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About Kenson Ventures, LLC
| The Kenson Ventures Team | Mission
About Kenson Ventures,
LLC
Kenson Ventures, LLC ("Kenson Ventures") is a California-based
venture investment limited liability company founded in 1999.
It is located in scenic Palo Alto, a town 25 miles south of San
Francisco and in the hub of Silicon Valley.
Kenson Ventures provides seed money/funds and strategic advice
to start-ups, partnerships, and established companies focusing
in the biotechnology and life science areas. Kenson Ventures also
considers and participates in co-investment with other institutions.
The range of investment varies from $500,000 to $3 million U.S.
dollars. Since Kenson funds are often accompanied by co-investments
from affiliated institutions, the actual amount of investment
could be much greater than that provided by us. Majority of the
investment are made in private companies in the United States.
A Kenson Ventures representative normally serves on the board
(member of the Board or Business Advisory Board) in which it has
a vested interest.
We, at Kenson Ventures, understand the challenges of building
a successful company. Our team is dedicated in assisting companies
with strong growth potential. Our strength is in our knowledge
base and industry experiences in building biotechnology companies
in the past. When we make an investment, we do our best to provide
growth strategy, resources and the contact network to assure success
of the company.
Kenson Ventures consistently strives to make fruitful investment
work. Our primary focus is on emerging-growth companies. We may
also make investments in late-stage companies. In the short time
since Kenson Ventures' inception, we have been involved in and
financed over 20 rapidly growing companies representing a broad
spectrum of technology platforms. The engagement of these companies
ranges from the development of novel drugs, discovery of genomics-based
drug targets and leads, to the development of research tools in
molecular and cellular biology. For a listing of our previous
and current investments, please visit our Portfolio Companies
section.
The Kenson Ventures
Team
 Kenneth
Fong, Ph.D., is the Chairman of Kenson Ventures, LLC.
Kenson specializes in venture financing and strategic consulting
to biotech companies. As of January 2003, Kenson has 18 investments
that mostly fall into 3 major categories: a) Innovative Research Tools,
b) Platform Technologies, and c) Drug Development. Prior to founding
Kenson, Dr. Fong is the founder and former CEO of CLONTECH Laboratories,
that was acquired by Becton Dickinson (BD) in late 1999. CLONTECH
is the leader in the Molecular/Cell Biology market and in the
last 4 years before its acquisition, the company had experienced
an average growth rate of 36% a year. The company also had 48
consecutive quarters of double-digit growth and profits. In 1994,
1995, 1998, and 1999, CLONTECH was selected as one of the fastest-growing
companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dr. Fong's past experience
is best suited to young companies and those desire to grow more
rapidly. He is also adept at crafting development strategy and
realistic implementation plan to promote the long-term growth
of company. Dr. Fong obtained his Ph.D. from Indiana University.
 Joseph
C.-C. Huang, Ph.D., is a Vice President at Kenson Ventures,
LLC. Dr. Huang has extensive knowledge and experience in the biotech
industry. He is an expert in the screening and selecting portfolio
companies for investment. Before Kenson, Dr. Huang was the Head
of Molecular Biomedical Research Department at CLONTECH Laboratories,
Inc. (1995-1999). He was responsible for setting up a new department
and managing multi-million dollar therapeutic target discovery
contract research programs for several major pharmaceutical companies.
Prior to CLONTECH, he was a senior scientist and project leader
at Genelabs, Inc. (1986-1995). He was involved in molecular cloning
of novel hepatitis viruses as well as in developing diagnostic
tests for detecting hepatitis viruses. Dr. Huang also participated
in developing new tools for use in screening small molecule drugs.
Before Genelabs, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory
of Dr. Michael Bishop, a Nobel Laureate, at University of California,
San Francisco. Dr. Huang received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from
University of California, Berkeley.
 Yishan
(Peter) Li, Ph.D., M.B.A., is a Vice President at
Kenson Ventures, LLC. Dr. Li has extensive business and scientific
experience. At his current position, he consulted for biotech
startups on business strategies, operations, marketing and
business development in his capacities as a member of Board of
Directors, an observer to the Board, or a business advisor. He worked in biotechnology corporate finance
at investment bank RBC Capital Markets while he was in business
school. Prior to business school, he was the head of Peptide
Antibody Development at Santa Cruz
Biotechnology, Inc. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of
California, Berkeley. Dr. Li's scientific work focused on protein
expression, small molecule-protein interaction, protein
structure-function relationship, and mechanisms of enzymes. Dr. Li
earned his M.B.A. from University of California, Berkeley. He
received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Ohio State University,
where he was a University Presidential Fellow, and his B.S. from
University of Science and Technology of China.
Mission
Kenson Ventures is focused on building successful companies and
creating values in these companies by providing seasoned and sound
strategic advice in addition to financial assistance.
Our secondary aim is to assist in the acceleration of basic and
drug discovery that promote the development of new and better
therapeutic drugs.
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