the first founders we backed, and we brought him into GV even before he knew exactly what kind of company he would start...
Read moreFebruary 03, 2021
The Future of Local Commerce is Nearby
When COVID-19 hit early last year, April Underwood, like all of us, watched in disbelief as small businesses in her town of San Anselmo were forced to scramble overnight and figure out how to stay alive. This trend, of course, was happening far and wide. Last fall, the WSJ reported on a study that found one in five businesses...
Read moreFebruary 02, 2021
Remote Work Is the Future: Five Highlights From Gitlab's Playbook
As remote work becomes even more ubiquitous—and with the trend likely to continue post-pandemic—companies need to rethink the way they communicate culture, values, and expectations for how teams work together. As a pioneer in remote work, GitLab has scaled to more than 1300 team members across 68 countries without opening any offices...
Read moreJanuary 28, 2021
My Once and Future Travel Buddy: Some Thoughts on GV's Investment in Gowalla
The year was 2011 and it was my first trip to London. I was there by myself. But I wasn’t alone. I had Gowalla with me. I was still a reporter at the time, and for the couple of years prior to that, the “location wars” between players like Gowalla and Foursquare had been one of my key beats...
Read moreJanuary 27, 2021
Welcoming Our Newest Advisor: Katie Dill, Former Design Lead at Airbnb and Lyft
In my previous role as head of UX for G Suite at Google, I led a team of 180 designers. I also worked on smaller and more agile product and design teams at GoPro and Walmart Labs. If there is one thing that I've learned in my 20+ years in design, there are vastly different opinions about what “design executive” actually means, and where that role fits within an organization.
Read moreJanuary 26, 2021
Vectorized's Alex Gallego and Google's Kelsey Hightower on the Language of Operational Simplicity
Before even thinking about starting a company, Vectorized CEO Alexander Gallego has had plenty of opportunities to test his resilience and grit. At just 14, he immigrated to the U.S from Manizales, Colombia. Here he reveled in opportunities to learn and grow.
Read moreJanuary 21, 2021
CoreOS Co-Founders Alex Polvi and Brandon Philips on Tackling Enormous Opportunities
One of the more fulfilling aspects of my job is connecting new founders with experienced mentors who can help them grow. CoreOS founders Alex Polvi and Brandon Philips are among the most requested open source mentors in the GV network, for good reason.
Read moreJanuary 11, 2021
EQRx: Affordable Medicine When Patients Need It Most
In the summer of 2019, I was at a board offsite for Relay Therapeutics, chatting with long-time collaborator, investor, entrepreneur, and friend Alexis Borisy. Many who know Alexis acknowledge that he is seldom wrong, and never in doubt. He looked at me with all the conviction in the world to state point-blank that he wanted to tackle drug pricing.
Read moreDecember 22, 2020
Allbirds Co-Founder Tim Brown on Building a Company for Your Grandkids
When I asked Allbirds Co-Founder Tim Brown what advice he’d give his eight-year-old self, it’s no surprise that he focused on relationships and guts. As someone audacious enough to turn the archaic footwear industry upside down, Tim spends as much time thinking about culture, legacy and community as he does about product materials and fit.
Read moreDecember 17, 2020
PostHog Founder James Hawkins on Engineering a New Approach to Product Analytics
A year ago, entrepreneur James Hawkins and technologist Tim Glaser were hard at work as part of Y Combinator's winter 2020 cohort. Their focus: help product managers and engineers collaborate.
Read moreDecember 16, 2020
Vercel Founder Guillermo Rauch on Raising Kids, Raising Capital, and Raising the Bar for Front-End Design
Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch is a passionate advocate for removing barriers to creative web development. Since back-end systems are now available off the shelf, and with innovation accelerating on the front end, developers can code, preview, and ship interactive web applications as fast as they can dream them up.
Read moreDecember 15, 2020
Bowery Farming’s Irving Fain on Food, Sustainability, and Growing the Farm of the Future
Irving Fain is equal parts optimist and critic. As the founder and CEO of the modern farming company, Bowery Farming, his excitement for the future of agriculture is contagious, and his relentless push to make food production more sustainable has led to several advances in vertical indoor farming.
Read moreDecember 11, 2020
Dr. Richard Scheller on Scientific Rigor, Genetics, and the Evolution of Drug Development
I first met Richard Scheller fifteen years ago when we worked together at Genentech. Richard’s pioneering work in drug development and oncology has touched millions of cancer patients, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount from him over the years.
Read moreDecember 10, 2020
The Shape of Metal: How Desktop Metal Took 3D Printing from Sci-Fi to Reality
Desktop Metal has shaped how metal is produced, ushering in a new era for 3D printing that brings digitized technology to manufacturing. On behalf of GV, congratulations to Ric Fulop and the entire team Desktop Metal team on taking the company public today.
Read moreDecember 08, 2020
"Absolutely Remarkable": Richard Scheller on COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthroughs
Last week I asked my longtime colleague, GV advisor Richard Scheller, for his perspective on the latest COVID-19 vaccine news. Richard has dedicated his life to developing new medicines, and as the leader of multiple R&D organizations, he pioneered oncology drugs that have helped millions of people.
Read moreDecember 01, 2020
Extra Crunch Live: MG Siegler on Remote Work and The Keys To Startup Success during COVID-19
Recently, GV General Partner (and TechCrunch alum) M.G. Siegler sat down with Darrell Etherington on TechCrunch’s Extra Crunch Live. They discussed what startup fundraising looks like eight months into the COVID-19 pandemic and the future of remote work.
Read moreNovember 25, 2020
Vaccitech Co-Founder Professor Adrian Hill on Developing a COVID-19 Vaccine
Following this week’s news that AstraZeneca, the University of Oxford, and Vaccitech have teamed up to deliver a promising vaccine for COVID-19, my colleague Vidu Shanmugarajah and I invited Vaccitech co-founder Dr. Adrian Hill to talk with our portfolio CEOs about the battle against the pandemic.
Read moreNovember 24, 2020
Sebastian Thrun on Tackling the Impossible
Sebastian Thrun is among the most prolific entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. As a serial founder whose ventures include Google X, education trailblazer Udacity, and transportation company Kitty Hawk, he is an enormously big thinker whose natural curiosity leads him to take on seemingly impossible projects.
Read moreNovember 18, 2020
Investors Tyson Clark and Sydney Sykes on Championing Diversity in Venture Capital
As part of our new video series examining diversity across venture capital and tech, I recently invited investor and BLCK VC founder Sydney Sykes to talk about breaking into venture, the mission for BLCK VC, and the current ecosystem for Black investors. We also invited members of the BLCK VC community to submit questions.
Read moreNovember 18, 2020
Headway: A Path to Mental Health Support During a Time of Crisis
As the pandemic disrupts our lives physically, socially, emotionally, and financially, many of us will experience a subclinical mental health struggle with anxiety, mood issues, family and relationships.
Read moreNovember 17, 2020
How a U.S. Marine Built HOVER to Recreate Homes in 3D
Before jumping into the technology industry over a decade ago, I spent six years in the United States Navy. I served on submarines as both a nuclear propulsion officer and scuba diver, roles which taught me the value of character and the meaning of true grit.
Read moreNovember 12, 2020
The Future of Education: Swing Education’s Mike Teng on COVID-19, Schools, and Social Equity in Distanced Learning
As schools grapple with questions about how and when to reopen amid the COVID pandemic, I asked Swing Education Co-founder and CEO Mike Teng for his perspective on the future of K-12 education.
Read moreOctober 29, 2020
Gitlab CEO Sid Sijbrandij Shares His Blueprint for the Future of Work
Sid Sijbrandij is a visionary leader. As Co-founder & CEO of GitLab, he forged a new way of operating by scaling the company to more than a thousand team members, all working remotely.
Read moreOctober 27, 2020
A Bet on Betty Labs and the Future of Sports Audio
Today, Howard and Betty Labs team announced $9.3M in seed funding led by GV and officially launched Locker Room. This is Betty Labs’ vision for talking about the sports we love in the digital era.
Read moreOctober 23, 2020
Exploring Diversity and Anti-Racism in the Workplace with Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey
Last week, UK-based diversity expert Dr. Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey and I hosted our European portfolio companies in a wide-ranging conversation on inequality and race.
Read moreOctober 14, 2020
GV’s Newest Investing Partner: Terri Burns
If you've spent much time around our GV team in the past few years, you probably already know Terri Burns, a bright star with seemingly boundless energy for our day-to-day work.
Read moreOctober 13, 2020
Reducing Medical Coding Complexity with Nym Health
Nym speaks the language of healthcare in a way that medical providers and computer scientists both understand. At GV, we talk about finding companies that bridge the divide between breakthrough technology and healthcare.
Read moreOctober 12, 2020
Segment and Twilio: The Future of Customer Engagement
This morning, Segment announced its intent to join Twilio, another company highlighting the massive enterprise shift toward API-driven value.
Read moreOctober 09, 2020
How to Ace Remote Schooling: Swing Education’s Mike Teng on Creating Learning Pods
As the U.S. adjusts to the dynamics of remote schooling, GV asked Swing Education co-founder and CEO Mike Teng for tips on creating positive homeschool environments that work for kids and their families.
Read moreOctober 01, 2020
Pixie Labs: Emerging from Stealth to Make The Hard Things Easy for Developers
Pixie Labs launches today to give developers a powerful toolset to monitor the performance of applications running on Kubernetes.
Read moreOctober 01, 2020
Tend: The Move to Modern Dentistry
Today, Tend announces its $37 million Series B led by GV. This is the first bet we’ve made on the dental industry. At GV, we like to invest at intersections that combine disparate fields of study and propel new ways of thinking.
Read moreSeptember 28, 2020
HAGS: A Lesson in How to Build for Gen-Z
Earlier this summer, high school students around the country realized that there was one small but essential graduation moment they would miss during the pandemic: signing yearbooks in-person.
Read moreSeptember 08, 2020
Four Steps to Develop A Race-Conscious Diversity and Inclusion Strategy
GV’s diversity and inclusion partner, Candice Morgan, explains the four steps companies must take to build a race-conscious equity strategy.
Read moreAugust 25, 2020
Lessons in Entrepreneurship from Stanford University's Chris Ré
Chris is the kind of entrepreneur we love at GV. He's inherently curious with a passion for learning; he prioritizes what matters and has the self-confidence to stay focused.
Read moreAugust 03, 2020
A Conversation on The State of Mental Health in 2020
GV Venture Partner Ben Robbins hosted a panel last week on mental health and examined ways to cope with quarantine-related anxiety, family issues, the variety of losses many of us are experiencing, burnout, and social isolation.
Read moreJuly 22, 2020
Encoded Therapeutics and the Drive to End Pediatric Epilepsy
If they succeed, their approach to gene therapy will not only rescue families with Dravet Syndrome, but may lead to solving other pediatric genetic diseases.
Read moreJuly 16, 2020
Relay Therapeutics: The 100-Year Race towards Better Drug Discovery
Relay's technology can visualize and target moving proteins in the human body. By identifying and simulating the underlying proteins that cause disease, Relay can design better drugs to treat cancer and other devastating genetic diseases.
Read moreJuly 14, 2020
Diving Deeper into Machine Learning with Snorkel AI
Snorkel’s vision is to make it dead simple for even non-developers to build and deploy ML applications in a fraction of the time. It’s an exciting prospect with significant implications for how we can dive even more deeply into machine learning for decades to come.
Read moreJuly 08, 2020
A Conversation with TechCrunch on Fostering Diversity and Inclusion in Tech
GV principal Terri Burns was asked for her observations on fostering diversity and inclusion in tech, and reasons for optimism. Below is a transcript of the conversation that originally appeared in TechCrunch.
Read moreJuly 02, 2020
Some Thoughts on Lemonade’s IPO
Lemonade has built on its promise to take the headache out of insurance for homeowners and renters. As a full-stack insurer, it redesigned almost all of the traditional insurance value chain to keep premiums low, and offer renters and home insurance quotes algorithmically.
Read moreMay 28, 2020
Congratulations to ThousandEyes on Joining Forces with Cisco
It has been a privilege to partner with Mohit, Ricardo, and the entire team as they built ThousandEyes to this point. Please join me in congratulating them on their continued success as a part of the Cisco family.
Read moreMay 26, 2020
Scandit Series C: Mobile Computer Vision Means Business
It takes more than just technical excellence and a compelling vision to build the next great startup; it takes dedicated people, productive co-founder relationships, and the ability to adapt to rapidly evolving business needs.
Read moreMay 19, 2020
COVID-19: Moving from Fear to Owning Our Future
This morning GV brought together a group of leaders across technology, healthcare, and public policy to discuss the impact of COVID-19 with Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann.
Read moreApril 27, 2020
The Road to ROME's Series A: Exploring the Human Genome to Develop Novel Therapeutics
Exploring the human genome to advance medicine is one of the most meaningful things we can do in our lifetimes to improve health.
Read moreApril 17, 2020
A Fine Line — Some Thoughts on GV’s Latest Investment in Stripe
Stripe is a business that emerges from our current turmoil stronger because they've helped support millions of other businesses in this time. And, as the world heals, helps countless businesses rebuild or get started.
Read more