Google Ventures President On Uber, Investments In Life Sciences

Google Ventures, operates separately from Google Inc as an independent entity. One of the major successes Google Venture had recently was Uber and its $40 billion valuation; Google Ventures invested in Uber in September 2013

Bill Maris, president and managing partner at Google Ventures, was recently on Bloomberg to discuss Uber and breaking the numbers on the firm’s 2014 investment decisions.

How Do You Deal With ‘Evil’ Image Of Uber?

"Look, I think anytime you have a company that’s growing as quickly as Uber is and this is a company -- probably the fastest-growing company I have ever seen, adding 50,000 jobs a month. You're going to rightly face scrutiny, but we are really optimistic about company’s future and it has the potential to be one of the most transformative companies we have ever seen," Maris said.

How Was 2014 For Google Ventures?

"It’s extremely busy. So, we had as of [Wednesday] morning 17 exits from the portfolio, we had a company called OnDeck Capital go public just this morning. We have quadrupled our investments in life-sciences from 9 percent to 36 percent of our dollars invested and we announced a $125 million fund for Europe and Israel […] So, it was a busy year," Maris added.

When asked if life-sciences is the biggest area for growth Google Ventures is looking at, Maris replied, "It is, it's a huge focus for us. Just personally I think, it's an opportunity to make a real profound impact on the world and life sciences is really becoming information technology."