Participated · Equity · Jun 2025

3DBioFibR develops scalable biopolymer fibers using a patented dry‑spinning platform that can process over six biopolymers. Its fibers report performance metrics two to three times the strength of natural tissue and are produced at over 3,600× the scale of conventional wet spinning and electrospinning, with improved uniformity and cost‑efficiency. The company has signed paid development agreements and partnerships across tissue engineering, medical devices, defense, cosmetics, and apparel, including several multinational corporations. The recently closed financing will fund ISO 13485 certification, construction of a clean room, and manufacturing scale‑up to meet rising global demand for medical‑grade and performance biomaterials. 3DBioFibR positions itself as a supplier for regulated clinical and therapeutic applications and plans to expand commercial and clinical partnerships. The company is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. 3D BioFibR develops patented, fully automated collagen-fiber manufacturing technology to produce biofibres that mimic natural materials such as spider silk and collagen. The company is focused on producing recombinant human collagen for the medical research market and launched two products in June: μCollaFibR and CollaFibR, a three-dimensional cell-culture scaffold. To scale production the firm is collaborating with PlantForm Corporation and plans to use PlantForm’s vivoXPRESS plant-based biologics platform rather than mammalian-cell systems. A recent collaborative project funded by Next Generation Manufacturing Canada aims to improve collagen expression scale, increase fiber manufacturing capacity, and validate methods for incorporating recombinant collagen feedstock. 3D BioFibR was founded in 2020 by Sullivan and CSO John Frampton, a biomedical engineering professor at Dalhousie University, and operates with a 12-person team. Financially, the company previously raised $550,000 in 2020 and $700,000 of equity in 2021, and closed an equity and debt round worth $3.52 million in July of this year. 3D BioFibR develops and produces high-value collagen fibers at commercial scale using a proprietary, fully automated dry-spinning process. The company says its process is the only one that produces diameter-controlled collagen fibers at commercial scale and is at least 3,600x faster than competing manufacturing methods. Its collagen fibers are positioned for use in 3D cell culture and tissue engineering, recreating the natural appearance, structure, and function of collagen. 3D BioFibR plans to expand facilities to include a climate-controlled biomanufacturing cleanroom and a new wet lab and cell culture facility to bring its premium collagen fiber products to market. The company is backed by seed financing and receiving government support, including a repayable contribution and NRC IRAP advisory and R&D funding to support development of an automated collagen fiber manufacturing system. Management emphasizes accelerating capacity to meet growing demand from tissue engineers. 3D BioFibR produces naturally sourced, high-value biofibers including collagen (CollaFibR™) and spider silk for use in biomedical engineering, 3D tissue culture, tissue engineering, green textiles, defense, and aerospace. The company uses a proprietary dry-spinning manufacturing process that the team says is faster than current methods and preserves the natural properties of the proteins. Recent messaging emphasizes transition from a lab-based process to an automated production system to deliver consistent, high-quality products at commercial scale. Management plans to scale up and automate manufacturing to be ready for first market sales in the second half of 2022. The company is prioritizing engagement with industry to secure commercial partnerships, with an initial focus on tissue culture and tissue engineering applications. 3D BioFibR was incorporated in July 2020 and is operating from Halifax, Nova Scotia. 3D BioFibR is an advanced biofibre materials company based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. It manufactures naturally sourced, high-value biofibres including spider silk, collagen and chitosan. The company targets applications across biomedical engineering, green textiles, defense and aerospace. Leadership includes CEO Kevin Sullivan and Chief Scientific Officer Dr. John Frampton. 3D BioFibR plans to use new capital to develop and commercialize its tissue engineering and biomedical device products and to scale up manufacturing of its biofibre platform. The firm raised external funding to support those development and commercialization efforts.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2023

Payscore analyzes applicants' bank accounts and deposit history to generate comprehensive income reports that capture paystubs, tips, gig work and other income sources. Its service can be used as a standalone income screening product or embedded into online rental applications. Launched in 2017 and previously called The Closing Docs, Payscore automates applications for more than 700,000 U.S. rental units and over 2,500 motorsports dealerships. The company charges $10 per delivered report, offers bulk discounts to power users, and serves hundreds of customer accounts including Marquette Management, Grady Management and Planned Property Management. Payscore said its customer base grew almost threefold over the past year and that its reported success rate is two-to-three times higher than competitors such as Plaid, Truework, Argyle and Pinwheel. Headquartered in Seattle with a fully remote workforce, the company was co-founded by CEO Mark Fiebig and CTO Stephen Arifin and is on track to have 20 employees by year-end.

Participated · Equity · Oct 2022

Vega Cloud offers a SaaS multi-cloud management and optimization solution that uses data context and automation to help businesses make decisions and accelerate time to value. The platform provides unified visibility across major cloud providers, simplifies core optimization routines, and concentrates on lowering the cost of cloud consumption. Kris Bliesner serves as Chief Executive Officer. The company intends to use the new funding to scale product development and meet growing demand in the FinOps category. The raise strengthens its position in cloud cost optimization and supports broader commercial growth efforts. Vega Cloud builds a cloud management platform to help businesses manage public cloud infrastructure. The company is developing the Vega Cloud Management Platform and plans to expand sales and marketing using the new funding. Vega Cloud positions itself against complex, highly technical cloud infrastructure, addressing a market the company describes as a $50 billion annual marketplace. The company is led by CEO and co-founder Kris Bliesner, who co-founded Vega Cloud in April and previously co-founded 2nd Watch. Financially, Vega Cloud raised a $2.3 million seed round and also secured $250,000 in debt financing. The equity and debt will be used to grow go-to-market efforts and continue product development.

Participated · Equity · Sep 2022

Vega Cloud is a Software-as-a-Service platform focused on enterprise cloud optimization, offering a unified view across major providers and simplification of core optimization routines. The company uses a proprietary unit economics and outcomes-oriented approach, combined with data context and automation, to help businesses make trade-offs between cost, quality, and speed. Vega provides near real-time data to influence spending decisions and accelerate time to value, with clients reportedly realizing compounding savings within months. Demand for Vega's multi-cloud management and optimization solution climbed sharply this year, accelerated by the global pandemic, and the company has experienced word-of-mouth growth. Vega plans to scale product development and advance cloud optimization technology and interoperability to help clients maximize their public cloud investments. The platform emphasizes putting fully optimized infrastructure into the hands of business teams, not just architects or DevOps engineers.

Led · Seed · Nov 2021

Variational AI builds Enki™, a foundation model tailored to small-molecule drug discovery that uses far less compute and data than foundation models in other domains. The company says Enki was trained on a proprietary dataset covering almost 600 targets and generates diverse leads with strong potency and selectivity. Partners synthesize and test around 20 novel molecules from multiple scaffolds per project over a few weeks, and Variational reports a sub-micromolar hit rate of over 50% with a 90% rate of synthetic success. The founding machine-learning team comes from Google, Microsoft, MIT, Caltech, and D-Wave Quantum and works with established drug-discovery leaders. Variational AI is based in Vancouver, BC, and is actively hiring. The company completed an oversubscribed $5.5 million seed extension to support market expansion of its compute-efficient foundation model. Variational AI develops state-of-the-art generative AI to accelerate the discovery and optimization of novel small molecules for drug development. The company uses data-efficient machine learning to rapidly generate novel, diverse compounds optimized for multiple properties to reduce drug attrition. It works with leading biopharmaceutical partners and is developing an internal pipeline across disease areas. Variational AI was founded in September 2019 and combines AI/machine-learning and business specialists. The company plans to use new funding to accelerate discovery programs in COVID-19, cancer, and other disease areas, and to expand its team and advisory board. Operationally, the seed funding improves its ability to hire leaders in medicinal chemistry, cheminformatics, and machine learning and to recruit a Scientific Advisory Board.