HealthQuest’s Kong on Teamwork, Medtech, & Investing $225 Million

Garheng founded HealthQuest Capital in 2012 to improve people’s lives through impacting healthcare on a significant scale. His vision was to build a best-in-class team of the highest talent and integrity to work with outstanding entrepreneurs to transform healthcare through high growth companies while generating outsized risk adjusted returns for investors. A physician and engineer by training, Garheng has 19 years of experience investing in innovative healthcare companies with a long list of successes. He has served on the boards of HealthQuest portfolio companies Ajax, Alcresta, Avedro, Avizia, Castle Biosciences, CleanSlate, Health Channels, Magnolia Medical, Spirox, Trice Medical, Venus, and VirMedica. Some of his notable past successes include IPO’s with Cempra (CEMP), Alimera (ALIM), Applied Genetic Technology Corp. (AGTC), Proteon (PRTO), Histogenics (HSGX) and TransEnterix (TRXC). His investments going on to successful M&A transactions include: Calibra Medical (J&J), Cellective (AstraZeneca), Serenex (Pfizer), Athenix (Bayer), NovaMin (GSK), Aldagen (Cytomedix), Salveo Specialty Pharmacy (United Health), SARCode (Shire), and Spirox (Stryker). Garheng’s interests and industry footprint are broad as he also serves on the board of LabCorp (LH), Alimera Sciences (ALIM), Histogenics (HSGX), Melinta (MLNT), StrongBridge (SBBP), the Duke University Medical Center, SEBIO, Corporate Chaplains of America and advises numerous industry groups such as IDEO and Lam Research. He is a Fellow of the Aspen Institute's Health Innovators Fellowship. Garheng received two undergraduate degrees in Chemical Engineering and Biological Sciences from Stanford, while on an athletic scholarship. He then earned an MD, PhD and MBA from Duke University, graduating #1 in his class in each instance. His early career included stints at GlaxoSmithKline, McKinsey and a medical device start-up, TherOx, before joining Intersouth Partners and then Sofinnova Ventures. He lives in Silicon Valley with his physician wife (a board certified electrophysiologist) and son, and was a nationally ranked volleyball player (and avid “foodie”).