John F. Harris

Managing Partner at JAZZ Venture Partners

John is a seasoned investor, operating executive and corporate director and brings to JAZZ significant experience founding, funding and developing early-stage life sciences and technology companies. In addition to his current role, John’s venture capital experience includes executive in residence positions at Mayfield Fund and Versant Ventures and an Advisory Board position with Arboretum Ventures.

Prior to JAZZ, John was the founder, president and CEO of NeuroVista, a Seattle-based medical device company pioneering new technologies for the management and treatment of epilepsy. NeuroVista was acquired by Cyberonics in 2013 (NASDAQ: CYBX). John was also a founder and vice president of marketing and business development at Northstar Neuroscience, which went public in 2006 (NASDAQ: NSTR) and was subsequently acquired by St. Jude Medical (NYSE: STJ).

Earlier in his career, John was a founder of Heartstream, a company that revolutionized the treatment of sudden cardiac arrest with uniquely designed external defibrillators that remain the market leader and can be found in airports, sports arenas, public buildings and many other locations.

Heartstream went public in 1996 and was subsequently acquired by Hewlett- Packard (NYSE: HPQ). John is also a cofounder of ClearFlow, MDI Partners, and VenX and has held board positions with Setpoint Medical, Mirador Biomedical, ExoLabs and Norfil Manufacturing. John holds numerous patents for his inventions in the life sciences field.

John earned a B.S. in industrial engineering from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.

Links

Previous companies

Versant Ventures logo

Org chart

Sign up to view 10 direct reports

Get started