Goldman’s top coder might be bound for biotech VC

Martin Chavez, known for bringing a techie sheen to the 150-year-old institution that is Goldman Sachs, is leaving the firm despite being widely considered a CEO in the making. And according to his Wall Street Journal exit interview, he’s considering jobs in venture capital with a particular eye on the life sciences.

“The transformation of finance through software is about making money programmable,” Chavez told the Journal. “The next frontier is making life — genes, cells, organs — programmable.”

That’s interesting in part because Chavez, whose 2005 return to Goldman came on the advice of God, is among the many technologists who speak confidently about how software is eating everything, whether it be defense, education, or finance. But there remains a debate as to whether biology is something software can digest, most recently hashed out between investors from the tech and biotech corners of the VC world.

And so whether Chavez does indeed dive into life sciences venture will be notable, as will his decision between joining the tech interlopers or going with the biotech old guard.