The Nautical Edition

Relentless RoundUp

23rd Edition

Well hello Autumn. I like the cut of your jib. This year as my favourite season blows in, I still feel buoyed by Canada’s showing at the summer Olympics. It was exhilarating to watch veterans to first timers secure podium positions. I love watching competition tactics, highs, lows, hugs, tears, environment challenges (I am speaking to you River Seine) and team dynamics. The similarities with venture capital investing are fascinating.

Watching Canada perform on the global stage has always been a delight for me, from sport to healthcare innovation. There are many parallels. Including how you find high performance athletes taking on roles in high performance finance firms. The discipline and focus required to compete at an international level has clear transferable skills to the world of investment such as venture capital. We are fortunate to have  such an individual on our team and she is heading into an extraordinary October as a competitive athlete.

Meet Isabella Bertold, the Concord Pacific Racing Women’s Team skipper for Canada’s first-ever campaign at the historic Puig Women’s America’s Cup. Isabella is also our Investment Associate at Relentless. For 17 years, Isabella was a member of the Canadian National Sailing Team, winning two World Cup medals in the ILCA 6 class, and reaching a career-high ranking of 2nd in the world. After retiring from competitive sailing, Isabella switched gears, literally, and traded her sails in for spokes and hit the pavement as a UCI Professional Cyclist, including founding a women’s pro cycling team.

Drawn back to the water, Isabella returned to competitive racing as the strategist for Canada’s SailGP team in 2022 and helped lead the team to a historic victory in Christchurch, New Zealand in April 2023, marking Canada’s first-ever win in the F50 class.

Isabella is also a UBC graduate with a Bachelor of Commerce from the Sauder School of Business, and she holds a Master of Finance and Sustainability from the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. Adopting sustainable practices in sport is a challenge, yet Isabella directly influenced change across several teams and various sports globally. Passionate about empowering the next generation of female athletes, Isabella has demonstrated her commitment with the creation of a grant program for female athletes and launched a podcast featuring women leaders across global industries.

We are incredibly proud to support Isabella’s commitment to excellence in sport as well as impact investment. 

AHOY! I See an Anchor Company!

$73M in Government Funding for Aspect Biosystems

Recall how we mentioned in the last RoundUp that Tamer Mohamed was declared a Top 50 Innovator in the world?! Well in early July, both the federal government of Canada and the provincial government in BC announced a collective commitment of $72.75M in direct financing to Aspect Biosystems, under the leadership of Tamer as CEO. The funding is part of a $200M, multi-year project to advance Aspect’s unique clinical biomanufacturing capabilities, full-stack tissue therapeutic platform, and pipeline of bioprinted tissue therapeutics. This funding commitment follows last year’s $2.6 billion strategic partnering announcement with Novo Nordisk at which time Novo also made a direct investment of $75M into Aspect.

Riding the Waves

On September 24th, Aspect Biosystems was named BIOTECanada “Company of the Year” at the annual gold leaf awards. This coveted award is granted to a company that has demonstrated exemplary performance and innovation in one of technological advancements, business milestones, or development of a robust and diverse product pipeline. As early investors in the company we know that Aspect checks each of these boxes – and they only needed one!

While two simultaneous waves in physics may cause interference, it elevates a company when it comes to award season. Earlier in September, Aspect was also named Life Sciences BC “Company of the Year” for 2024.

And here are two Aspect facts you may not be aware of - with a workforce of over 90 FTEs, more than 50% of staff identify as women and the team boasts 20+ countries of origin. These are social impact metrics that we can get genuinely excited about reporting AND boosting.

LUCID Running Downwind

LUCID is running downwind, aka sailing with the wind at its back. Following the launch of their web-based version of ResonanceRxTM over the summer, they have enjoyed a wave of demand across the U.S.A. They are actively recruiting to expand their team of care navigators, those indispensable healthcare professionals who determine an individual's response to treatment and  facilitate patient engagement (RN/LPN/LCSW/LPC). 

Fortunately for early-stage health investors, Lucid has also just launched a new round of financing. Ping me!

Charting New Waters with Orpyx Medical

New funding alert! Orpyx secured $20M for their Series B round of financing from Perceptive Advisors, a US based private equity firm. We are thrilled to see this major financial infusion catalyze the launch of their significant contract with US Veterans’ Affairs. Fair winds ahead for Orpyx.

Relentless Autumn - In Person, Digital, and Aquatic Appearances

·       Creative Destruction Labs BME Launch: Earlier in September I was honoured to represent the Biomedical Engineering stream at Vancouver-CDL’s mentor and partner kickoff event. Alison Twiner (Relentless LP & Advisor) and I are participating in the upcoming CDL season launching at the end of October. #MentorshipMatters

·       Monday, October 28th – Vancouver Coastal Health’s 24th Annual Healthcare Summit. This year’s overarching theme is “Medicine 3.0 -Exploring the Nexus of Longevity, Artificial Intelligence and Genomics.” I will be providing panel input both from a health tech VC perspective as well as insights from my role on the DIGITAL Project Selection Committee where we recently committed $53M across a variety of consortium collaborations from healthcare to mining to AgTech.

·       Tuesday, Oct 29th – Oct 30th – Life Sciences BC 9th annual “Invest in BC” conference. Relentless will be participating in this two-day extravaganza profiling all the best of BC health innovation. In case you missed it, this year includes the BIO 1:1 Partnering Platform to facilitate our in person meet ups.

·       Throughout September and October – be sure to follow our new LinkedIn series “The Relentless Body” (original art by Caitlynn Irwin ). Each post profiles one area of our unique investment focus on chronic disease and conditions associated with aging.

In addition to my return to swimming and seeing friends poolside (thank you Kits Park Board for extending the 137.5m long Kits Pool outdoor swim season this year), by far, the most exciting upcoming aquatic appearance to highlight is October 5th weekend. As mentioned above, Canada is making history with their first-ever campaign at the historic Puig Women’s America’s Cup. The event is historic as it is the first-time women are competing at the America’s Cup. And Isabella is the skipper for Canada’s Concord Pacific team.

You can watch the action online too. Fortunately for me, I will be joining Isabella in person (see you soon Barcelona), screaming support, and shaking my cowbells (do they do cowbells at the America’s Cup?) from the shoreline.