Who the heck is Giants owner David Schnell?
This is the fourth installment in our series on who exactly owns the Giants. So far, we have covered real estate mogul Scott Seligman, private equity guy Phil Halperin, and real estate mogul Jed Walentas. Let’s see the big board!
Boy, we’re so close to getting them all done.
As we continue with our series on exactly who makes money when the Giants make money, we come to our next victim: David Schnell.
Now, just to be clear, David Schnell is not the Indiana University quarterback from the ‘80s:
Or the contemporary German painter:
Or this rando dude on Twitter who really hates Shaw Academy (whatever that is):
No, our David Schnell got his Bachelor’s from Stanford in Biological Sciences, then a Master’s in Health Services Research in 1982. In 1987, he got his MD from Harvard Medical School. After med school, he worked at Sandoz (now Novartis), a pharmaceutical company that makes generic drugs. While there, he worked in executive management positions in the US and Switzerland, getting experience in marketing, strategic operations, and business development, and if you want more details than that, well, sorry but I basically copied it from his bio on his current firm’s website.
In 1993, Schnell moved to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, where he became a partner. While he was there, he co-founded a company called Healtheon, which merged with WebMD a few years later in a $6 billion deal. Finally, he moved onto Prospect Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that he founded in 1997. Both KPCB and Prospect specialize in medical technology investments, a natural fit for Schnell, since he went to med school and is, in some sources, referred to as “Dr. Schnell.”
Today, Prospect has two funds that it manages, each of which started with $500 million. They invest in a range of up-and-coming biotechnology and biopharmaceutical companies. Schnell is the managing partner of the firm, which is apparently very successful, and he is also part of another investment firm called Iconica Partners, whose website touts investments in sports, media, entertainment, and technology.
Schnell seems to enjoy owning pieces of sports teams, as he is also part of the ownership group of the Oklahoma City Dodgers (AAA) and the Los Angeles Football Club (MLS). He bought his piece of the Giants in 2005, and parlayed that into writing a children’s book called The Night Before Baseball at the Park by the Bay in 2013. Inspired by his son Ryan, the main character is a boy named Ryan (big coincidence!) who ends up pitching in a Giants game. I do not specifically remember Kruk and Kuip plugging it nightly on broadcasts, but that did probably happen.
Politically, Schnell does not make a lot of donations (he’s the one from CA on that list). More than a decade ago, he gave about $3,000 to VenturePAC, a PAC for (you guessed it!) venture capital interests, and $1,000 to Maria Cantwell, a Democratic Senator from Washington. He also threw in a seemingly obligatory $500 per year to the MLB Commissioner PAC for four straight years, but for a person who owns part of the Giants, he is not particularly involved in giving his money to political causes.
Schnell sits on the boards of companies such as NGM Biopharmaceuticals and several others that don’t seem to exist anymore, as well as the board of the Make-A-Wish Foundation in the Bay Area. He has a wife, Sara (you can see a conspicuously watermarked photo here) and the aforementioned son, Ryan, who is now a teenager.
In all, David Schnell seems like a guy who hit it big in the medical technology field, and then continued to invest in medical technology because it’s what he knew and (presumably) what he liked. Then he went out and bought a piece of a baseball team because why the hell not? Pretty relatable move, if we’re being honest.