Podcast #10 – Bill Taranto – the Wolf of Merck
In our latest podcast, we talk to Bill Taranto, President and General Partner of the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund. The son of a career Air Force pilot, Bill grew up in Florida. In the early 80s, Bill swapped sailing and boat racing for New York and Wall Street. After a couple of years in healthcare investment, Bill was offered to join Johnson & Johnson and started putting capital to work in digital health long before anybody else (though at the time it was vaguely known as ‘IT adjacency’). The move to Merck came years later in 2010, when Bill got the opportunity to open his own venture capital shop. Bill talks to us about the early days of health tech investment, the difficulty of putting data to proper use, the holy grail of physician adoption and his unique approach to investing in this space. We also learn about Bill’s passion for music and entertainment, and that even though he can’t carry a tune (so he says), in another life, he would have loved to be a musician.
