We interviewed Jenny Yip, managing partner at Adjuvant Capital, a life sciences venture capital firm based in New York and San Francisco. Adjuvant Capital launched in 2019 and announced its first, $300M fund in February 2021 to invest in medical innovations in historically overlooked market segments.
When Jenny Yip was fourteen years old, she attended a job fair where she met a representative from Doctors Without Borders, which sparked her interest in global health. Going into college, she pictured herself graduating with a pre-med degree and becoming a physician. However, a summer internship at Goldman Sachs steered her path away from medicine and into investment banking.
Jenny spent a decade at Goldman Sachs building both her investment acumen and nurturing her passion for global health. She requested a secondment from Goldman Sachs to volunteer for TechnoServe, an NGO in Nairobi, Kenya, where she provided consulting services for farmers and small business owners around Kenya. Eventually, an opportunity arose at the Gates Foundation for Jenny to be part of its strategic investment fund. At the Gates Foundation, Jenny was able to combine her passions for public health, impact, and investing. From this foundation, she helped to launch Adjuvant Capital with a mission to prioritize global health.
In this episode of The First Close, we cover:
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Jenny’s early career as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs
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The global experiences and passion for healthcare that led Jenny to start her own fund
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Adjuvant Capital’s approach to addressing issues in public health
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Using the “but-for” test to weigh the impact of a potential investment
Listen to our interview with Jenny by streaming The First Close on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.