LSIPR 50 2018: Bryan Roberts
Name: Bryan Roberts
Organisation: Venrock
Position: Partner
Bryan Roberts has been ranked on the Forbes Midas List, an annual ranking of the best dealmakers in life science and high-tech venture capital, nine times so far. He joined Venrock in 1997 and has spent his career to date investing broadly across the healthcare industry; nine of his portfolio companies have reached $1 billion or more in value.
As a partner at the venture investment firm, Roberts is instrumental in helping entrepreneurs create successful and disruptive companies. Venrock works across the technology industry in areas such as software, big data, and healthcare IT, and across the healthcare sphere in areas such as medical devices, diagnostics, and therapeutics.
Roberts is currently involved with a number of companies, both public and private, including 10X Genomics, Castlight Health, and Lyra Health. 10X Genomics uses an innovative system to transform short-read sequencing technologies, providing products that deliver actionable genomic data. The system allows researchers to discover previously inaccessible genomic information while leveraging their sequencing systems and workflows.
His past investments include Ikaria (acquired by Mallinckrodt), Sirna Therapeutics (acquired by Merck), and Zeltiq Aesthetics (acquired by Allergan). Zeltiq was acquired for $2.48 billion last year and Ikaria for $2.3 billion in 2015. Biotech Sirna was acquired in 2006 as it was developing a new class of medicines based on RNA interference technology, an enabler of drug discovery in cells which could control the activity of cancer cells.
Roberts has served on the board of many of the companies he founded; he served as the director of Castlight Health, Ariosa Diagnostics, and Vitae Pharmaceuticals, among others. He was named a Henry Crown Fellow by The Aspen Institute in 2006. Roberts was featured on Healthspottr’s Future Health 100 list in 2009, an annual listing of the most influential innovators in healthcare.
Before joining Venrock, Roberts obtained his PhD in chemistry and chemical biology from Harvard University.
