RiverVest Venture Partners® is a venture capital firm focused on identifying and shaping early-stage life science companies to create significant shareholder value. With hands-on, high-level expertise and financial resources, RiverVest supports entrepreneurs by helping them achieve near-term objectives that position their companies for exit.

When medical device inventor Lixiao Wang, Ph.D., called on Dennis Wahr, M.D., Managing Director at RiverVest, to help develop a drug-coated balloon catheter based on his patent-pending technology, he was looking for leadership in addition to funding.

Experience, steady leadership, a willingness to drive change, and a deep understanding of the growing pains of a start-up — these are a few of the benefits CEO Joe Army cites when discussing the role of Salient’s Chairman of the Board Jay Schmelter, who is also a managing director of RiverVest.

It was the perspicacity of team members J. Gordon Foulkes and Niall O’Donnell in shepherding pharmaceuticals from gene discovery to clinical trials that attracted entrepreneur Nicholas Dean, Ph.D., to partnering with RiverVest. The three met through ‘BioBrits’, a networking community in San Diego.

Otonomy’s genesis has all the makings of a biopharmaceutical legend. Jay Lichter, Ph.D., managing director of Avalon Ventures, was driving down Prospect Street in La Jolla, Calif. one afternoon in January 2008 when he was struck not by a great entrepreneurial idea, but rather an unbearable dizziness.