Genesys Capital is a Toronto-based venture capital firm founded in 2000 that invests in early- and growth-stage life sciences and medical technology companies across North America, managing over $400 million. It focuses on biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, backing companies such as Flosonics Medical, Profound Medical, Inversago Pharma and Fusion Pharmaceuticals.
Your background began in academia before transitioning into investing. What prompted your shift away from a scientific career, and why did the turn of the millennium feel like the right time to build a venture firm?
I didn’t even know what venture capital was when I finished graduate school. I thought I would go down a scientific path, but it struck me that I probably didn’t want to spend my life in academia. I really liked science, but wanted to spend my career in something science-related rather than be a bench scientist.
I thought about industry, but most roles were still bench science. During my MBA, venture investors came in to speak, and that’s when I focused on life sciences investment. Shortly after business school, I had been offered a job on Wall Street, my business partner was offered a job in San Francisco with a venture firm, and we were intercepted by a Canadian entrepreneur who had made money in telecom. It was 100 per cent naivete—the late nineties were the go-go days of the Internet boom, genomics was moving quickly, and markets were buoyant. We pitched building a firm focused on the Canadian life science opportunity, raised a fund in 2001, and rolled from there.
Canada has strong innovation and potential, but companies often struggle to reach the next stage. What role does venture capital play in helping life sciences companies move forward?
The science here in Canada is incredible; we’ve always punched above our weight. The raw material that fuels company creation is academic research. Unlike other sectors, most life sciences companies come out of research institutes and hospitals because of the equipment and infrastructure required.
Early-stage venture is about giving companies the capital boost to push the opportunity forward.
At later stages, capital is portable, but at the earliest stages it’s a full-contact local game.
You need to be close, putting your fingerprints on companies and helping them reach a point where they can raise capital in global markets. That’s been our role for 25 years.
Your portfolio spans companies that have progressed from early concepts to major acquisitions. What characteristics enabled those companies to generate real value?
Fusion Pharmaceuticals is a good example. We were involved before it was even a company—it was a concept. Through the Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization, a federally funded program that received roughly $40–50 million over 10 years, we worked with founder John Valliant on a fundable plan—how to get products into the clinic quickly and attract global capital. We spun Fusion out in 2016, led its early financing, co-led with J&J and brought in investors like CPPIB and took it public in 2020, and did an early deal with AstraZeneca. Fusion built manufacturing, human capital and infrastructure to deliver a full radiopharma package—and AstraZeneca acquired it for $2.4 billion.
One question is whether you lose capacity after an acquisition. In many cases, you do, but with Fusion, you didn’t. The infrastructure and jobs stay here—manufacturing and scientific roles. The innovation stays because you can’t move hot cells or a radiopharmaceutical manufacturing program. What made Fusion successful was innovation in an emerging area of precision cancer treatment, combined with a unique ecosystem in Hamilton—reactor, cyclotron, and strong radiochemistry talent. The missing ingredient was Smart, local seed capital.
Canada has world-class homegrown talent and innovation, but life sciences companies so often exit to larger pharma companies. Is that simply how value is realized in the sector, or are there deeper structural barriers to building larger Canadian companies?
At the end of the day, these companies are funded to generate returns for investors. Life sciences require a lot of capital to reach real value, and often that comes through acquisition, but not always. The capital needed to take products all the way to market is enormous—you’re into multi-billion-dollar territory—and many companies never get there. That’s not just Canadian companies; that’s true globally.
We need more successes. At some point, one of them will spread its wings and be a big independent company. We’ve had attempts—Biochem Pharma, QLT. Denmark has Novo. We have the capacity—insulin was a Canadian invention. If we continue to punch above our weight in innovation, it’s a matter of time, if there’s national will.
There is a growing sense that Canada’s life sciences sector is at an inflection point. Does 2026 feel like a breakout year similar to past periods of momentum, and what innovations emerging from Canada best reflect that?
The rhetoric and actions in the U.S. around trade have shocked Canada out of complacency. We were the U.S.’s biggest trading partner, but that’s become less certain. There’s now a national sense that we need to do more on our own and be masters of our own destiny. If a single administration can yank manufacturing jobs out that quickly, we have to act. We control our innovation—life sciences, clean tech, critical minerals—those are clear advantages. We’ve always done innovation well; we just haven’t always translated it.
We’re deploying our fourth institutional fund, with five Investments so far. One company we started about nine months ago is focused on developing non-addictive pain medications. We’ve developed a drug that is effectively a fentanyl analogue but doesn’t act in the brain, so it doesn’t cause addiction or respiratory depression. It binds only in acidic environments—sites of inflammation—so it targets pain without systemic effects. We seeded it last June and expect to raise about $20 million this year to move it into the clinic.
Investors backing venture funds often show different levels of comfort across sectors. How do investors actually perceive life sciences today?
It’s a frustrating dynamic. Institutional investors often feel more comfortable in tech than in life sciences. Many investors lack dedicated life science expertise. The Biology—and especially the regulatory path—frightens them because it looks like binary risk: if the regulator says no, value goes to zero.
At a macro level, that’s not borne out. Life sciences companies go to zero less often than tech equivalents, and at the fund level, it’s probably a less risky bet, with faster exits. It’s an ongoing frustration because we don’t get the level of support we should, given the returns and timelines. We as a sector do a terrible job of promoting ourselves. We saved the world from COVID-19, but once the crisis passed, attention shifted back and, compared to AI, life sciences is dwarfed.
What would you change most urgently in a national playbook to help Canada attract capital, support spin-outs, and build globally scaled life sciences companies?
I’d focus on capital, innovation and people. On capital, we need to mobilize local sources better. Our pension funds have barely supported life sciences domestically; you can count on one hand the number of life sciences companies they’ve supported. If government sees them as strategic, it needs to incentivize them or create separate pools of capital, like a sovereign wealth fund.
We also need more people—both scientific and business talent. There are efforts to bring scientists back to Canada, but we should do the same for experienced operators. Ultimately, capital, innovation and people build companies. We do innovation well; we just need to match it with capital and talent.
