San Francisco: Reed Jobs, the son of late Apple Co-founder Steve Jobs, is starting an investment firm to focus on new cancer treatments, and has already closed its debut fund worth $200 million, the media reported on Tuesday.
The 31-year-old Reed is “expanding on his work at Emerson Collective, a philanthropic organisation founded by his mother, Laurene Powell Jobs,” reports DealBook.
His father and iconic Apple figure Steve died from complications of pancreatic cancer in 2011.
“My father got diagnosed with cancer when I was 12,” Reed was quoted as saying.
He was at Stanford University then, studying as an undergraduate student to become a doctor.
Shaken by his father’s death, he took a break from oncology and switched to majoring in history.
However, he returned to the field after completing his master’s degree and led Emerson’s health care division.
Reed has now created Yosemite VC firm, “whose name alludes to the national park where his parents were married”.
The firm has raised $200 million from investors and institutions including the venture capitalist John Doerr, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, The Rockefeller University and MIT.
“My dad succumbed to cancer when I was in college at Stanford. 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,” Reed was quoted as saying.
“I had never ever wanted to be a venture capitalist. But I realised that when you’re actually incubating something and putting it together, you can make a tremendous difference in what assets are part of that, what direction it’s going to take, and what the scientific focus is going to be,” he added.
According to DealBook, Yosemite will run a for-profit business but also maintain a donor-advised fund. The idea is to help seed innovation.
Reed has three siblings, sisters Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Eve Jobs and Erin Siena Jobs.
–IANS