Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ son, Reed Jobs, announced he is starting a venture capital (VC) firm to fund new treatments against cancer, the disease that cut short his father’s life, which has already raised $200 million from investors including the venture capitalist billionaire John Doerr, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, The Rockefeller University and M.I.T.
Apple Co-Founder Steve Jobs died from pancreatic cancer in 2011| Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Key Takeaways
- The firm, called Yosemite, is an off-shoot of Emerson Collective, a hybrid investment, social impact and philanthropic firm the late Steve Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, founded in 2004.
- Yosemite derives its name from Yosemite National Park, where Steve and Laurene got married, according to the New York Times.
- Yosemite will run a for-profit business but also maintain a donor-advised fund in the hopes that, once a project is successful, it will become a benefactor of other promising ideas, the Times reported.
“I had never ever wanted to be a venture capitalist,” Reed Jobs told the New York Times’ Dealbook. “But I realised that when you’re actually incubating something and putting it together, you can make a tremendous difference in what assets are part of that, what direction it’s going to take, and what the scientific focus is going to be.”
Forbes Valuation
Powell Jobs’ net worth is at $14.3 billion according to the latest Forbes valuation.
Key Background
Laurene Powell Jobs founded Emerson Collective in 2004, and put a large chunk of the billions of dollars of stock in Apple and Disney she inherited from her late husband into the venture after he died in 2011 of pancreatic cancer at age 56.
Reed Jobs is the health managing director at Emerson Collective after he dropped out of pre-med school, where he was studying to become an oncologist.
