Reed Jobs, the son of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, has announced the launch of a new venture capital firm called Yosemite. The firm will focus on investing in new cancer treatments. Pancreatic cancer (islet cell carcinoma) took his father’s life. Yosemite has already raised $200 million from investors, including venture capitalist billionaire John Doerr, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, The Rockefeller University, and MIT.
“My father got diagnosed with cancer when I was 12,” Mr. Jobs told DealBook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in his first interview with a news organization. That led him to begin focusing on oncology, starting with a summer internship at Stanford when he was 15.
That path has inspired the creation of Yosemite, whose name alludes to the national park where his parents were married.
Yosemite is a spinoff from Emerson Collective — the business and philanthropic organization founded by his mother — where Jobs has served as managing director for health.
“My dad succumbed to cancer when I was in college at Stanford,” Mr. Jobs said. “I was pre-med because I really wanted to be a doctor and cure people myself. But just completely candidly, it was really difficult after he passed away.”
Taking a break from oncology, Mr. Jobs switched to majoring in history (with a focus on nuclear weapons policy). But he returned to the field after completing his master’s degree and led Emerson’s health care division, which has invested in companies and given grants to labs.
MacDailyNews Take: Yosemite will run a for-profit business and maintain a donor-advised fund to make grants to scientists. This dual structure creates a virtuous cycle for innovation, according to Jobs: Scientists are given grants with no strings attached, and many of them will return to Yosemite for venture funding once they begin to commercialize their research, Jobs told The Times.
(P.S. It was so weird, but also so nice, to once again type “according to Jobs.”)
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So much virtue signaling. /s
I like the name it.