Meet the 16 pioneering biotechVCs who are taking newapproaches to investing andreshaping the industry's future

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.

Insiders 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 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 experience 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 deep knowledge of the underlying science. Many on the list bring a tech or finance background into the life-science 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, Inside 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.

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Mira Chaurushiya

Title and firm: Senior partner at Westlake Village BioPartners

Age: 42

Years in VC: 8

Notable investments:  Precision NanoSystems, Enliven Therapeutics

Creating a great biotech company is like putting together pieces of a puzzle.

At least, that’s Chaurushiya’s strategy in her role as a senior partner at Westlake Village BioPartners. Chaurushiya said she looked for opportunities to match the right science with the right team to leverage meaningful medicines that have the potential to change people’s lives.

“Oftentimes, you can find pieces of this puzzle, but the magic happens when you bring them together,” she said. “If you have the right insights and relationships, you can actively pull together the right opportunity, rather than waiting for the perfect one to come along.”

Chaurushiya said that in terms of her investing thesis, she’s likely more similar than different from the old guard of biotech investors, but where she differs is how she works with her companies. 

 “The nicest thing a CEO has ever said to me is that outside the founders and team, nobody had done more for the company than I had,” she said.

Chaurushiya added that she’s intentional about being helpful without being overbearing or micromanaging – a hard line to walk.

 “I think that’s a nice, sweet spot to be in,” she said.

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