Venrock (

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsventure capital firm Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which hav ...

formed in 1969 to build upon the successful investing activities of the

Rockefeller family The Rockefeller family () is an American industrial, political, and banking family that owns one of the world's largest fortunes. The fortune was made in the American petroleum industry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by brothe ...

that began in the late 1930s. It has offices in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, and Boston, Massachusetts.

History

Venture capitalist Laurance S. Rockefeller (1910–2004) was the fourth of the six children of

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. John Davison Rockefeller Jr. (January 29, 1874 – May 11, 1960) was an American financier and philanthropist, and the only son of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. He was involved in the development of the vast office complex in ...

In January 1946 he formed Rockefeller Brothers, Inc., one of the first postwar venture-capital operations, starting with a capitalization of $1.5 million. There were eight partners in all, the five brothers and their sister, Abby, and two non family members Harper Woodward and MIT scientist, Ted Walkowicz. In 1969, the firm became known as Venrock. Laurance S. Rockefeller became an investor in enterprises based on science and technology. His investment interests included the fields of aviation,

aerospace Aerospace is a term used to collectively refer to the atmosphere and outer space. Aerospace activity is very diverse, with a multitude of commercial, industrial and military applications. Aerospace engineering consists of aeronautics and astrona ...

, electronics, high temperature physics,

composite material A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or ...

optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviole ...

lasers A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fir ...

data processing Data processing is the collection and manipulation of digital data to produce meaningful information. Data processing is a form of ''information processing'', which is the modification (processing) of information in any manner detectable by an ...

thermionics Thermionic emission is the liberation of electrons from an electrode by virtue of its temperature (releasing of energy supplied by heat). This occurs because the thermal energy given to the charge carrier overcomes the work function of the mate ...

, and

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...

. Venrock closed its seventh fund in July 2014 with 8 partners and its eighth fund in January 2017 with 15 partners, each fund totalling $450 million.

Investments

Venrock invested more than $2.5 billion in more than 440 companies, resulting in 125

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

s. Venrock focuses its investments on early-stage and start-up companies in information technology, healthcare and emerging technologies. These include:

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

AppNexus Xandr, formerly known as AppNexus, is an American multinational technology company operating a cloud-based software platform that enables and optimizes programmatic online advertising. Headquartered in the Flatiron District of New York City, the ...

Astranis Astranis Space Technologies Corp., doing business as Astranis, is a private American geostationary communications satellite operator and manufacturer headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was founded by chief executive officer John Gedma ...

StrataCom StrataCom, Inc. was a supplier of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Frame Relay high-speed wide area network (WAN) switching equipment. StrataCom was founded in Cupertino, California, United States, in January 1986, by 26 former employees of t ...

, Check Point Software, Dapper Labs,

DoubleClick DoubleClick Inc. was an advertisement company that developed and provided Internet ad serving services from 1995 until its acquisition by Google in March 2008. DoubleClick offered technology products and services that were sold primarily to adv ...

3Com Corporation 3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe ex ...

Mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

PGP PGP or Pgp may refer to: Science and technology * P-glycoprotein, a type of protein * Pelvic girdle pain, a pregnancy discomfort * Personal Genome Project, to sequence genomes and medical records * Pretty Good Privacy, a computer program for the ...

Itek Itek Corporation was a United States defense contractor that initially specialized in camera systems for spy satellites and various other reconnaissance systems. In the early 1960s they built a conglomerate in a fashion similar to LTV or Litto ...

Digex Digex, Inc. was one of the first Internet service providers in the United States. During the dot-com bubble, its stock price rose to $184 per share; the company was acquired for $1 per share a few years later. History Digital Express Group, pred ...

, Interos, Shape Security,

Phoenix Phoenix most often refers to: * Phoenix (mythology), a legendary bird from ancient Greek folklore * Phoenix, Arizona, a city in the United States Phoenix may also refer to: Mythology Greek mythological figures * Phoenix (son of Amyntor), a ...

, Second Rotation (gazelle), RedSeal and

CTERA Networks CTERA Networks is a privately held enterprise software company headquartered in New York and Israel. The company has regional offices in the UK, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and Australia.

Juno Therapeutics Juno Therapeutics Inc is an American biopharmaceutical company founded in 2013 through a collaboration of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and pediatrics partner Seattle Children's Research Instit ...

. It also has a significant venture in the nascent

nanotechnology Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal o ...

field, with early funding of

Nanosys Nanosys is a nanotechnology company located in Milpitas, California and founded in 2001. The company develops and manufactures quantum dot materials for display products. Products Quantum Dot Enhancement Film (QDEF) Nanosys Quantum Dot Enhance ...

and the nanotech division of Du Pont. Others include

BioTime Lineage Cell Therapeutics, Inc. is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel cell therapies for unmet medical needs. Lineage’s programs are based on its robust proprietary cell-based therapy platform and associated in-house devel ...

. In the healthcare sector with partners such as Bryan Roberts, Venrock has invested in

athenahealth Athenahealth (stylized as athenahealth) is a private American company that provides network-enabled services for healthcare and point-of-care mobile apps in the United States. The company was founded in 1997 in San Diego and is now headquartere ...

Grand Rounds Grand rounds are a methodology of medical education and inpatient care, consisting of presenting the medical problems and treatment of a particular patient to an audience consisting of doctors, pharmacists, residents, and medical students. It wa ...

HealthSouth Corporation Encompass Health Corporation, based in Birmingham, Alabama, is one of the United States' largest providers of post-acute healthcare services, offering both facility-based and home-based post-acute services in 36 states and Puerto Rico through its ...

, MedPartners, Inc., Castlight Health, Caliper Technologies Corporation,

Centocor Janssen Pharmaceuticals is a pharmaceutical company headquartered in Beerse, Belgium, and wholly-owned by Johnson & Johnson. It was founded in 1953 by Paul Janssen. In 1961, Janssen Pharmaceuticals was purchased by New Jersey-based American ...

, Geron,

senolytic A senolytic (from the words ''senescence'' and ''-lytic'', "destroying") is among a class of small molecules under basic research to determine if they can selectively induce death of senescent cells and improve health in humans. A goal of this re ...

startup

UNITY Biotechnology Unity Biotechnology is a publicly traded American biotechnology company that develops drugs that target senescent cells. The company's products in development include UBX 1325, which targets Bcl-xL, a mechanism to eliminate senescent cells in ag ...

, Genetics Institute, Idec Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Illumina,

Millennium Pharmaceuticals Takeda Oncology (originally Millennium Pharmaceuticals) is a biopharmaceutical company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is a fully owned subsidiary of Takeda Pharmaceutical. Takeda Oncology's research, development and commercialization acti ...

Sirna Therapeutics Sirna Therapeutics, Inc. was a San Francisco, California based biotechnology company that explored the use of RNA interference in human disease therapy. Sirna's development pipeline included several small interfering RNA (siRNA) drugs, thought to s ...

, and Sugen.

References

External links

Company Website

''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', February 6, 1984 {{Private equity and venture capital Financial services companies established in 1969 Companies based in Menlo Park, California Rockefeller family Venture capital firms of the United States

History

Investments

See also

References

Further reading

External links