If you’re curious what the future might hold for humanity and how targeted investments can help get us there, have a conversation with Reema Khan.
Khan is the founder and CEO of Green Sands Equity, a boutique venture capital firm focused on investing in the technology, health care, space and frontier tech fields. Frontier tech includes subcategories like quantum computing, brain-computer interface and nuclear fusion.
It’s heady stuff, and Khan knows it. There are “ideas and technologies that aren’t here today, but when they come, they could bring paradigm shifts with them,” she says. “We want to have some part of our portfolio invested in a future that could be. It’s a big bet we take on these deep tech companies.”
Advocating for the future
But technology is only part of the equation, Khan notes. “It isn’t possible for any technology or innovation to solve problems for the world or to make the world a better place unless there is cultural readiness for acceptance of it.”
That, she says, is why she also dedicates time and resources to advocacy and philanthropy, with a special focus on empowering women and minorities. She is also a trustee of the SETI Institute and chairwoman of their Endowment Committee.
The SETI Institute is a scientific organization, funded in part by NASA grants, dedicated to investigating the nature of the universe and the prevalence of life beyond Earth. Khan funds the SETI Forward Award for the Carl Sagan Research Center, a prize that supports undergraduate students interested in careers in astrophysics, astrobiology and astronomy.
“My overarching philosophy is that progress is punctuated by increases in knowledge, and what we want to do is not work on making the world just more convenient, but we want to discover new truths and new ways of looking at the world and solving problems,” she says. “I often say progress lies not in enhancing what we have today, but in toward what will be.”
Green Sands Equity also specializes in political and policy strategy aimed at helping countries design incentives and strategies to attract foreign direct investments. The firm is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in New York, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. That global vision brings an inherent “humility,” Khan argues, in seeing and approaching topics from different perspectives, as well as staying “constantly curious.”
Khan herself was born in Saudi Arabia and raised between Europe and the United States. “We often say that at Green Sands, we have the DNA of an entrepreneur, a scientist and a diplomat,” she says. “We’re all free thinkers and people who care about the world. We are very global.”
Here, Khan shares insights into the work of Green Sands and her thoughts on the role of private equity in shaping the future.
Pragmatic innovation
Two main areas of investment for Green Sands Equity are technology and health care. “While the buzzword of today is ‘AI,’ we don’t actually use that so much. We say ‘data,’” Kahn notes. “We invest in hardware and software, with a look toward enterprise rather than direct-to-consumer.”
Though that’s a little unusual in Silicon Valley, she suggests, it may be because their team includes scientists and engineers. “We like hardware because we do feel that given how much data we have accumulated and the speed at which it needs to be processed for it to be meaningful in its outcomes— whether it’s in applications of AI or anything else—we do need to upgrade our hardware to be able to handle that.”
In the health care field, Khan points especially to therapeutics and digital health. “Again, these are companies that are building solutions that have never been built before. We really feel that we’re trying to build a future that isn’t here yet, in the sense of many people are trying to make things more efficient that are already here, but we’re literally building things that haven’t been ever done before. And that’s very exciting.”
One company Khan mentions in Green Sands’ portfolio is SandboxAQ, which acquired Good Chemistry, a company focused on computational chemistry, quantum computing and the power of simulation. Khan notes that it has applications in the pharmaceutical industry for drug discovery.
Another is Colossal, a company focused on “de-extinction.” Khan highlights its innovations in areas like artificial gestation and embryos. This, she notes, “has applications that are good for humans and for genomics, and it has an impact that is going to be far greater than bringing back the wooly mammoth.”
Two other investments include brain-computer interface companies Synchron and Paradromics. Khan compares them to Elon Musk’s Neuralink, though she underscores that the two are “valued much more nimbly.” She calls them “very meaningful companies” that hold “great promise” for people with disabilities, among other applications.
Enabling change through investment
Khan notes that some of the “crown jewel companies” in Green Sands’ portfolio are women-founded or women-led, such as BioAge (co-founded by Kristen Fortney), Space Perspective (co-founded by Jane Poynter), Encoded Therapeutics (co-founded by Stephanie Tagliatela), Stepful (co-founded by Tressia Hobeika), Elve (founded by Diana Gamzina) and SpaceX (co-led by COO Gwynne Shotwell).
“I don’t necessarily pick companies because they’re led by women, but of course I give them a second, third, fourth look before I say no. I do want to make sure that I don’t miss anything that is worth investing in,” Khan explains.
“[We] need more women who are investors because investors really are the enablers of thought and execution today,” Khan continues. “And if you put women in those seats, then you are enabling a change.”
Investing in promising ideas
Khan may be investing in the future, but she is clear the firm is also “very pragmatic” and employs a strategy that straddles both shorter-term three-to-five-year returns as well as long-term investments.
“We’re responsible for returns. We are managing capital, hard-earned money of endowments and institutions [that] are also doing meaningful work. And our job is wealth creation for them as well.”
Reigning wisdom generally pushes investors toward one or two big winners. As a woman, she says, “you learn to enter a very competitive market from the sidelines, to see the opportunities that others are leaving behind and still see value in them.”
“We have been able to invest in many ideas and companies which might not be the multibillion-dollar IPOs, but they have built products and tools and have brought about innovations that have enabled future companies to build on,” Khan adds. These often end up being acquired by larger companies.
“While they themselves may not be the big stars, they have enabled the big stars,” she says. “Those companies are laying the foundation for more innovation to come.”
Green is a freelance writer based between the U.S. and Spain.
This article originally appeared in the July issue of SUCCESS+ digital magazine. Photo by Augustine Raj/courtesy of Reema Khan
