Today is an important day in my life as a founder of Index Ventures as it marks the birth of a new firm that springs from our own. As of today, Medicxi Ventures will carry forward all of the life science investment activity that has been part of Index since our founding.
As a lone missionary, my partner Francesco De Rubertis built this practice from scratch over the last two decades and after some experimentation, developed the new asset-centric approach to investing in biotech— a term he coined.
Perfecting this approach over the last ten years, Francesco, Michele, David and Kevin have built a number of successful biotech companies and put several important new drugs into pharmaceutical pipelines— some of which have already been approved. Their combined experience as scientists and drug-developers and entrepreneurs, augmented by a team of driven, young investment professionals, makes them one of the best equipped and most respected teams investing in life sciences anywhere in the world.
As our life science team scaled and specialized to match the scope of the opportunity it began operating more and more independently within the structure of our firm. In 2011 we raised our first dedicated life sciences fund, pioneering a new form of collaboration with GSK and Johnson & Johnson that continues to thrive.
Today, we celebrate the birth of Medicxi as culmination of our work together building a platform to catalyze and capitalize on the enormous promise of drug discovery. I remain heavily invested in the success of this new firm and am impatient to see it flourish.
Published — Feb. 2, 2016
