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Robert A. Swanson Robert Arthur Swanson was born on November 29, 1947, and received his SB in chemistry and his SM in management from MIT in 1970. Swanson's SM thesis, titled "A Model for New Product Attribute Selection," was supervised by marketing Professor Arnold E. Amstutz. Swanson was introduced to the spirit of high tech entrepreneurship at MIT by his mentor, Professor Richard S. Morse, through a course called "New Enterprises" which is still taught at MIT today. Following graduation from MIT, Swanson was recruited John Reed MIT '61, now Chairman, CEO, Citicorp and Phil Smith, Former President, Citicorp Venture Capital, to work for Citicorp Venture Capital Limited. In 1973, Swanson assumed responsibility of opening Citicorp's VC's San Francisco office. In 1975, he left Citicorp to join the venture capital partnership of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. The following year he co-founded Genentech, Inc. (see Corporate Information, below), where he was Chief Executive Officer from 1976 to 1990, and Chairman of the Board from 1990 through 1996. Swanson resigned from the Genentech board effective December 31, 1996 and engaged in venture capital activities on his own account. In June of 1996 he was named Chairman of a biotechnology startup called Tularik, Inc., of which he is in effect a founder (see Corporate Information). Swanson married Judy Church in 1980. She is from Lansing, Michigan, and was a National Merit Scholar at Michigan State University. Bob's mother, Arlene Swanson, lives nearby in Foster City. The Swansons have two daughters, Katie (16) and Erica (11). They are both enthusiastic soccer players, and their father has coached their teams. Both Swanson parents are active on the boards at their childrens' private school. SIGNIFICANT AFFILIATIONS: Corporate: Geron Corporation, director (as of 1994) Flag Venture Partners, director Tularik, Inc., Chairman and director (as of 1996) Non-profit: Genentech Foundation for Biomedical Sciences, director (as of 1996) Harvard University Faculty of Medicine, member of Board of Fellows Nueva School, Hillsborough (daughters' private school), trustee San Francisco Ballet Association, trustee San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, trustee Tech Center of Silicon Valley, director Young Presidents Organization, member MIT Entrepreneurship Center, Board Member Academic: American Association for the Advancement of Science, member American Chemical Society, member American Society of Microbiology, member Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, member MIT AFFILIATIONS:
MIT Living Group: Sigma Chi Fraternity CORPORATE: Tularik, Inc.: This closely held company, based in South San Francisco, is focused on developing therapeutics which act through the regulation of gene expression. By discovering and understanding how a given human gene is "switched on and off" to cause specific diseases, the company identifies specific targets for therapeutic intervention. The company's president is Dr. David Goeddel, who had been the first full-time scientist hired by Swanson at Genentech in 1978 and was a leader in developing several of Genentech's drugs. Goeddel named it for a river in Alaska, where he was vacationing when he got the idea for the company. Genentech: In the early 1970s, Swanson became fascinated with the idea of using one's own DNA to create new medicines. In 1975, Swanson met with Dr. Herbert Boyer, a professor at the University of California-San Francisco and a leading researcher in recombinant DNA research. At the time, Boyer said he only had ten minutes for a meeting, but he and Swanson hit it off and met, over beers, for over three hours. (There is a bronze statue in front of Genentech headquarters commemorating the historic encounter.) The two proposed to take a human gene and splice it into the DNA of a common bacterium in such a way that the bacterium accepted the DNA as its own and then followed the instructions of the gene to make a human protein. In 1976, Boyer and Swanson co-founded Genentech with a $1,000 personal investment and initial capital funding from Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and the Lubrizol company. Genentech made its initial public offering in 1980 at $35/share and the share price almost tripled on the first day of trading. In 1990, Genentech merged with Roche Holdings, the parent of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Hoffmann-La Roche. In 1999, Roche bought out all of the shares of Genentech that it did not already own; it subsequently re-sold some shares to the public. |
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MIT Entrepreneurship Center, 70 Memorial Drive, Room E51-355, Cambridge, MA 02138 Telephone: 617-253-8653, Fax: 617-253-8633, Email: ecenter@mit.edu |
