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| a year In Review
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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.
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| CEO Q&A
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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.
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| 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. |
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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.
Shave time. Shave money.
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| PORTFOLIO NEWS |
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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 companies Nest 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
Klout in the Wall Street Journal
Ariosa Diagnostics in The Telegraph
Gazelle on CNBC
Singly in TechCrunch
Inrix in Forbes
Appthority in VentureBeat
Retail Solutions Inc. in Forbes
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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.
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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.
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Creating Outcome-Driven Health Care Markets
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.
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| VENROCK NEWS
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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!
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| Contact Venrock |
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| PUBLIC RELATIONS Nicole Pack nicole@venrock.com Tel: (650) 475-3721 venrock.com | CAMBRIDGE Suite 100 Cambridge, MA 02142 Tel: (617) 995-2000 Fax: (617) 995-2001 | NEW YORK 530 Fifth Avenue 22nd Floor New York, NY 10036 Tel: (212) 444-4100 Fax: (212) 444-4101 | PALO ALTO 3340 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94304 Tel: (650) 561-9580 Fax: (650) 561-9180 |
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