'Gap years' are for adults, too: Ex-Foun­da­tion ex­ec Steve Kaf­ka joins Third Rock af­ter glo­be­trot­ting break

Af­ter tak­ing off the past 7 months to trav­el the world and spend time with fam­i­ly, for­mer Foun­da­tion Med­i­cine ex­ec Steve Kaf­ka is join­ing the start­up foundry Third Rock Ven­ture as their lat­est ven­ture part­ner.

Kaf­ka has spent the bulk of his ca­reer in fi­nance and op­er­a­tions at var­i­ous bio­phar­ma out­fits, most re­cent­ly serv­ing as pres­i­dent and COO of Foun­da­tion. This will be Kaf­ka’s first post in the VC world, but that’s not un­usu­al for Third Rock part­ners. In fact, the VC firm makes a habit of bring­ing in guys like Kaf­ka. Just last week, an­oth­er ven­ture part­ner — Jeff Tong — was telling me about Third Rock’s un­usu­al ap­petite for in­dus­try ex­ecs that have more ex­pe­ri­ence run­ning com­pa­nies than in­vest­ing in them. That’s be­cause the firm is a bit non­tra­di­tion­al in its mod­el, op­er­at­ing like a “start­up stu­dio” — build­ing out com­pa­nies them­selves rather than in­vest­ing in ex­ist­ing ones.

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