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2012 Newsletter | venrock.com 

 

a year In Review
 
Happy Holidays!

As the new year approaches, we feel very fortunate on many dimensions: we have several new faces around the office, exciting portfolio developments and we added ten new companies to the fold this year. Our most recent investment was made this week - a stealth company in the ecommerce space that represents Nick Beim's first investment at Venrock.

The portfolio continues to shine - recent IPOs have continued to perform well (Vocera and Imperva), several M&A outcomes have brought cheer (SlideShare by LinkedIn and CodeRyte by 3M), and even biotech financings are back with Intarcia's $210 million raise last month.

We look forward to seeing what 2013 has in store and wish you all a very happy holiday season.

CEO Q&A
Known for their ambition to disrupt the $12.8 billion global market for men's razors/blades and their popular viral video (nearly eight million views), Dollar Shave Club is one of Venrock's newest investments. They have been written about in the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, among others, and interviewed on NPR. We asked CEO Michael Dubin three questions so we could all get to know him a bit...     

Question: How did you come up with the idea for Dollar Shave Club?
Michael Dubin: I saw an industry ripe for disruption, and knew we could be successful building a brand around making guys lives better + easier.

Question: What is a little know fact about you?
Michael Dubin:  I love Neil Diamond.

Question: Why did you partner with Venrock?
Michael Dubin: David Pakman is a scrappy, lean-forward entrepreneur at heart and a VC second.  His passion for building business is inspiring, and I like having that element in our camp.

New Portfolio Companies
 Welcome to the Family

We added ten new companies to the portfolio in 2012, including four stealth companies.  


Appthority 
Helping the Enterprise identify and manage the risks hidden inside mobile apps.


CTERA  

Revolutionizing data protection and storage for SMBs and enterprise branch offices.

 

 

Nest
We make things that work for people.






Boundless 

Connecting students with high quality, openly licensed, and free educational content.

 

Dynamic Signal
Helping leading brands find, engage and form relationships with social amplifiers.

Dollar Shave Club
Shave time. Shave money.
PORTFOLIO NEWS

Our portfolio companies have been making waves in the Wall Street Journal, earning recognition on the Next Big Thing list and winning the Technology Innovation Awards.
For the second year in a row, a Venrock portfolio company ranked #1 on the Wall Street Journal's "Next Big Thing" list. The list ranks the top 50 venture-backed companies in the U.S. and a total of six Venrock portfolio companies placed on the list.  Congratulations Genband (#1), Appia (#22), Achaogen (#35), Quantenna (#36), Acceleron (#48) and Neoconix (#50)!   View the complete Next Big Thing list.

The Top 10 Venture-Backed Healthcare Companies list was released a few weeks later to put a spotlight on healthcare, and included three Venrock portfolio companies: Castlight Health (#4), Achaogen (#5) and Acceleron (#6).
The Wall Street Journal also announced their annual Technology Innovation Award winners and Venrock companieNest Labs and CloudFlare won their categories, energy and network & internet technologies, respectively. Receiving the award is an honor, as the Wall Street Journal received 536 applications from over two dozen countries and only 37 winners are selected by an external panel of judges.  View the complete Technology Innovation Awards list

Portfolio Companies in the News
Silicon Alley 100: The Coolest People in New York Tech

For the second year, Business Insider ranked
Marissa Campise and David Pakman  on their list of movers and shakers in New York, the Silicon Alley 100.  Since joining forces last year, David and Marissa have continued to build the firm's tech portfolio and network, and have established Venrock as one of the most significant VCs in the New York tech scene.
  

 

A Different Seed-Stage Strategy

Money is cheap, but time creates value. Bryan Roberts explains his seed investment rationale, reasoning that a commitment to a seed investment will help the company increase it's speed, likelihood and scale of success. This time-intensive approach improves the chance of creating great companies by affording them resources early, that they would not get in other seed models. 

 
Creating Outcome-Driven Health Care Markets

Bob
Consumers today have many choices when it comes to healthcare.  Bob Kocher explores some of these choices in two recent articles centering around outcome-driven health care markets and the effects health care reform will have on consumers, hospitals and doctors. You can read his articles on Health Affairs and Forbes.  

 

Recognition

 

Earlier this year, Forbes published their annual Midas List, ranking Bryan Roberts (#38), Ray Rothrock (#49)  and Brian Ascher (#67). Each year, the Midas List honors the top 100 tech investors in venture capital.

 

Congratulations to Venrock's Brian Ascher and Mike Tyrrell for placing on the AlwaysOn 2012 Venture Capital 100 list and to Ray Rothrock and Matt Trevithick for making the 2012 Power Players in Greentech list

 

Blogroll

 

Disruption - David Pakman's blog

RayRock - Ray Rothrock's blog

Secret Formula - Matt Nordan's blog

VC Waves - Brian Ascher's blog  

 

Follow the Team

 

@VCSurferDad - Brian Ascher

@NickBeim - Nick Beim

@Marissa - Marissa Campise

@Kerby - Richard Kerby

@BobKocher - Bob Kocher

@MatthewNordan - Matthew Nordan

@Pakman - David Pakman

@BRobertsVC - Bryan Roberts

@RayRothrock - Ray Rothrock

@MTrevithick - Matt Trevithick

VENROCK NEWS
Welcome to the Team!
 

2012 brought several additional new members to our investment team, including Colin Cahill who joined our healthcare team as a Vice President, Tai-Li Chang (left) who joined our public healthcare team as a Senior Associate and Richard Kerby (right) who joined our tech team as a Senior Associate. 

 

Colin was most recently a co-founder of Simpirica Spine, a medical device company focused on developing devices for spinal stabilization. Colin has also held positions at InterWest Partners, Boston Scientific and Boston Consulting Group.

 

Prior to Venrock, Tai-Li was an orthopedic surgery resident at the Hospital for Special Surgery. He previously held positions as an analyst at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.


Richard Kerby previously worked as an Associate at Institutional Venture Partners, where he focused on identifying and evaluating later-stage investments.   

 

Welcome to the team!   

Contact Venrock
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