[5] As a result, Swanson petitioned MIT to be able to take the first year's courses at the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management for a master's degree, and they allowed him to do so.

[5][6][7][8] His performance pleased his supervisors, and he and a colleague were chosen to open a San Francisco office for Citicorp Venture Capital.

[5][6] One particular failure, which Swanson later believed to have been a lucky break, was the bankruptcy of Antex, a science based company that Citicorp had invested in.

[6] As an associate, Swanson spent a lot of time and effort attempting to convince the heads of the science company Cetus, one which Kleiner and Perkins had invested in, to pursue genetic recombination projects.

[5][6][7][8] One of the scientists he contacted, Herbert Boyer, expressed interest but was hesitant of meeting up with Swanson at first.

[6] Swanson convinced Boyer to meet, for a short time, at his University of California, San Francisco lab.

"[5] Swanson then set out to identify their first marketable product, and quickly focused on the human protein insulin.

[6] Because of the Kleiner and Perkins investment, Swanson and Boyer dissolved their partnership and created the legal entity Genentech.

[5][6] With funding secured, and the organizational structure formed, the first logical step forward was to begin experimenting with the procedure for the synthesis of insulin.

[5][6] Following their success with the proof of concept, Swanson then directed the scientists to pursue the creation of a bacterium that synthesized human insulin.

[5][6] Two other scientific teams were already attempting to carry out such a project, but Swanson moved quickly to ensure that they synthesized it first.

[5][6] By February 1978, Swanson leased a 10,000-square-foot section of an airfreight warehouse, which would serve as Genentech's first lab space.

[5][6] Later that year, Swanson also secured a partnership with Eli Lilly; Genentech would receive $50,000 a month to pursue the human insulin project.

[5][6] By August 1978, the Genentech scientists were able to synthesize human insulin, and in that same month, Swanson and colleagues negotiated a multimillion-dollar contract with Eli Lilly.

[6] While there was still plenty of work to be done on the human insulin synthesis, the new stream of revenues and the significant amount of media coverage meant that Genentech could pursue other research projects.

Genentech needed more money to continue its development, and Swanson believed that the public interest in the technology should be capitalized on.

[5][6] The initial public offering took place on October 14, 1980, and it was the largest IPO ever, at that moment in history, with Genentech raising 35 million dollars.

[9] From here on, Swanson would focus on pursuing his vision of Genentech as a self sustainable biotechnology company, not a contract research operation.

[5][6] He believed that recombinant growth hormones had a large market in the United States, and that they would be key for Genentech's corporate evolution.

[5][6] By October 18, 1985, the FDA approved the human growth hormone, developed almost entirely by Genentech, for sale in the United States, under the commercial name Protropin.

Genentech is still producing drugs and treatments to this day, and some of his policies, such as allowing company scientists to publish, are still in place.