Serial investor Tom Kelly takes up CFO role at US cancer therapeutics firm

Position is with one of Mayo ex-banker’s many investment targets, writes John Reynolds

LOW-PROFILE serial tech investor Tom Kelly has taken up the role of CFO at ZPredicta, a US cancer therapeutics firm that he backed in 2015.

The firm helps to automate cancer drug development, seeking to predict how cancer drugs will behave when taken, and aiming to lead to improved success rates in trials and then treatment.

San Francisco-based Kelly is a former investment banker at Merrill Lynch and Bank of America.

He also spent three years building up a private capital placement division at investment giant Blackstone.

The Mayo man has backed 27 startups over the past decade, one of which is Jayne Ronayne’s Dublin-based employee engagement firm Talivest. He also previously backed Facebook, and five of his other previous investments have either floated or been acquired.

Another of his promising tech investments, contracting platform Ironclad, raised $50m (€45m) last month, and has been backed by several well-known Silicon Valley VCs, including Y Combinator, Accel Partners and Sequoia.

He has also backed two other legal tech startups, Legalzoom, which has expanded from the US into the UK, and Lawyaw, which automates the writing of various legal forms and agreements.

Speaking exclusively to the Sunday Independent about his new role, Kelly said: “I have a lot of interest and experience in the pharmaceutical and medical tech space, having qualified as a pharmacist in the UK many years ago, and worked at the Christie Hospital, Manchester, which is a major cancer treatment centre, before moving to the US.

“Prior to that, I had also spent some time working in R&D at Pfizer in England.

“In the US, I then worked as a healthcare banker for many years and my clients were mainly pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies, so in some ways this move harks back to all of that experience, and will build on it,” he said.

“A few of my angel investments have been in life sciences, and ZPredicta has grown since I invested in 2015, so I’ve become more involved with them over time, first as a board member, and now as CFO.

“I’ve been really impressed with the technology they’ve developed and the customers they’ve been able to sign up.

“They’re accelerating the development of cancer therapeutics by partnering with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to help develop in vitro tests for anti-cancer drugs.

“I’ll be playing a key role, helping to continue growing the business, serving companies in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors. We will need to establish strategic partnerships to aid in that growth.”

Asked whether tech investments are becoming overvalued and might be due a correction, Kelly said: “Late-stage preIPO rounds have got very frothy, and we are definitely seeing a correction there.”