A rising VC star leaves Silicon Valley for … Michigan? Is she crazy?
Venture capital, banking, private equity, tech startups
That is, as we used to say once upon a time in the news biz, a man-bites-dog story.
One thing we currently say at Crain's is: One doesn't make a trend. At the dailies, these days, to our amusement here, one is sometimes all it takes to make a trend story and a big headline. But here it takes three examples of something, at a minimum, to allow you to pitch a trend story to editors.
So this isn't a trend story, yet. But it does qualify as a dog-biter.
Here's the setup: Kristin Myers was on a fast career track. Just 31, she has a biomedical-engineering degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison; spent five years in engineering, marketing and sales for the cardiac rhythm management division of the medical device giant Medtronic; got her MBA from Harvard University; and spent four years at the Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm of Skyline Ventures, where she did due diligence on potential investments, served on the board of directors of several portfolio companies and made partner.
And made jaws drop when she announced she was leaving Palo Alto for Ann Arbor and Arboretum Ventures LLC — which this morning will announce that it has hired her as principal to lead new investments from the VC firm's newest fund, Arboretum Ventures III, which was planned at $125 million but ended up being oversubscribed at $140 million when it closed fundraising last August.
Skyline has $800 million under management, including its current fund of $350 million, and is back in the marketplace raising a fifth and presumably larger fund.
Kristin and her fiance, Dave Peng, were in a mall in Palo Alto last weekend. She got the same treatment there as she has been getting from former colleagues. The WHAT!-You're-going-WHERE!!?? treatment. The you're-leaving-the-nirvana-of-venture-capital-for-Michigan-of-all-places? treatment.
"We were chatting with this nice couple, and I told them we're moving to Michigan. And they gave us this look, like, 'Why in the world would you ever do that?' " recounts Kristin. "People don't realize what a great opportunity there is here or that there's a quality of life you can develop here as a young family."
Here's how she got here: She already knew Paul McCreadie, one of Arboretum's managing directors, and had talked about Skyline co-investing on some of Arboretum's deals. At some point, a mutual friend told her she needed to meet this cool person named Jan Garfinkle, a former engineer turned venture capitalist who co-founded Arboretum in 2002.
Kristin and Jan met last year, when Arboretum was in the middle of fundraising. Jan mentioned they were looking for a principal to come aboard and help manage the new fund.
Here's why Kristin quickly decided that principal ought to be her:
One, both she and her fiance have Midwest roots and like the culture here. She grew up in a small town in Wisconsin; he grew up in Mt. Pleasant; and he got his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and his medical degree from Michigan State University.
Two, Arboretum has developed a national reputation for a string of large, very lucrative exits in recent years for its fellow out-of-state VC co-investors, including the sale of three Ann Arbor companies: HealthMedia Inc. for something approaching $200 million, Accuri Cytometers Inc. for $205 million and HandyLab Inc. for $275 million.
"Arboretum was one of only two or three health care companies to raise a fund nationally last year, which speaks to their team," she said.
Three, she says, the health care and medical device VCs on east and west coasts tend to chase the same deals and the same types of deals, mostly later-stage companies that can have quick exits. Arboretum has a reputation for nurturing startups, and Kristin thought it would be more fun and certainly more entrepreneurial to help fledgling companies.
"It really is refreshing to be here. The work Arboretum does is much broader-based — the companies they look at, the deals they make," she said.
Four, Dave, an anesthesiologist currently in a fellowship at Stanford, had two job offers in Ann Arbor and accepted one, from Anesthesiology Partners of Ann Arbor PLLC. He'll arrive in August when his fellowship is over.
Five, although she's healing from a stress fracture in her hip, now, she's a veteran marathoner, bike rider and triathlete and is eager to take her black lab out to the many miles of wooded trails near Ann Arbor that she has been hearing about on her visits into town to find a place to say and start attending to Arboretum business.
"On one of my trips in, I took a walk through the Arboretum. I figured since it's the company's namesake, I should check it out, and it was beautiful," she said. "Personally, moving here has been so easy."
Commentary: Good reason to be bullish on business attraction in 2021
Commentary: How to own your online reputation during a pandemic