Dr. Geoff Brooke
Michael Hoey
Eric J. Kim
Robert F. Kuhling
R. King Nelson , President and CEO
Carl Simpson
Dr Geoff Brooke co-founded GBS in 1996 and has more than 15 years venture capital experience. He was formerly President of Medvest Inc., a US-based early-stage venture capital group he co-founded with Johnson & Johnson. Geoff's experience includes company formation and acquisitions, as well as public listings on both NASDAQ and ASX. He has been an investor, executive and director of private and public companies and has an extensive network of international contacts. Geoff is on the board of GBS portfolio companies Antipodean Pharmaceuticals, Chemgenex Pharmaceuticals, CoDa Therapeutics, CogState, Sunshine Heart and Uptake Medical.
Geoff is licensed in clinical medicine by the Medical Board of Victoria, Australia and his post-graduate studies were in anaesthesiology/intensive care. He earned his Bachelor of Medicine/Surgery from the University of Melbourne, Australia and a Masters of Business Administration from IMEDE (now IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Michael Hoey is a former academic researcher and educator at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He taught in medicine, engineering and business and is an expert in thermotherapy and energy-tissue interactions and product development. He also taught physiology at Hamline University in St. Paul. Michael has been a consultant to many medical products companies and is a frequent guest lecturer for product development. He is an inventor of several medical products in cardiology, surgery, urology, gynecology, pulmonology and oncology and is also developing veterinarian products. Since 2002 he has been a founder/principal of several medical start-ups and serves on Scientific Advisory Boards and Boards of Directors. Michael also manages an engineering product development company to advance his products into these companies. Peripherally, he serves as a board director for Affinity Plus, a $1B financial organization and he designed, built and campaigns an NHRA drag race car.
Eric is a Managing Director with Maverick Capital where he focuses on the Firm's private investments and small cap public equity investments.
Prior to joining Maverick, Eric co-founded Biomimedica, an orthopedics-focused medical device start-up and was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company's healthcare practice where he worked with a number of pharma, biotech and medical device companies.
He received his M.B.A. from Stanford's Graduate School of Business and his Bachelors Degree in Cognitive Science from Yale University (Magna Cum Laude), where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was a recipient of the Richard U. Light Fellowship.
Rob Kuhling came to ONSET Ventures in 1987 after experience in a variety of technology marketing, strategic development and management positions. Rob was Director of Marketing at Sun Microsystems, where he spearheaded the company's expansion into the design automation marketplace. He also served as VP and Manager of General Electric-Calma's $100 million electronic design automation business and was a team leader for Boston Consulting Group, where he oversaw the development of a range of corporate business strategies.
At ONSET Ventures, Rob invests in communications and networking companies and medical device companies. Rob serves on the boards of several public and private companies, and has led ONSET Ventures' investments in companies like Aneurx, Clarify, Conceptus, Alteon, Packeteer, Embolic Protection, Endotex Interventional Systems, Uptake Medical and Gadzoox Networks.
Rob received his A.B. from Hamilton College and his MBA from Harvard Business School.
King joined Uptake Medical in April 2007 with over 25 years of medical device experience including 19 years with American Hospital Supply and Baxter International. He was Division President for Dade Diagnostics, Bentley Labs and Baxter's Perfusion Services from 1989-1999.
He was CEO and President of VenPro Corporation, a medical device company focused on heart and venous valves. The heart valve business was acquired by Medtronic in 2003.
Prior to joining Uptake Medical, King was CEO and President of Kerberos Proximal Solutions in 2005-2006 when FoxHollow Technologies acquired it.
He serves on the Board of Directors for several early stage private medical device companies and Digirad Corporation.
King graduated from Texas Tech University and has a MBA from The University of Miami.
Carl has worked in the medical/medical device arena for over 40 years.
He supported his way through undergraduate school working as an x-ray technician at El Camino Hospital. In addition he supported his way through graduate school working at Stanford in cardiovascular medicine.
His undergraduate training is in Microbiology and Biochemistry. His graduate degrees are in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science and an MBA, both from the University of Santa Clara.
After graduate school and a short period working for Hewlett-Packard's medical business group, Carl began an unanticipated excursion into becoming a medical device entrepreneur. With John Simpson, MD, PhD, and Ray Williams, Advanced Cardiovascular Systems (ACS) was formulated and was Carl's first entrepreneurial effort. Needless to say ACS was very successful, the company was sold to Lilly in 1984 and spun-off into Guidant in 1994. ACS became the University of Medical Devices for Silicon Valley, giving birth to over 100 medical devices companies. Recently Guidant has been sold to Boston Scientific and Abbott Vascular.
ACS created the experience, motivation and entrepreneurial drive to launch into a career of working with other entrepreneurs in establishing over 16 medical device companies. Carl has been on the board of multiple medical device companies and worked with Versant Ventures for four years learning the VC business and assisting them in defining new companies for future investments.
With multiple start-up companies under his belt, understanding the VC business models, and 40 years of operational and clinical experience, Carl is uniquely situated to contribute to the success of early stage medical device companies through the Coronis Medical Ventures incubator.
[Back to Top]
