Genoa Ventures

Genoa Ventures is a San Francisco, California venture firm that invests where biology and technology converge. Founded and led by Jenny Rooke, the firm backs companies whose products depend on advances in both the life sciences and engineering, on the view that this convergence is where the pace of innovation can be accelerated and whole industries reshaped. Genoa describes its work as identifying those opportunities early and then concentrating capital and operating expertise behind them, with the stated aim of helping build category-defining companies that make the world healthier, cleaner and more productive. Its stated sequence is converge, focus, launch and empower. The founding principle of the firm is to improve the performance and stability of its portfolio companies on the way to their full potential, and the team is assembled with that in mind: its backgrounds span investing, company operating roles, scientific research and discovery, and launching and scaling businesses across both the biology and technology sectors. Genoa positions itself as an extension of the company team rather than a passive shareholder, describing itself as part of the extended team once it invests, and it works with a set of strategic partners alongside its own staff. The firm publishes commentary from the frontlines of biology and technology, including on human genomics and next-generation clinical assessment tools, and Rooke is a recurring presenter at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. For founders, Genoa is most relevant when a company sits at the boundary of a life-science insight and a technology platform and needs an investor fluent in both, rather than a generalist technology fund or a pure therapeutics investor.