Bill Maris

Bill Maris Parts Ways with GV

Bill Maris, who founded GV (formerly known as Google Ventures) in 2009, is leaving the unit at the end of this week, according to a new report from Recode.

Maris, a neuroscience student at Middlebury who cofounded an early web hosting company before joining Google, is reportedly being replaced by David Krane.

Krane is a managing partner at GV; he joined the venture arm in 2010, after spending nearly 10 years as Google’s director of global communications and public affairs.

This is quite a bombshell, and, as Recode notes, comes on the heels of a string of other recent, high-profile departures within Alphabet, parent company to GV and several other units.

Android cofounder Rich Miner recently left GV to start an education project within Google.

Alphabet also recently parted ways with Tony Fadell, the cofounder of Nest Labs (acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in early 2014), and several executives at Google’s self-driving car unit, including CTO Chris Urmson.

Maris wielded a tremendous amount of power at GV, which, as he told this editor in an on-stage interview in February, currently invests $500 million a year.

Not everyone realizes that despite GV’s bench of investors, every decision fell to Maris.

As he explained the process during that sit-down: “[A]ll the investment decisions I make, going into a company or when and how to come out of it, is in collaboration with the partner who brings [the deal] forward. So we talk about all the opportunities as a team and everyone is invited to that discussion – not just the investing partners. And we don’t take a vote. It’s not like a democracy in any way. But everyone knows where people stand and we try and give each other good advice, and at the end of the day, the person who brings it forward and I decide whether to move forward or not.”

Asked why GV wasn’t run more democratically, he told me, ” I have no idea, because I’ve never worked as a venture capitalist before. I masquerade as one now . . . But basically it started out with just me. The buck stops with me. So if we succeed, credit all goes to the team. If we fail, the blame should fall all on me; that’s how management should work.”

Whether that top-down process will change now remains to be seen.

More here.

(Pictured:Bill Maris at a StrictlyVC event in February. Photo courtesy of Brittany M. Powell.)

Bill Maris Talks Uber, Zenefits, and Running the Show at GV

Thursday night, at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, we talked with GV CEO Bill Maris about a wide range of issues, including what happened with its Europe fund, why GV didn’t invest in Zenefits, and why Maris alone makes every decision on behalf of the powerful venture unit, which now employs 70 people.

As venture geeks, we found much of what he had to say interesting. Hopefully, you’ll find the conversation instructive, too. (It’s been edited lightly for length.)

You work for the most valuable company in the world. You run its venture arm. Every decision falls to you and you alone, which not everyone realizes.

It’s getting scary. [Laughs.]

What is the trickle-up process?

So all the investment decisions I make, going into a company or when and how to come out of it, is in collaboration with the partner who brings [the deal] forward. So we talk about all the opportunities as a team and everyone is invited to that discussion – not just the investing partners. And we don’t take a vote. It’s not like a democracy in any way. But everyone knows where people stand and we try and give each other good advice, and at the end of the day, the person who brings it forward and I decide whether to move forward or not.

Why isn’t it more democratic?

I have no idea, because I’ve never worked as a venture capitalist before. I masquerade as one now . . . But basically it started out with just me. The buck stops with me. So if we succeed, credit all goes to the team. If we fail, the blame should fall all on me; that’s how management should work.

Do Larry Page or Sergey Brin ever say, “Bill, why’d you invest in XYZ deal?”

They never say anything. And that’s not a bad thing. We designed it specifically not to be influenced by Google. Larry and Sergey . . . are billionaires. Google has many billions of dollars. If they want to invest in something themselves, they have the opportunity to do that.

Some people are surprised that they don’t or can’t influence [GV], but the idea was that they wouldn’t. So I never talk about ventures with them. The closest we get is an email from Larry with a URL of a company that he came across.

Much more here.

Bill Maris Addresses Sensational Headlines at Disrupt

Bill Maris of Google Ventures gave a thoughtful performance yesterday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York. Interviewed by the outlet’s co-editor, Alexia Tsotsis, the two covered a range of high-profile stories that have been published in the last year and relate either to Google Ventures’s portfolio companies or to controversial – even seemingly strange — statements that Maris has made to reporters.

Earlier this year, for example, in a Bloomberg profile, Maris was quoted as saying: “If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes.”

The Bloomberg piece actually provides readers with a fairly rich picture of what Maris is trying to achieve at Google Ventures. But Maris’s very specific prediction has stuck to him like chewed gum and Tsotsis gave him the chance to address it yesterday — an opportunity he seized, suggesting the “science fiction headline” belies the truth.

The reality, he said is that “for generations, physicians and researchers have worked really hard to diagnose, treat and prevent disease. And so I’m interested in the people that are doing that. And if that adds five years to people’s lifespans, if it adds 10 years . . . I think it’s a worthy pursuit.”

At the beginning of the last century, he noted, the lifespan in the U.S. “was about 40 years; now it’s about 77.” There’s “a ton of work that has to be done” to address the question of whether humans can live 500 years, Maris continued. But he said he thinks things are moving in the right direction. “I think it’s possible within a generation or two, at the most, to cure cancer.” Maris also noted that the “first human genome was sequenced in 2004. It took about 15 years and $2.7 billion, and now you can sequence a genome on a machine that can sit [on a small side table] for under $1,000 in a couple of hours.”

Maris was also asked about the reputation of Uber — heralded as Google Ventures’s largest deal ever when Google backed it in 2013 — as “ethically challenged.” Calling Uber the “fastest-growing company we’ve ever seen,” he offered that any outfit growing so fast is invariably going to “bump into challenges.” Maris also shared some color about one of his first meetings with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick about a potential tie-up.

“When we invested in the first round of Uber, my partner, David Krane, and I went to see Travis and talk about the round,” said Maris. “I told Travis the same thing I told Matt Rogers and Tony Fadell when we invested in Nest [Labs] . . . which was: ‘What does it take to take it off the table? We don’t want to get into an auction. We’re not looking to save money on valuation, and hopefully you’re not looking to crank it as much as possible.’ And Travis said, ‘Here’s what it’s going to take. Here’s the price and what I want the round to look like. Are you on board with that?’”

After Maris said Google Ventures was, and they “shook on it,” that’s “exactly the deal that we did, and Travis was as good as his word,” said Maris, offering that Kalanick could “easily” have asked for “15 to 20 percent more.”

Tsotsis next moved on to Google Glass — which Maris says is alive and well, despite reports suggesting otherwise. We’d hoped she might ask Maris about another, Uber-related headline this year: the news that Google plans to develop its own Uber competitor.

As you may recall, Bloomberg had reported back in February that Google was “preparing to offer its own ride-hailing service, most likely in conjunction with its long-in-development driverless car project.” At the time, Bloomberg said that David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer and senior vice president of corporate development (as well as an Uber board member), had “informed Uber’s board of this possibility, according to a person close to the Uber board.” Bloomberg further reported that “Uber executives have seen screenshots of what appears to be a Google ride-sharing app that is currently being used by Google employees.”

Shortly after the piece was published, a “person familiar with the matter” told the Wall Street Journal that the “news that Google is developing an app to rival Uber has been blown out of proportion.” Reported the Journal: “The person said a Google engineer has been testing an internal app that helps Google employees carpool to work, and the app isn’t associated with the company’s driverless cars program.”

That seemed to settle the matter. Given the size of the opportunity Uber is chasing — and Google’s slowing growth — we’re not certain why.

(By the way, in case you’re curious: Unlike Maris’s colleague Ray Kurzweil – who reportedly takes 150 supplements each day to extend his life — Maris doesn’t take any, he said yesterday.)