Reed Jobs, the eldest son of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, is making his public debut. According to the New York Times‘ Dealbook, the 31-year-old is starting Yosemite, a venture capital firm that will invest in novel cancer cures. After his father died from pancreatic cancer complications in 2011, he was inspired to launch the foundation, he told the publication.
“My father got diagnosed with cancer when I was 12,” Mr. Jobs told DealBook in his first interview with a news organization. This led him to begin focusing on oncology, starting with a summer internship at Stanford when he was 15, he revealed.
According to the New York Times, Yosemite – named after the national park where his parents got married – has so far raised $200 million in funding from medical institutions such as Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, The Rockefeller University, and M.I.T, as well as venture capitalist John Doerr.
Reed Jobs’ latest endeavor will expand on his prior work as a managing director at the Emerson Collective, his mother’s mission-driven firm. The company will use a dual structure model of a for-profit corporation and a donor-advised fund to distribute grants to scientists, who will then use the monies for research before returning to Yosemite for venture capital.
According to the Times, Mr. Reed Jobs stated that his new role at Apple will assist scientists in developing and focusing their research. “I had never ever wanted to be a venture capitalist,” he said. “But I realized that when you’re actually incubating something and putting it together, you can make a tremendous difference in what assets are part of that, what direction it’s going to take, and what the scientific focus is going to be,” the 31-year-old added.