Brook Byers has been a venture capital investor since 1972. He has been closely involved with more than fifty new technology based ventures, over half of which have already become public companies. He formed the first Life Sciences practice group in the venture capital profession in 1984 and led KPCB to become a premier venture capital firm in the medical, healthcare, and biotechnology sectors. KPCB has invested in and helped build over 110 Life Sciences companies which have already developed hundreds of products to treat major underserved medical needs for millions of patients.
Brook was the founding President and then Chairman, of four biotechnology companies which were incubated in KPCB’s offices and went on to become public companies with an aggregate market value over $8 Billion. He is currently on the Board of Directors of nine companies, most recently joining CardioDX, Genomic Health Incorporated, Five Prime Therapeutics, OptiMedica, Pacific Biosciences, Inc., Tethys and XDx, Inc. He was formerly a Director of Idec Pharmaceuticals (Chairman), Athena Neurosciences (Chairman), Signal Pharmaceuticals, Arris Pharmaceuticals, Pharmacopeia, Hybritech (Chairman), Genprobe and others. These companies have pioneered the medical use of molecular biology, monoclonal antibodies, molecular diagnostics and genomics.
Brook was President and a Director of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists. He is a currently a Board member of the University of California at San Francisco Medical Foundation, the New Schools Foundation, Stanford’s Bio-X Advisory Council and the Stanford Eye Council. He was Co-Chair of the five year, $1.4 billion, UCSF Capital Campaign. In 2007, he was awarded the “UCSF Medal” as their honorary degree equivalent.
He was formerly a Director of the Entrepreneurs Foundation, the California Healthcare Institute, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council, That Many May See (UCSF) Vision Research Foundation (Chairman) and the Georgia Tech Advisory Board.
Raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Brook graduated in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech and received an MBA from Stanford.
