Reed Jobs announced the launch of a venture firm, which has already raised $200 million, to focus on new treatments on cancer – the disease that cut short his father Steve Jobs’ life.
New Delhi: “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away,” Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said in a moving address at Stanford University in 2005.
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Coping with the death of a close family member, especially a parent, is a hard challenge. Death in a family can sometimes change the way we live our lives. The story of Reed Jobs, the son of late Steve Jobs who died of cancer complications, stares directly into the perspective of how our life can change in a fraction of a second no matter how much money we are born into as death does not discriminate between have and have not. Reed Jobs had dreamt of becoming a doctor but his life changed after his father passed away.
Reed Jobs had recently announced the launch of a venture firm – which has already raised $200 million – to focus on new cancer treatments. The 31-year-old Reed Jobs is “expanding on his work at Emerson Collective, a philanthropic organisation founded by his mother, Laurene Powell Jobs”, reports DealBook.
How Father’s Death Pushed Reed Jobs To Launch VC Firm
Steve Jobs died in 2011 from complications of pancreatic cancer in 2011. “My father got diagnosed with cancer when I was 12,” Reed was quoted as saying.
Reed Jobs was at Stanford University then, studying as an undergraduate student to become a doctor. Shaken by his father’s death, Reed Jobs took a break from oncology and switched to majoring in history.
Reed Jobs graduated from Stanford University with an honors degree in history and international security in 2014. However, he returned to the field after completing his master’s degree and led Emerson’s healthcare division.
With a sole focus on oncology, Reed Jobs’ team accelerated the discovery and translation of cancer research to best improve and empower the lives of patients.
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‘Never Wanted To Be A Venture Capitalist’
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 are 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.
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Reed Jobs is an active philanthropist and venture investor. His philanthropic portfolio includes several competitive grant programs with major research entities in the US and the UK Additionally, he is involved in the creation of a nonprofit organization to house altruistically donated patient genomic and clinical data to be made available to researchers across the United States upon request.
