Rick Blume has been financing companies in healthcare for over three decades. His early investment banking career involved financing and banking relationships with hospitals, payers, physicians, and new biotech companies. The excitement he saw at Genentech, in its early years, led him to transition into venture capital in the mid 1980's.  Rick co-founded CB Health Ventures in 1998 where he assembled what is now the core of Excel including Enrico Petrillo, M.D., Steve Gullans, PhD, and Tricia Moriarty.

In each of his five prior venture funds Rick has followed the same successful strategy: invest broadly in healthcare across various sectors and stages and focus on businesses that lower costs and improve outcomes. By having savvy healthcare providers as limited partners and advisers, Rick has built up an extraordinary network to help with due diligence and market acceptance issues.

Rick has served as a director or active investor in many companies including Dormir, Lantos Technologies, Cytyc (acquired by Hologic - HOLX), AbT (now OSI - OSIP), Somatogen (acquired by Baxter - BAX), EdenTec (acquired by Nellcor), Exact Sciences (EXAS), IPC The Hospitalist Company (IPCM), GeneOhm (acquired by Becton Dickinson - BDX), Zonare, TransMedics, US Servis (acquired by McKesson); and the former public health insurance company Washington National. . In addition to Excel, Rick has been active in initiating and teaching courses in venture capital and entrepreneurship at both Boston College Carroll School of Management and Simmons College School of Management, and serving on the Boards of the Chicago Biomedical Consortium and the National Regenerative Medicine Foundation .Rick did his undergraduate studies at University of the Pacific and Stanford. His MBA is from Stanford University.

Juan Enriquez is a leading authority on the economic impact of life sciences on business and society and is a respected business leader and entrepreneur. Juan represents Excel on the boards of ShapeUp, Activate Networks, Catch.com, and Synthetic Genomics.

Prior to Excel, Juan was the founding Director of the Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project, with many of his innovative thoughts captured in his bestselling book, As The Future Catches You, which provided an accurate blueprint of how a bio-based economy changes industries and corporations.

His most recent publication is an eBook he co-authored with Steve Gullans, Homo Evolutis: A Short Tour of our New Species, which describes a world where humans increasingly shape their environment, themselves, and other species. 

Following HBS, Juan became an active angel investor and founder of Biotechonomy Ventures which invested in BioTrove, Xcellerex, and Synthetic Genomics, a company he co founded with Drs. J. Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith to apply synthetic biology solutions to address global energy, medicine, clean water, and food challenges. As a business leader, advisor, and renowned speaker, Juan works directly with the CEOs of a number of Fortune 50 companies, as well as various heads of state, on how to adapt to a world where the dominant language is shifting from the digital towards the language of life. Mr. Enriquez serves on a number of boards including Cabot Corporation, the Public Interfaces Steering Committee of the Division of Earth & Life Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences, The Genetics Advisory Council of Harvard Medical School, The Chairman’s International Council of the America’s Society, and the Visiting Committee of Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center. He graduated from Harvard with a B.A. and an M.B.A., both with honors.

View Juan Enriquez's Selected Talks

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Steve Gullans, PhD, Managing Director

Dr. Gullans is an experienced investor, entrepreneur and scientist. At Excel, he focuses on life science technology companies with a particular interest in disruptive platforms that can impact multiple industries. Steve is currently a Director at Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals, PathoGenetix, nanoMR, Cleveland HeartLab, and Catch.com.  He was previously a board member of Activate Networks as well as BioTrove which was acquired by Life Technologies (LIFE) in 2009 and Biocius Life Sciences which was acquired by Agilent Technologies (A) in 2011.

Prior to Excel, Steve co-founded RxGen, Inc., a pharma services company where he served as CEO from 2004-2008. In 2002, Steve stepped in as a senior executive at U.S. Genomics to direct operations, recruit a new CEO, and assist with fundraising. In the 1990s, he co-developed the technology that launched CellAct Pharma GmbH, a drug development company. Steve’s experience with venture investing began in the late 1980s when he became an active advisor to small biotechs and venture investors, including being a Senior Advisor to CB Health Ventures for 10 years.

Dr. Gullans is an expert in advanced life science technologies and was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital for nearly 20 years. He has published more than 130 scientific papers in many leading journals, lectured internationally, and co-invented numerous patents. He recently co-authored with Juan Enriquez an eBook entitled, Homo evolutis: A Short Tour of Our New Species, and a comment in Nature entitled, “Genetically Enhanced Olympics Are Coming,” which describe a world where humans increasingly shape their environment, themselves, and other species. Steve received his B.S. at Union College, Ph.D. at Duke University, and postdoctoral training at the Yale School of Medicine. He is a Fellow of the AAAS and the AHA.

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Enrico Petrillo, MD, Managing Director

Dr. Petrillo has a wealth of experience as a venture investor, healthcare consultant, entrepreneur, and physician who has been instrumental in the success of CB Health Ventures (CBHV), two funds which he co-founded with Rick Blume. Enrico has been advising and building successful healthcare and IT companies for over 20 years. He initiated investments in nanoMR, Aileron, MedVentive (acquired by McKesson - MCK),Saladax Biomedical, Pathogenetix, Lantos, BioTrove  (acquired by  Life Technologies-LIFE),  BIOCIUS/BioTrove Spin-out (acquired by Agilent Technologies - A) , Quovadx (now Healthvision), eBenX (acquired by SHPS), and Morphotek  (acquired by Eisai Co. , Ltd – Japan ). Enrico has been a Director and/or an Observer at GeneOhm (acquired by Becton Dickinson – BDX) , Exact (EXAS) , Aileron Therapeutics, MedVentive (acquired by McKesson - MCK), Pathogenetix, Saladax Biomedical, Shape Up, Aventura, Lantos, IlluminOss, BioTrove, Morphotek, Quovadx, and eBenX.

Previously he was a partner at Fletcher Spaght, a Boston-based consulting firm spun out of Boston Consulting Group that specializes in strategy and market consulting for multi-stage medical and IT companies. He is a current advisor to the Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary and affiliated agencies.

In addition to being a full time managing director at Excel, Enrico is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine at Boston University. Dr. Petrillo earned both his undergraduate and M.D. degrees from Tufts University, and completed his internship and residency at Harvard-affiliated hospitals in Boston.

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Caleb Winder, Director

Caleb brings over 15 years of operating and startup experience in life science and healthcare companies to the Excel team. He represents Excel as a Board Member for Aventura and Cleveland HeartLab and a Board Observer for Saladax and MedVentive and plays an instrumental role in sourcing and structuring deals.  Caleb works closely with portfolio companies to form strategic partnerships such as Saladax’s partnership with Myriad Genetics where he and Enrico introduced, structured, negotiated and closed the deal on behalf of Saladax. 

Prior to joining Excel, Caleb was a Principal at Biotechonomy, where he worked with Juan Enriquez to identify, finance, and manage several entrepreneurial ventures, including Synthetic Genomics, where he was the Director of Finance and helped secure the initial financings.  Caleb is a former member of the board of Xcellerex, Inc., where he helped develop a new strategy and restructure the company.  He began his career as an award winning sales and marketing executive at medical device and diagnostics companies. He is a former member of the Entrepreneurial Council of the Wake Forest Translational Science Institute.  He received his M.B.A. from Babson College, magna cum laude, where he was a Babson Fellow in the Center for Technology Enterprise and a Director of the Entrepreneurial Finance Group. He received a B.A. in Biology with a minor in Economics from Colby College.

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Michael Fritz, Associate

Prior to joining Excel, Michael was a strategy consultant for healthcare, telecom, and private equity clients as a Senior Associate for The Parthenon Group in Boston. He is experienced in the due diligence process and provides economic modeling expertise to the team. He also is a mentor in the MassChallenge 2011 startup accelerator. Michael received a bachelor’s degree with a focus on engineering and economics from Dartmouth College and studied on exchange at the London School of Economics and the University of Otago in New Zealand.

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