Health Care Needs More Entrepreneurs and Innovation: Google Ventures Head

Were looking for entrepreneurs with a healthy disregard for the impossible, said the managing partner of Google's

Bill Maris | Twitter

Google Ventures' Bill Maris a startup veteran, who founded and sold a web hosting company knows the challenges entrepreneurs face.

His challenge: Help the fund invest $200 million a year in startups. That works out to about one to two investments a week.

For Maris, who's also a neuroscientist, health care is a good place to look; seven of the 130 plus startups listed in its portfolio are focused on life sciences.

And clearly the Google Ventures team has an eye for talent. Shinya Yamanaka, who pioneered the intellectual property behind Google Ventures portfolio company iPerian (and now serves on the startups board), was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his groundbreaking stem cell research.

As part of CNBC's Healthy Week special report, we asked Maris to talk about the power of funding big ideas to change the practice of medicine. (See exclusive web video below.)

How are you changing the way venture Capitalism is done?

We've really taken a radically different approach to venture capital than has been seen before. We built a venture fund from the ground up, which is a pretty rare thing these days. And we hired a team of entrepreneurs and engineers and people who have built significant companies in the past and decided that we should focus our efforts on being hands on, helping them solve the kinds of problems that we faced as entrepreneurs just a few years ago.

We're measured by financial return, like all venture capitalists are, and probably should be. But we do have a larger goal, which is to invest in and support the most disruptive, interesting entrepreneurs in the world that are really looking to make a big change for the better in the way we live our lives.

The rest is here:

Health Care Needs More Entrepreneurs and Innovation: Google Ventures Head

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