The Resilience RoundUp
Relentless Roundup
25th Edition
Welcome to the 25th Edition of the Relentless RoundUp, one month into 2025.
I have noticed that there has been a lot of commentary around ‘resilience’ across LinkedIn, on stage at conferences, declared by influencers as their ‘word of the year’ and even as a key talking point on stage during a panel I was on recently. In some cases, it comes across as the ‘mot du jeur’, but on the most part it lands and sticks with relevance. A well-timed use of an adjective that captures the adapting, learning and thriving amid challenges.
Here’s a roundup of responses to some stealthily navigated portfolio challenges in 2024:
· A public (via email) declaration of zero tolerance of bully tactics.
· Eleventh hour deal term switch? Take a breath, assess, respond. Is it in the best interest of the company to get the transaction done? Accept. Sometimes we all just need to take the hit (and dilution).
· The next move committed to with confidence. No wavering. It wasn’t a game.
· A superior product will secure a new inhouse champion with partners. Never assume they see customer demand. Show them the demand. Show them the data. Data doesn’t lie.
· A superior product will replace the incumbent. It’s superior. Just make sure there is a constant flow of evidence. Evidence over exposure.
· Open that round back up without obsessing over the value created. Don’t change the cap just because you think you should. Make it easy to invest. Sometimes the only negotiation is no negotiation.
Yes, 2024 had its share of challenges. Yet, 2024 also had moments of brilliance. Much of the brilliance was born on the back of resilient founders, executives and co-investors. Mad respect and special shout out to you James Lochrie – you know why! When I reflect on these various scenarios that took place in the virtual boardroom, in the email metaverse and in the physical world, there was never any whining or defaulting to an excuse founded in an ugly market (even if there was a lot of ugly still in the market). Nope. In every unattractive scenario, top tier teams and culture reigned victorious.
Expressing gratitude to the founders and executive leadership of our private portfolio of companies. We are inspired daily to be on this journey with you:
· Breanne Everett
· Bill Hunter, Jeff Gross, Fred Cushner
· Zach McMahon, Zoe Thomson, Aaron Labbe
· David Helliwell, Greg Kerfoot
· Anton Solonnikov
· David Suendermann-Oeft, David Fox, Vikram Ramanarayanan, Lakshmi Arbatti, David Pautler
· Tamer Mohamed, Sam Wadsworth, Simon Beyer
Now for Some Fun
Balancing the tough stuff with the fun stuff. A quick roundup of 2024 texts, media quotes and various LinkedIn wisdom that reflect the quirky and the fabulous. . . just in case you missed it. Following are a few zippy statements from some of our Relentless leaders. From clever wordsmithing to major milestones.
“I’ve been quoted before as saying we want to build a $100-billion anchor company here, and I wasn’t bluffing,” Tamer Mohamed /CEO & Co-founder of Aspect. In reference to Jan 8th/25 US$115M funding announcement and the commitment to build in Canada.
“To GPT, or not to GPT – that is the question.”
“What would Hamlet say?” - CEO & Co-founder, Canary Medical, Dr Bill Hunter.
“The side effects are dancing.” Zach McMahon, CEO and Co-Founder, LUCID during CNN coverage of ‘How One Company is using music to treat dementia.”
“The product really seems to offer a sense of hope for these individuals that they can still experience moments of real joy and real connection with memories from their lives and also with their loved ones.” One quote pulled from Zoe Thomson, Co-Founder, LUCID, as part of our Relentless Pulse video series.
“We just reached 100 publications.” DSO, Modality.AI July 2024 (board meeting highlight). A testament to the deep domain expertise of the Modality team. As of January, 2025 they are at 110.
“I don’t do LinkedIn. Gets in the way of my golf game.” Denis Ho, Relentless Special Advisor
“We double booked at the hostel. Do you want the second room?” Breanne Everett, CEO Orpyx Medical
Yes, you read that right – that is hotel with an ‘s’ slipped in – we do what we must do to manage that JP Morgan week hotel expense ridiculousness. Thank you, Breanne, for setting the precedent on conference expense management.
A Key Theme from 2024 – Record Breaking Traction!
Relentless portfolio companies are at various stages of commercialization. We would categorize 2024 as a breakout year with some impressive revenue growth across many portfolio companies.
Lucid – Commercial launch in July 2024. Lucid transitioned from pilots and building out their clinical validation data sets in H1 to contracts with 30 clinics throughout the U.S. by year end, with thousands of serviceable clients (seniors experiencing varying degrees of dementia related agitation and associated behaviours).
VitaminLab – record breaking back-to-back quarters in Q3 and Q4. The company also grew their monthly recurring revenue by 75% year-over-year by year end.
Canary Medical – record breaking sales volume trajectory month over month growth from October to November to December. This momentum has continued with another record month for January 2025!
Modality.AI – signed their first seven-figure commercial contract. They also doubled the number of clinical studies from 21 in 2023 to 40 today, including 9 interventional trials (Phase 1, 2, and 3).
Under the traction section, I also want to share one of my favourite moments in a board meeting that happened last year. It was during the latest Modality update when it was highlighted during the engineering section the growing list of languages supported by their virtual agent, Tina. In addition to English, she now also speaks Japanese, Czech, Polish, Italian, German, French, and Spanish. It is exciting to see the potential global reach of this technology, and the commitment of the team to ensure their game changing technology to assess neurological and psychiatric states is not limited by language. Eindrucksvoll. Eccezionale. 素晴らしい
Like we said, lots of record-breaking growth in the portfolio. And, lots of resilience.
May we all thrive in twenty-twenty-five!
Brenda