Bill Maris steps down as CEO of Google’s investment arm

12 Aug 2016

Bill Maris has stepped down from his role at GV. Image via Wikimedia Commons

Bill Maris, the man behind Google’s investment arm GV (formerly Google Ventures) for the past eight years, has quit his role at the firm.

“Bill Maris has decided to step down to take a break with his family and tackle something new,” GV said in a statement.

Helping to found the investment firm back in 2009, Maris helped lead an investment firm that led the way in the new age business, betting big on cutting-edge start-ups like Uber, Carbon 3D, Slack and Flatiron Health.

google ventures

GV will now be led by David Krane, managing partner at the firm, who has been at Google for 17 years.

With an estimated $1.4bn under management, recent examples of its success include Jet, which Walmart agreed to acquire for around $3bn this month.

“I have an 11-month-old son and a wife. And I legitimately want to spend more time with them. It’s mission accomplished for me,” said Maris to Recode upon the announcement.

“GV is seen as a premier venture capital operation around the world. If it weren’t in great shape, that would be the wrong time to leave. I’m leaving because everything is great.”

One of GV’s more recent gambles has been a $30m investment into start-up Light, which is bidding to replace DSLR cameras with one pretty cool device. That device, though, has been delayed.

The Light L16 camera has raised eyebrows, and attracted plenty of pre-orders, as well as significant funding from Silicon Valley.

The latest round of $30m from Alphabet sees Light more than double its total funding, despite the concurrent news that the ‘late 2016’ hopes of delivering its first product cannot be achieved.

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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