Back in the late 1990s, venture capitalists got very excited about the Internet. A whole lot of money was poured into some companies that failed rather spectacularly, and a lot of people lost a lot of money. – Bill Maris
I’m interested in the ideas that sound a little crazy, such as radical life extension, curing cancer, being able to create a simulation of the human brain and map every neuron. – Bill Maris
We are looking for highly technical, enthusiastic and capable entrepreneurs who have a healthy disregard for the impossible, and that’s not always easy to find. – Bill Maris
Google Ventures has a direct financial incentive to ensure the companies we invest in succeed. – Bill Maris
There are environmental threats to health; there are internal threats to health – genetic conditions, viral threats, diseases like cancer and Parkinson’s. And then there are societal and global ones, like poverty and lack of nutrition. And unknown viral threats – everything from a new kind of influenza to hemorrhagic fever. – Bill Maris
All the information in the world has been pretty dispersed, but Google’s mission has been to organize it and make it universally accessible. – Bill Maris
There are a number of start-ups in Europe that are able to reach beyond their own country. Take Spotify – Spotify just in Sweden isn’t that interesting compared to Spotify all over the world. – Bill Maris
Not many venture firms have people whose job is to read academic research – on startups, ventures, and entrepreneurs – and gather knowledge from that. – Bill Maris
Google was a venture-funded company. Being part of that brings an energy to the company. – Bill Maris
I’m not bothered when other VCs start hiring great designers or start recruiting. That’s the direction I’d like it to go. – Bill Maris
You want to work with people you are excited about and they are excited about you. It’s a two-way street. – Bill Maris
If I’m an entrepreneur, and I have a term sheet from Sequoia and Kleiner, that’s the safe choice. Google Ventures is the brave choice. – Bill Maris
Venture funds get beaten up for not investing in important things. Okay, if you want venture funds to invest in important things, then don’t penalize or make fun of them when those important things don’t work. – Bill Maris
If you want to invest in early-stage technologies, putting a timeframe on it does behold you to Silicon Valley economics. You’ve got a certain time period where you have to make the money. And you have to invest that money whether you find good companies or not. – Bill Maris
I used to be a health-care investor a long time ago in the public markets. One thing I learned that we tried to apply here is that investing in small molecules, trying to invest in the next treatment, there’s an element of gambling to that. – Bill Maris
CEOs who can hire properly, that’s the most important part of the job. The CEO’s job is really to hire the right team and execute the vision second. – Bill Maris
I would draw a really big distinction between competition, or potential competition, and a conflict of interest. A conflict of interest implies wrongdoing, whereas competition is really healthy. – Bill Maris
If I were to leave and raise a venture fund, I would have to find 10 or 100 LPs. They would all give me a bunch of money, and I would take a percentage of that to pay myself. They would expect me to invest that over the next three years, and they want that money back in seven or eight years. – Bill Maris
We actually have the tools in the life sciences to achieve anything that you have the audacity to envision. I just hope to live long enough not to die. – Bill Maris
Say you have cancer – you have this broad thing we call cancer; we’re going to irradiate you and pump this poisonous material into you and hope more of the bad stuff dies than the good. That is going to seem so medieval when we can fix it on a genetic level, and Foundation Medicine is the first step to diagnosing it on a genetic level. – Bill Maris
Organizing healthcare information is a daunting task, but it is not an impossible task. We’ve had people walk on the moon. This is a lot more doable. – Bill Maris
Antibiotics are so pervasive that they are often prescribed preemptively, as soon as patients report symptoms, before a diagnosis is made. – Bill Maris
People talk about the redistribution of wealth a lot, which is a very valid topic. But what about the redistribution of health? That’s even more concentrated at the top. – Bill Maris