Derek Norman joined Leaps by Bayer, the corporate venturing arm of Germany-headquartered life sciences and agricultural products group Bayer, as a vice-president in April 2019.
Norman was originally hired by Bayer Growth Ventures (BGV), which had been known as Monsanto Growth Ventures until Bayer bought its parent company, agrochemical producer Monsanto, in mid-2018.
Bayer already ran the Leaps by Bayer investment vehicle, which focused on incubating life sciences startups. The Leaps team has now taken control of the BGV portfolio, which was focused on making seed-stage investments in developers of health and nutrition technologies.
Leaps by Bayer has invested more than $1.5bn since being set up in 2015. The unit collaborates with the “world’s brightest minds” in biotech and agriculture, focusing on medium-to-large equity investments over a minimum time of three to five years. Leaps aims to provide significant early-stage funding, allowing companies to focus on the long-term delivery of their disruptive technology, rather than short-term and lower-impact results.
Among Leaps by Bayer’s recent investments are participation in the $175m venture round for Affini-T Therapeutics, a US-based company developing T-cell therapeutics for cancer sufferers, and a role in the $40m series B round for Kenyan agtech company Apollo Agriculture. Other new portfolio additions include cancer therapy specialist Triumvira Immunologics and Woebot Health, a developer of therapeutics for mental health problems.
Norman was formerly head of Syngenta Ventures, Switzerland-based agribusiness Syngenta’s corporate venturing unit. Norman joined Syngenta Ventures in 2009 as a managing director and was included in Global Corporate Venturing’s 2016 Rising Stars list.
He has a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Stanford University as well as a PhD in the same subject from Harvard University.
