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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