Kirk Raab arrived at Genentech in 1985 as “the big pharma guy.” The Genentech founders--Bob Swanson, Herb Boyer and Tom Perkins--went looking for someone experienced in managing a company as big as they wanted Genentech some day to become. Raab left Genentech ten years later, and Genentech was indeed a much bigger player in the pharmaceutical world. During Raab’s tenure, first as president and later as president and CEO, Genentech grew in every way. Genentech built new facilities at its campus in South San Francisco and at a new production facility in Vacaville. It filled those facilities with thousands of new hires, in every Commerce, Industry, and Labor discipline, and its management structure took on a new formality. Genentech moved onto the big board of the New York Stock Exchange, pursued innovative financing, and entered into two pioneering and controversial alliances with Roche. Genentech underwent a cultural shift in its research organization so that its basic science increasingly put new drug candidates into the clinical pipeline. And Genentech brought blockbuster new drugs to market, notably tissue plasminogen activator [tPA] and human growth hormone [HGH], that both brought cash into the company and made lives better. Under Raab’s leadership, Genentech sharpened its focus and grew into a firm with substance and a future.