emily: he was the most unlikely candidate for the job. a young entrepreneur living in vermont with limited investing experience. yet, in 2008, he was tapped to start a venture fund. one year later, gv was founded.

joining me today on studio 1.0, no manus, gv ceo. thank you so much for being here. bill: thank you for having me. toly: you are hand-picked create the venture capital fund in 2008. you have limited investing experience, no clout in silicon valley. how with those early years like? shared was sitting at a office space, sitting next to a corporate development intern who happened to be the founder of instagram. at the time, we were trying to figure out what we were going to do. i was certainly not picked for my clout or experience. in part, my lack of experience has led us to develop a sort of unique model. emily: the story goes that you

were going up and down, knocking on doors, trying to get people to take you seriously. career has been a progression of not being taken seriously in volunteering for jobs that i was not qualified for. saying,irm to firm here's what we are thinking of doing, and some took a seriously, and gave us great advice, and still do to this day, and some litter the last. laughed at you? bill: i will not name names, but they probably are not laughing anymore. it seemed out of the ordinary to have someone like me say we are going to start a venture fund. emily: what prepared you for that? where did you grow up? what kind of kid were you? bill: i watched star wars and star trek, i took apart any tory

i was given. if it was electronic, i would disassemble it, and try to put 50%ack together at about a success rate. i got really interested in computers, computer games, and imagination, storytelling, and all those kinds of things coalesced into me when it to be an animator when i was growing up. i thought you could create any world you want, so i would draw lots. emily: you majored in narrow science. bill: i found the subject matter really interesting. i graduated i decided i did not want to be a doctor, and stumbled into a bunch of things come of one of which was a startup, and eventually, gv. emily: you went on to manage a biotech portfolio at a bank. it just so happens that in 19 nice seven, the person sitting next to you was and would just anne.

bill: we were office mates and became best friends and have been friends ever since. she told me about some friends that were in her garage. emily: she went on to marrying the founder of google. she told you about google -- two: and here are these kind of stanford dropout starting this company. it was not tractor because i had a path i was on and i wanted to see where with the. emily: you want to vermont and started a web company. that there was a lot happened in between. i was making payroll with my credit card. in march of 2000, when the market crashed, it was not worth anything to anyone. we intercept selling the company in 2002-2003.

emily: ultimately, you ended up back with google. bill: they were insistent that and moved to california. they introduced me, and over the course of 19 interviews, they will ask you, we to start looking into this. there was no check book given, but, what should we do in venture? i spent about six months looking at different models. we hired a recruiting firm to hire the head of google ventures. it was not going to be me. as i interviewed people for that role, i discovered the thing i discovered when i sat next to anne, no one knows anything. the people and talking to to

start this fund, they know nothing about google, and does not seem like they have special knowledge about the technology companies. i volunteered and said, i would like to give it a try. toly: was it an attempt distance yourself from the goal name? bill: people called as gv to call it google ventures would mislead. it is broader than that. it is not a google service. literally, we brainstormed a thousand or so different names and we thought that gv was the most obvious emily: evolution. what is the relationship between gv and alpha that? -- alphabet? bill: i am now the ceo of gv. we make our investments --

emily: they have no access to information about startup strategy? bill: no. they have similar access to information that any partner we get like financial information, etc., but have no incentive to aare details about what startup is doing. our job is to generate returns and help the company grow. ,mily: in the world of venture there are firms that entrepreneurs left after -- lust after. you feel like you are trying to convince people to go to google? bill: i think imposter syndrome is key to many people's personalities. i am no exception. you are only as good as your next few investments. i think that insecurity comes up a lot. it never bothered me that people

took a seriously or not. i think it is more important if we take ourselves seriously because we trying to do something that no one had ever done before. emily: one thank you focus on is trying to extend human life. how much progress have you made? ♪

emily: one of the things you really focus on is trying to

extend human life. how much progress have you made? mad: it sounds very scientist, as if i have a garage with bubbling beakers -- it isn't so much about extending life. if you set a goal that we have to land on the moon but you start by saying, we cannot land on the moon, you will probably never get there. can we live vigorous lives and get more out of our years and more years out of life? emily: in terms of actual progress you have made, where are you? say, i guess i would don't make progress. we invest in companies that do good work. analyzeble to diagnostics now. can analyze the genome

and find areas where we find areas. diagnostics come first and their bees come after that. now we are at a place where a company that we invested in, it is a gene editing technology. that may not mean anything to a lot of people but five years ago, the idea of that company was hard to fathom, that it could be a company. now, things are treatable that were untreatable before. emily: what is the? 200? 500? bill: i think the goal i would put out there is before that. if you look around the world, or even in san francisco today, has area of the world disruption, innovation, words overused, people

are tired of them. the goal i would put out has to do with distribution. if you are the average life expectancy is 77, some bailey that. if you live in western africa, the life expectancy is like 45 or 50. for me, it is about distribution of existing technologies. then of the most of diseases, we can hear right now, or prevent. if i could tell you that we could double lifespans in this country by snapping our fingers, you would say, we should do that. in otheruble lifespans countries. emily: let's talk about alzheimer's. successful treatment could be huge. where do you see the inakthrough happening

age-related diseases? bill: their people spending their entire careers of moving actual molecules and working in labs to develop treatments for something that is untreatable. that will be a win for humanity when that happens. if we have an understanding of how develops and how all note to neuroative -- degenerative diseases come about, when i was a neuroscience student, that was not in the books. it was until 19 30 that we had antibiotics. suddenly, you get a disease, take a pill, and lives. that is kind of a miracle. emily: we want to talk about some specific companies like foundation medicine, working on a personalized cancer treatment.

they have been slow to get insurance to cover it. what are the chances of them finding a cure for cancer? bill: the goal, when we invested, they came with a pitch, and after the pitch, we look to each other and thought, doesn't seem impossible, will be technology get their? what they do now seemed impossible when they found at the company. the progress they have made to date is so incredible. by manyderappreciated people, including the market. helpcreated a prototype to physicians to choose modalities. so, they treat your cancer. not this generic form of what we called lung cancer because it

happened to be in your lungs. that is a huge step. will it lead to a cure? they say that if there is a cure for cancer, it is early detection. it is a big step. i will tell you, their patients alive who would not be alive but for the foundation test. that is really compelling. in some cases, they did find a cure for cancer. emily: are there any areas of health were you just will not go, where technology has not caught up to the need? bill: no. emily: how do you fund something may be possible? bill: if i need to be correct or right, this is the wrong business for you. emily: is that a luxury? bill: no, it is not luxury because we would not have a job anymore. we go and skeptical.

we have bioengineers on the team who spend their careers on this kind of thing. we are ok being wrong sometimes, even most of the time. by the way, google gives you as much money as you want. bill: they don't give me. i would not put it in those terms. we all try to be rational, how much money can we reasonably invest and expect a good return. emily: and you don't have to funders, which is kind of a luxury. it saves about one third overtime, we can spend with the companies and other things. likenednce fundraising to bank robbing -- since then the market has

changed. bill: i think it was an entrepreneurial unfriendly comment. it was something not nice to say. that was a unique situation. i think they learned something from it. the investment obviously did not work out, but they were onto something for a short time that burned brightly. at the same time, they were not dealing with sick patients. the kinds of chances we take and the entrepreneurs are willing to take do not and should not work on the life science side. you have to be careful. emily: the market is in the middle of a major reset. how do you think this plays out? ♪

emily: the market is in the middle of the major reset. how do you think this plays out? bill: since we are part of it, we have to understand what is happening. we have tried to avoid investment opportunities that seemed overheated and try to work with founders making reasonable deals. someone once told me, you can pick your investor or pick your price. what that means is -- you cannot take both. it is better to pick the investor.

at a: you invested in uber $3 million valuation. now it is valued over $62 million. could it be over five? bill: i'm completely biased. you have a transformational company. when we invested, there were a lot of people that questioned what are they doing. we pushed all in, a lot of money. we have over $300 million invested in the company which is the size of the entire fund at the time. , people question, is .t overpriced emily: things with bloomberg did

it a bit complicated. tryinggle is doing self cars. uber,we are invested in trying to make them as important of the company as possible. emily: but now you compete. bill: we don't compete. we are the investors. in cars.wants to be anytime you get a company the size of uber, they will bump into it one another. emily: you pledged to hire a woman general partner. what kind of progress have you may? bill: we are not hiring a general partner now, that when we do that, we have to make an effort to do it.

elements to it. entrepreneurs and ventures like ours are white men. this is a problem on several different fronts. deploy a certain amount of money, into something that we never did before which is to invest in some other venture funds. we invested in for venture funds that are not our own. they are founded by people who are not white men. itly: i don't want to call affirmative action, but maybe it is affirmative action. bill: we do have a female general partner.

point these to things out. on ouryou the numbers team. i think there is a devaluation that goes along with that that makes that person this so-and-so, rather than, oh, there also technologist or onto pernod ricard emily: but you have the power to change that. bill: we have the power to look at ourselves and say, what can we do differently. i have a team undergo unconscious hearing. we are all guilty of that. to try to correct those things and to start those ways, and like i said, invest in other entrepreneursth come on our radar

necessarily. it is ok to say come on our tha. i would like to do better with that. if we invested in the companies that have the most positive impact for the largest number of patients, that would make me really happy. emily: how about 50 years? bill: i hope i'm still around. to think that out. anytime i think, where will i be in 3-5 years, i have been wrong. a ton of fun. it is mostly because of the people i work with. as long as that is the case, the answer is yes. emily: bill manus. thank you. ♪

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