Runway Growth Capital, a provider of growth loans to both venture and non-venture backed companies seeking an alternative to raising equity, hired Igor DaCruz as managing director to continue to expand the company’s life sciences origination team.
DaCruz will operate out of the firm’s San Diego office and report to Rob Lake, managing director and head of life sciences for Runway Growth Capital. In his post, DaCruz will facilitate new investments in life sciences and healthcare businesses. Having previously in served multiple roles at Silicon Valley Bank for the past 10 years, DaCruz has commercial lending experience enabling him to foster borrower partnerships and better Runway Capital Growth’s ability to support companies bringing life-enhancing treatments to market.
“Augmenting our life sciences team with Igor’s extensive network and experience advances Runway’s mission of supporting passionate entrepreneurs to maximize market opportunities and build great businesses without diluting equity. His keen understanding of an entrepreneur’s mindset and the business cycles they face, along with a strong acumen for lending, enables Runway to support companies in non-linear sectors like life sciences,” Lake said. “Igor is passionate about the life sciences sector and being able to provide growth capital to cutting-edge companies who are developing breakthrough therapies, improving patient outcomes and saving lives.”
“Runway’s entrepreneurial spirit and leadership in life sciences lending, under the guidance of Rob Lake, was a compelling draw; it’s very hard to find this mix in the growth-stage life sciences space, especially scaling this quickly,” DaCruz said. “Runway provides borrowers with a less dilutive way to capitalize growth-stage businesses with venture debt.”
Most recently, DaCruz worked as the director of life sciences for the Southwest region of Silicon Valley Bank in San Diego. Before that, he helped manage global lending initiatives at SPD Silicon Valley Bank in Shanghai, focusing on life sciences companies in Asia, and was part of the asset-based lending group for SVB in Boston. During this time, DaCruz participated in funding more than $400 million in venture debt deals.
