Nate joins as Operating Partner supporting Playground's Engineered Biology portfolio across fundraising and business development, Katja serves as Operating Partner leading Go-To-Market Strategy, Marketing & Communications for the firm and its portfolio.
PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 3, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Playground Global, a deep-tech venture capital firm with over $1 billion in AUM, today announced the hiring of two veteran operating partners, Nate Chang and Katja Gagen. Both have worked in venture capital and adjacent sectors for over two decades respectively bringing industry and fund operating experience from investment firms including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and TCV. Their expertise complements the 40+-person team at Playground dedicated to investing in breakthrough technologies and providing comprehensive support to founders and their companies. Nate will focus on supporting the firm's Life Sciences portfolio, including fundraising, strategy, and corporate development, and Katja will manage marketing for Playground and advise portfolio companies in the areas of marketing, communications and go-to-market strategies.
"Joining Playground provides an opportunity to take my experience and relationships in the life sciences and support the next generation of incredible scientists that Playground has and continues to invest in," said Nate Chang, Operating Partner at Playground Global." Jory Bell and Ben Kim, Ph.D., built a portfolio that represents a new era in life science tools and breakthrough therapeutic platforms from a world-class group of founder-led companies. Playground shares the big and bold visions of our founders. We're proud to invest in the future we all desire."
After spending nearly fifteen years in healthcare investment banking, Nate transitioned to venture capital in 2019, joining Andreessen Horowitz as a Partner, leading Corporate Development in the firm's newly established Bio team. Prior to Andreessen Horowitz, Nate was a Managing Director in the Life Sciences Investment Banking Group at RBC Capital Markets and spent his earlier investment banking career at Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley advising life science companies. Most recently, Nate was a Managing Director at CBC Group, an Asia-focused healthcare private equity fund with over $5 billion in AUM.
"It's an exciting time to have Nate join our team as our engineered biology portfolio continues to grow and reach its next set of milestones," said Jory Bell, General Partner at Playground Global. "We make singular bets in each technological or scientific approach at Playground, so we want to pair our high conviction with the right level of post-investment support."
Beginning with Fund II, Playground expanded its focus into the Engineered Biology category, investing in foundational tools including Ultima Genomics and breakthrough therapeutics such as mRNA with Strand Therapeutics. Over the past 12 months, Playground Global has led four investments in this category. Today, Playground Global announced that it has led a seed investment in Amber Bio, a company pioneering new gene editing platforms to enable multi-kilobase RNA writing to reach previously undruggable diseases.
In marketing, Katja brings over two decades of experience building and growing leading B2B brands and developing best-in-class practices at venture capital firms. She joins from fintech start-up Brex, where she ran External Communications and helped grow the company's reputation while navigating the venture capital banking saga from earlier this year. Before Brex, Katja was a VP of Marketing at TCV and General Catalyst, building out their marketing functions and working with portfolio companies on transforming their brands, preparing for fundraising, M&A opportunities and IPOs.
"Technology is a transformative force that can redefine and create entirely new industries. Playground Global supports a remarkable collection of companies driving change in areas like energy transformation, robotics and automation, life sciences, next-gen compute, and more," said Katja Gagen, Operating Partner at Playground Global. "I am thrilled to join the team at a time when its mission of supporting young and deeply innovative businesses is more important than ever."
"Playground is well known for its ability to support first-time founders commercialize their breakthrough technologies in large markets," said Bruce Leak, General Partner at Playground. "As our portfolio companies grow and mature, we are expanding our resources to support them in critical areas like fundraising and go-to-market strategies, where Nate's and Katja's deep operational experience comes into play."
Nate's addition bolsters the Life Sciences team, which includes General Partners Jory Bell and Matt Hershenson, Venture Principal Ben Kim, Ph.D., Venture Partner Phyllis Whiteley, Ph.D., Principal Software Engineer Daniel Yum, Data Scientist Guocong Song, and Engineered Biology Fellow Erin Yang.
Beyond Life Sciences, Playground's portfolio tackles hard problems with breakthrough technologies, investing in deep tech sectors including AI, Automation, Decarbonization, Engineered Biology, and Infrastructure, all underpinned by investments in Next-Gen Compute. Most recently, Playground portfolio company MosaicML announced its $1.3 billion acquisition by Databricks, a leader in AI infrastructure. MosaicML has quickly emerged as the leader in efficiently training LLMs for top enterprises on their own proprietary data.
Media Contact
Alex Mack, Playground Global, 317-690-6851, [email protected]
SOURCE Playground Global
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