Venture capitalist Andrew “Drew” Senyei still remembers the first complete sentence he so cheerfully spoke in English: “Wonder Bread helps build strong bodies 12 ways.”
As a youngster, Senyei would have made any television sponsor proud. A newcomer to America, the Hungarian refugee spent endless hours religiously reciting advertising slogans in his extended family’s living room in Cleveland.
“I learned to speak English by watching television,” admits Senyei, general partner at Enterprise Partners, formerly of Newport Beach and now headquartered in San Diego. The group manages an estimated $745 million in capital, funding nearly 100 technology-based firms in Southern California.
“There weren’t many venture capitalists around where I grew up,” Senyei says jokingly about his birthplace of Budapest, Hungary.
Born in 1950, the son of an accountant at the University of Budapest and a homemaker, the Senyei family was among the few Hungarians who managed to flee the country during the 1956 anti-Communist revolution.
A poster child for the American Dream, Senyei has achieved it all: education, money, success, family and home.
Senyei, 50, was the first in his family to graduate from college, as well as medical school. He started various biotech firms, including Molecular Biosystems Inc. in San Diego and Adeza Biomedical Corp. in Sunnyvale.
For the past 13 years, Senyei has been raising money for promising early-stage biotech and high-tech firms. Among his San Diego investments are Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc., Nanogen, and Discovery Partners International Inc.
Enterprise hasn’t been as active in Orange County lately, but Senyei said the firm’s investments in OC include For Health Inc., eRehab.com, Y Media Corp. and Sourcemine. A former UCI Medical School professor, Senyei remains a member of the school’s board of visitors. He also is a trustee of Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, and won a 1998 March of Dimes Award for Orange County.
But despite his ties to OC, Senyei is also the person responsible for moving Enterprise Partners out of the county in late 1998, after a parting of the ways between company founder Chuck Martin and Senyei’s San Diego-based faction.
Senyei said Martin is no longer involved with Enterprise. He characterized the breakup as “ancient history.” Senyei said Martin did “a great job founding the partnership,” adding, “I have a lot of respect for him.”
The biotech sector that is the focus of much of Senyei’s efforts hasn’t fared well relative to high-tech and communication investments in the last couple of years, but Senyei is unapologetic. He says biotech companies follow a 6-to-8-year product development cycle apart from the gyrations of the stock market, and that both Enterprises’ investors and corporate partners understand that fact.
He said the key for biotech startups is “to get corporate partners in early.” That continues to be “easy” for Enterprise to do, Senyei said.
These days Senyei articulates English well beyond bread commercials. Dressed casually in a polo shirt and slacks, he reflects pure California living. But he says crossing cultures wasn’t always easy.
“In growing up, you feel like your background is a little different than others. It starts with the language you speak at home, the foods you eat, the ones that are really fattening and good,” he says.
Senyei gives a sobering account of the escape from Hungary. His parents wrapped him in a blanket to keep him from crying as they ran across fields to Austria. The Senyeis waited three months in a refugee camp before U.S. immigration officials granted them visas.
In Cleveland, the Senyeis spent six months with relatives. Then came the first job opportunity for the family with no money and limited English skills,three years on a farm.
“We lived in the caretaker’s quarters in the barn and we took care of the farm, the horses and everything,” Senyei recalls.
By 1959, Senyei’s father was proficient enough in English to restart his accounting career, at a small firm in Cleveland. In 1962, the Senyeis moved to Los Angeles at the advice of their doctor, who suggested a warmer climate for his mother’s arthritis.
The American dream was beginning to take shape. Senyei’s father landed a job as a controller for a technology firm in Hollywood. His mother did data-entry for Walt Disney Studios.
Senyei, an avid swimmer in high school, won two scholarships, including one from the Walt Disney Foundation. He graduated from high school in 1968 and enrolled at Occidental College in Los Angeles. During his senior year, Senyei took part in an exchange program with Caltech, studying molecular biology. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1972, Senyei remained at Occidental to attend graduate school and continue his research.
In 1974, he entered medical school at Northwestern University in Chicago. He worked in a laboratory for about 18 months, researching ways to selectively target cancer drugs. His roommate and lab partner, Kenneth Widder, now a partner at the San Diego-based venture capital firm Windamere Venture Partners LLC and CEO of two biotech firms, shared Senyei’s entrepreneurial vision.
“We were roommates, best friends, did research together and licensed the technology we developed to Eli Lilly,” Widder says.
Armed with patents on how to deliver cancer drugs magnetically to tumors and $1.5 million from private investors, the buddies decided to start their own firm in 1979. Senyei took a three-year break from pursuing his residency program at UC Irvine to head Molecular Biosystems in Sorrento Valley.
In 1982, the unexpected happened during a business flight to Chicago. Senyei invited a flight attendant named JoAnn to join him for a cup of coffee. Senyei then got her phone number and gave her a call.
“It was the worst telephone discussion I ever had in my life,” Senyei says. But he called again months later and this time things went better.
“We went out and three months later were engaged,” he says. They married in 1983.
That same year Senyei went back to UC Irvine to finish his residency in obstetrics and gynecology. From 1984 to 1986, Senyei was a faculty member, did clinical work and consulted with venture capital firms.
By 1988, Senyei, who had been working with Enterprise Partners before, decided to pursue venture capital full-time. “They said, ‘You seem to enjoy birthing companies more than babies,’ ” Senyei recalls.
At Sunnyvale-based Adeza Biomedical Corp., Senyei developed a test that detects fetal fibronectin, a protein found in pregnant women. The test was granted expedited approval by the Food and Drug Administration in 1995 for use in women with warning signs of premature birth.
Senyei says he moved to San Diego partly because he was intrigued by the success of the local biomedical and wireless industry. But he says he also wanted to offer his three children,Alison, 15, Kelly, 14, and Grant, 12,the best education possible. “Education was the No. 1 priority in our household,” Senyei says of his own upbringing.
At The Bishop’s School in La Jolla, Senyei raises money to help enroll disadvantaged students.
“Sometimes,” he says, “people forget about what this country has to offer.” n
Webb is a staff writer at the San Diego Business Journal. Rick Reiff contributed to this report.
