Jenny Rooke (Genoa Ventures)

Ear­ly Zymer­gen in­vestor Jen­ny Rooke re­flects on 'chimeras' in biotech, what it takes to spot a $500M gem

When Jen­ny Rooke first heard of Zymer­gen back in 2014, she knew she was look­ing at some­thing dif­fer­ent and ex­cit­ing. The Emeryville, CA biotech held the promise of blend­ing bi­ol­o­gy and tech­nol­o­gy to solve a huge un­met need for cost-ef­fec­tive chem­i­cals — of all things — and a stel­lar found­ing team to boot.

But back then, West Coast ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists didn’t see in Zymer­gen the one thing they were look­ing for in a win­ning biotech: ther­a­peu­tic po­ten­tial. Rooke, how­ev­er, saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty and made her bets. Sev­en years lat­er, that bet is pay­ing off in a big way.

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