Top 16 Pioneers in Biotech Venture Capital

• Insider found 16 pioneers in the world of biotech venture capital who are shaping the industry.
• Each investor has fewer than 10 years of VC experience but is already having an influence.
• They’re investing in new tech and taking a chance on first-time founders.

The biotech industry has grown rapidly over the past few years, but a lot of the biggest names in biotech investing have stayed the same: Arch Venture Partners’ Robert Nelsen, Flagship Pioneering’s Noubar Afeyan, and Atlas Venture’s Bruce Booth are all known for being pioneering investors who have shaped the industry over the past decade.

But new investors are joining the ranks of biotech venture capitalists every day, and they’re bringing new ideas with them.

Insider set out to identify the rising stars writing biotech’s next chapter and ended up with a wide-ranging group of 16 investors shaping the industry. To build a diverse list from an infamously nondiverse sector, we didn’t set a maximum age or minimum company size. The result is a list of people ranging from 30 to 61 years old and working at VC firms that just opened to those who have been around for decades and manage billions in assets. 

All the VCs on this list have less than a decade of experience in the venture-capital world, and they all approach investing with a different mentality from the classic biotech approach — which typically installs an experienced CEO to prioritize a lead drug program and pave a clear path to going public. 

Instead, these investors are prone to taking chances on first-time founders who bring no business experience as CEOs but often have a deep knowledge of the underlying science. Many on the list bring a tech or finance background into the life-sciences industry and previously worked at places like Google and Morgan Stanley. And many of these rising stars said they believed biotech could do more than develop drugs and influence other industries, like food and energy.

To compile this list, Insider reached out to over 20 well-known investors, such as Andreessen Horowitz’s Vijay Pande and EcoR1’s Oleg Nodelman; academics such as Yale’s Aaron Ring and MIT’s Andrew Lo; and biotech entrepreneurs including Strand CEO Jake Becraft and Ochre CEO Jack O’Meara.

According to these people, the 16 names on this list represent some of the brightest minds in the VC world and are using their intellect to shake things up. They’re listed below in alphabetical order by first name. 

Here are the 16 rising stars of biotech investing, according to investors, academics, and entrepreneurs.