The Foundry^® Management

Allan R. Will
Managing Director, Split Rock Partners
Chairman, The Foundry, Inc.

Biography/Professional Profile
Allan Will was the founder and continues to serve as Chairman of The Foundry. In this role, he serves as a director and advisor for early stage medical companies, providing expertise in commercializing medical device technology.

Allan Will is also a founding Managing Director of Split Rock Partners. Based in the California office, he serves as a member of the firm’s healthcare investment team and focuses on opportunities in therapeutic medical devices. Prior to Split Rock Partners, Will was a General Partner with St. Paul Venture Capital’s healthcare team.

Before starting The Foundry, Will was president and chief executive officer of AneuRx, Inc., a developer of stent grafts for aortic aneurysms that was acquired by Medtronic, Inc. in 1996. At AneuRx, Will led the firm to make up three years on the market leader, enabling AneuRx to launch simultaneously and establish a position of >80% market share. While at AneuRx, Will and AneuRx founder Thomas Fogarty, M.D., co-founded Adjacent Surgical, Inc. to develop tools enabling endoscopic vascular surgery. In 1996, Adjacent Surgical was sold to General Surgical Innovations, Inc., which was subsequently acquired by Tyco International.

Will’s prior experience in the medical device industry includes serving as president and chief executive officer at Devices for Vascular Intervention (DVI), a company founded to develop atherectomy devices. He joined the company in 1986 when it consisted of 16 employees. During his tenure as chief executive, the company grew to 550 employees and $84 million in sales. DVI was sold to Eli Lilly and Company in 1989. In 1994, Will and Dr. John Simpson led a $2B leveraged buyout effort for the Eli Lilly Medical Device companies (later to become Guidant Corporation). Prior to DVI, Will worked for Abbott Laboratories in various marketing, business development and management capacities.

Will is an inventor on over 20 issued U.S. patents. He earned his master’s degree in management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981 and a bachelor’s degree in zoology from the University of Maryland in 1976.