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Jan 29, 2021 · January 29, 2021 08:07 AM EST. Financing. Illumina co-founder Mark Chee moves from the genome to the proteome with upstart Encodia. Nicole DeFeudis. Editor. When Mark Chee...
- Nicole Defeudis
- Editor
Mark Chee, PhD. Co-Founder, President & CEO. Nigel Beard, PhD. Chief Technology Officer. Li Yu. Vice President of Finance. Board of Directors. Our board guides the mission and vision at Encodia with sound and effective leadership. Mark Chee, PhD. Ingo Chakravarty. Andrew El Bardissi, M.D. Sean Kendall. Giulia Kennedy, PhD. Our Investors.
- Who Founded Illumina?
- Meet Serial Start-Up Founder Larry Bock
- Larry Meets David Walt, Future Co-Founder of Illumina
- Larry Bock’s Ten Biotech Star Startups
- Larry Recruits John Steulpnagel, Future Co-Founder of Illumina
- A Rare Pushback For Larry Bock
- Back to David Walt
- The Naming of Illumina
- John Steulpnagel
- Illumina and Consumer DNA Companies
Biotech investor Larry Bock and his associate John Stuelpnagel licensed the initial technology that would underpin Illumina from Tuft University professor, David Walt. They recruited two more scientists as co-founders: geneticist Mark Chee and chemist Tony Czarnik. Illumina was incorporated in 1998.
I’m going to try to tell the Illumina foundation story in chronological order. That means I start with the late Larry Bock, a legendary founder of biotech start-ups. Larry Bock was a New Yorker who majored in biochemistry in the early 1980s. His mother was a chef, and his father was a stockbroker who recognized the early promise of the new biotech ...
During those early years of his investment career, Larry Bock was interested in a fiber-optic technology developed by a university professor named David Walt. Remember that name, as he will later be one of Illumina’s co-founders. But at this time, Bock and his colleagues considered Walt’s technology to be too early-stage for investment and they pas...
In 1987, Bock joined a small investment group with funds to create ten biotech ventures within five years. The results were stellar. All ten went public with excellent returns on the initial investment. This made Bock’s reputation as having a sharp eye for talent. His strategy was to gather good scientific, operational, and business people together...
When Larry Bock looked for interns he usually went to his old alma mater, the business school at CalTech. John Steulpnagel was a veterinarian with an interest in investment and biotechnology. Bock recruited Steulpnagel as an intern in his first year of business school. Steulpnagel worked through the summer for Bock, who was so impressed that he sug...
Up to 1997, Larry Bock seemed to be living a charmed business life. Every venture turned to gold, and every door was opened. Nate Lewis and Bob Grubbs, renowned chemists at CalTech, were developing a new chip technology that could hold a high volume of sensors. This is the kind of technology that would eventually be used by Illumina, but Bock wasn’...
About five years since David Walt had first met with Larry Bock, his fiber optic sensors were greatly matured. Bock approached him again, and Walt agreed to license his technology. At this point, Bock was looking for a general solution, or “nose”, that could detect any pattern. He hadn’t settled on a specific industry for use. Enter Mark Chee.
At this point in early 1998, Larry Bock and John Steulpnagel had their team of founders in place. David Walt would take a senior advisory position in the new company, which lasted for over a decade. Bock asked Steulpnagel to act as interim CEO until he could fill the position. Jay Flatley would be recruited about eighteen months later, and Steulpna...
Steulpnagel stayed in a leadership role with Illumina for about ten years. He also co-founded several other companies in the genomics space.
Most of our readers are interested in consumer DNA testing for genealogy and ancestry research. Illumina played a massive role in making these services affordable. All the big DNA testing companies use Illumina’s chip technology. But some companies are even more closely intertwined with Illumina. I mention briefly in an article on who owns 23andMet...
Illumina was founded in April 1998 by David Walt, Larry Bock, John Stuelpnagel, Anthony Czarnik, and Mark Chee. While working with CW Group, a venture-capital firm, Bock and Stuelpnagel uncovered what would become Illumina's BeadArray technology [3] at Tufts University and negotiated an exclusive license to that technology.
- 1998; 25 years ago
- US$4.58 billion (2022)
- 10,200 (Jan 2023)
Mark Chee, PhD. Co-Founder, President & CEO. Mark has a celebrated career in science and technology and is an inventor with more than 100 U.S. patents issued. In 1998, he co-founded Illumina and served as vice president of genomics and informatics.
