modern venture capitalists in Seattle along with George Clute and Denny Van Ness, founders of Olympic Venture Partners (originally, Rainier Venture Partners, until they separated from Rainier Bank). Prior to its IPO in 1983, Immunex raised about $6 million from Cable & Howse along with the California venture funds, Mayfield and NEA, but this was by no means enough to build a biotech firm. Immunex in following years raised enormous amounts of capital beginning with its IPO, successive public offerings and funding from partnerships with major pharmaceutical firms.
In order to secure license agreements with large pharmaceutical companies, Duzan and I travelled to various foreign paces, including Tokyo, Frankfurt and the Philadelphia/New Jersey corridor (foreign to us). Along the way we gained expertise on the substance of license agreements which began to match our confidence and Duzan’s superb negotiating skills. His most effective technique was to storm from the negotiating room, leaving me as the good cop.
Fortunately, a younger lawyer at Perkins Coie, Steve Graham, was willing and able to take on an increasing amount of Immunex’s legal work and developed considerable expertise on licensing and other legal issues confronting biotech companies. Graham ended up becoming one of the leading biotech lawyers in the world.
Duzan proved to be just what Immunex needed, a strong executive capable of raising large sums of money, dealing with powerful pharmaceutical firms and managing an ever growing group of scientists. It wasn’t easy and there were many growing pains, but Immunex would not have reached the 1990s as an important, full-fledged research and development biotech company without Duzan’s leadership. Immunex spawned and trained many of the people active in the tech community today, including Alan Frazier, Stewart Parker and many entrepreneurial scientists such as Gillis and Henney. I learned a lot.
Duzan also had talents and interests outside the tech industry, which is rare among most tech executives. He actively supported political candidates, leading an effort to reform the state business tax laws. As chair of the Corporate Council for the Arts in the late 1980s, Duzan is credited by Peter Donnelly as convincing him to come back to Seattle to be its executive director. Duzan was also a brilliant writer, mostly in has annual Christmas card ramblings and in odes to his friends on their weddings or significant birthdays in lively, and often mildly salacious, lyric poetry.
Duzan’s decision in the late 1990s to move to San Juan Island and then warmer southern climates was Seattle’s loss. But the Immunex success story and the entrepreneurial skills and experience gained by dozens of Seattleites from their Immunex years was Seattle’s gain.
