{"id":10819,"date":"2016-08-11T12:19:34","date_gmt":"2016-08-11T12:19:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=10819"},"modified":"2016-08-11T12:19:34","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T12:19:34","slug":"bill-maris-steps-down-as-ceo-of-google-ventures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/technology\/bill-maris-steps-down-as-ceo-of-google-ventures.html","title":{"rendered":"Bill Maris Steps Down as CEO of Google Ventures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Maris Steps Down as CEO of Google Ventures<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Bill Maris Steps Down as CEO of Google Ventures:<\/strong> Silicon Valley\u2019s top corporate VC is leaving Alphabet.Bill Maris has stepped down as CEO of Google Ventures<\/strong>, the corporate investment group he founded in 2009.<\/span><\/p>\n

News of Maris\u2019s decision was shared with GV employees via a memo on Wednesday afternoon, with an all-hands meeting scheduled for Thursday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maris\u2019 successor will be GV managing partner David Krane, who was Google\u2019s original communications lead. Sources familiar with GV suggest that Maris has been the firm\u2019s driving vision, while Krane is primarily responsible for day-to-day operations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The shake-up comes exactly one year after the creation of Alphabet, a holding company designed to better distinguish the core Google business from other projects like GV. Sources suggest that the reorganization has been accompanied by new cost controls for Alphabet companies, some of which do not currently generate revenue.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maris would be the second Alphabet company CEO<\/strong> to resign, following Tony Fadell (Nest)<\/strong> back in June. Also recently leaving was Chris Urmson, a key member of Alphabet\u2019s self-driving car effort.<\/span>
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Maris\u2019s original ties to Google GOOG 0.05% actually predate the company\u2019s creation. He was a neuroscientist by training who had gone to work in the mid-1990s at a Swedish investment company Investor AB, where his job was to help \u201ctranslate\u201d scientific conference presentations into something that the firm\u2019s analysts could better understand. His office-mate was Anne Wojcicki, whose sister Susan would memorably rent out her garage to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, so that they could build a new search engine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anne (now co-founder and CEO of GV portfolio company<\/strong> 23andMe) later married Brin (they divorced last year), and kept in touch with Maris, who also would move into the tech world by founding a web hosting company. In 2007, Google asked Maris (among others) to brainstorm ideas for what a Google venture capital unit would look like.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ultimate result, unveiled two years later, was an extraordinarily flexible platform that featured a generalist investment strategy (software, hardware, healthcare, robotics and energy), competitive compensation (senior investors receive carried interest), a large portfolio support staff (designers, engineers, recruiters, etc.) and a seemingly bottomless supply of capital (the official pool can be, and has been, expanded for out-sized opportunities like the group\u2019s $258 million investment in Uber).<\/span><\/p>\n

Whereas many corporate venture capital groups are viewed as \u201cdumb money,\u201d GV quickly established itself as a go-to firm for many of Silicon Valley\u2019s hottest entrepreneurs \u2015 rearranging the Sand Hill Road pecking<\/strong> order (alongside Andreessen Horowitz, also founded in 2009).<\/span><\/p>\n

Google Ventures had $2.4 billion<\/strong> in assets under management as of the beginning of 2016, and last year backed 39 different companies (including Jet, which just agreed to be acquired by Wal-Mart for $3 billion).<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the firm\u2019s website, Maris\u2019s investments include Uber, Nest, Cloudera, DocuSign, Flatiron Health and Foundation Medicine. He also was instrumental in the creation of Calico, an anti-aging Alphabet company into which Google invested approximately $1 billion. There is no word on his specific plans after GV, but Maris is expected to remain in the investment world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maris declined comment when contacted by Fortune. A Google spokeswoman also declined comment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/strong> : http:\/\/fortune.com\/2016\/08\/10\/bill-maris-google-ventures\/<\/span><\/p>\n

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