We are ^1000 Amplitude.

The name is new but we, decidedly, are not. We stand proudly on a foundation of deep experience and a demonstrable body of success creating, building, and growing break-out companies.

About Us

We are savvy investors and proven company builders who, at the core, are driven to bring the best healthcare innovations to market to help improve the lives of patients one patient at a time.

A foundation
for success

We have spent decades working with healthcare entrepreneurs to realize their vision of bringing life changing therapies to patients, while delivering superior value to investors.

Most recently, we worked together to lead healthcare venture investing at Canada’s most active venture investor, creating, building and growing globally competitive Canadian healthcare companies. This strong track record has attracted leading institutions as investors in Amplitude.

Alexandre Le Bouthillier_Co-founder & COO, Imagia

“The vision of AI in healthcare from the Amplitude team was unique in Canada. They supported the bold step of accelerating growth via acquisition, enabling Imagia to provide one of the leading AI healthcare discovery platform in the world. Their strong network and experience continue to be attractive to new investors & customers who are key to company success.”

Arun Menawat_CEO, Profound Medical

“The Amplitude team has been key to our success. As an early investor, they helped construct a great foundational team and then made the moves to add expertise and technology to accelerate our growth and build product lines for Europe and North America.”

Mike Weider_CEO, Shoebox

“As our first institutional investor, the Amplitude team provided the capital and guidance to enable the company to refine its product strategy and build strong market presence. By always encouraging the company to “think big” and supporting that strategy with capital, they enabled the company to have the confidence to build a world-class product and commercial success.”

Ali Tehrani_CEO and Founder, Zymeworks

“Leadership, guidance and relationships from the Amplitude team were instrumental to our Mezzanine round. It was clear that they shared our vision to create a great company, and to strongly support that vision with the capital they provided, which catalyzed our success since. Their philosophy and commitment to building world-class companies with global impact is refreshingly unique and very much appreciated.”

Clarissa Desjardins_Co-founder & CEO, Clementia Pharmaceuticals

“As a partner who saw the spark of the idea and provided the kindling to get the fire started, the Amplitude team was key at the company’s origin and their strong and early support was necessary to attract large amounts of external capital that enabled us to attract our leadership team and progress quickly. They were the only Canadian fund to take the early risk with us and see what we could become.”

Joe Oliveto_CEO, Milestone Pharma

“As an early institutional investor, the Amplitude team was critical to supporting the company to generate the proof of concept data necessary to attract others. By providing increasing amounts of capital, they enabled us to expand our investor base and secure the growth capital that we needed. Their experience growing companies was invaluable on the board as we built a leadership team to take the company to the next level.”

The Team

Dion Madsen
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“I’ve focused my career on doing bold, big things and making an impact to create a better world.”

Experienced health investment leader. Founded or led investment activities at BDC Capital's Healthcare Fund, Physic Ventures, and Unilever Technology Ventures.

Specialties
  • growing companies to IPO
  • coaching entrepreneurs to “think big”
  • playing soccer like it’s hockey
Dion Madsen
Partner
Jean-François Pariseau
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“I’m passionate about scanning the healthcare landscape to find that next big idea that will significantly impact lives.”

Unrepentant entrepreneur. Unrepentant investor. Led investments at BDC Capital’s Healthcare Fund and CDP Capital Technology Ventures. Lived the start-up dream, twice.

Specialties
  • molding ideas into real startups
  • building them to IPO and beyond
  • radical candor
  • “cycling-ninja” in my free-time
Jean-François Pariseau
Partner
Allyson Tighe
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“I’m a treasure hunter with an insatiable drive to help the most audacious ideas become practical realities.”

Previous investor at the BDC Capital Healthcare Fund. Recovering scientist but perpetual nerd. Passionate about creating, building, and growing world class healthcare companies in Canada.

Specialties
  • creating companies
  • developing strategy
  • making a really killer cup of coffee
Allyson Tighe
Associate
Bharat Srinivasa
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“I am a champion of innovators pushing at the boundaries of science to improve and save lives.”

Ex-consultant and academic. Connoisseur of graphs. Previous investor at BDC Capital Healthcare Fund.

Specialties
  • company builder
  • competitive intelligence
  • climbing mountains (both start-ups and real ones)
Bharat Srinivasa
Principal
Matthew Rosenberger
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“I'm eager to work with insightful and driven teams to build and grow socially responsible companies.”

Experienced finance professional. Spreadsheet maven. Previously lead the finance function at CoPower.

Specialties
  • bringing a finance view to strategic decisions
  • creating a well-oiled machine from a blank page
  • avid runner, especially when trying to keep up with my 100lb dog
Matthew Rosenberger
Vice President Finance
Michael Mee
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“I am a firm believer that the biggest impacts of the age of biotechnology are yet to be discovered. I am passionate about providing the necessary capital and entrepreneurial insights to pull visions of the future into reality.”

Lifelong truth seeker. Formerly conceiving, founding and building novel platform companies at Flagship Pioneering. Passionate about unleashing Canada’s life science potential to impact patients’ lives at home and abroad.

Specialties
  • unrelenting value maximizer
  • growing exceptional teams
  • drawing inspiration from nature at the helm of a canoe
Michael Mee
Principal
Anish Kaushal
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“I’m an optimistic risk taker excited to be at the forefront of healthcare innovation.”

Ex-physician turned investor. Former analyst at M Ventures. Honorary EU citizen.

Specialties
  • scientific due diligence
  • aspiring networker
  • wannabee sports analyst
  • ‘fun guy’
Anish Kaushal
Associate
Nancy Harrison
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“I’m focused and excited to be working with entrepreneurs and companies with treatments and technologies which can improve human health.”

Experienced investor and biotech executive, impacting the sector’s long-term growth across the country. Former Partner with Ventures West and Co-founder and former president of MSI Methylation Sciences, a company with a focus on CNS. A true innovator and demonstrating my dedication to Canadian ecosystem in mentoring the next generation of companies and leaders.

Specialties
  • working with entrepreneurs to focus strategy
  • reducing risk for start-ups
  • building companies through the investing cycles
  • enjoying BC’s mountains, ocean and forest
Nancy Harrison
Venture Partner
Juliana Muñoz
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“I'm always in awe of the ingenuity of scientists and entrepreneurs who move the boundaries of what is possible.”

Proud immigrant. Scientist. Business developer in pharma and not-for-profit organizations. Always striving to push discoveries into applications.

Specialties
  • scientific due diligence
  • protein structure
  • bilingual tour guide
Juliana Muñoz
Associate
Ali Tehrani
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“I am passionate about innovation, entrepreneurship and helping outside of the box thinkers take a concept from a dream to reality.”

Co-founder of Zymeworks (NYSE: ZYME) and President and CEO from 2003-2022. Board member and mentor for Biotech companies at various stages of growth including ideation, platform, and preclinical.

Specialties
  • biologics research and development
  • strategic thinking and planning
  • executive team formation and mentorship
  • business development – licensing and partnerships
  • public and private financing
  • a devout New England Patriots fan before and after Tom Brady; a regular at the local gelateria with his kids; and an avid tennis player who does not mind losing
Ali Tehrani
Partner
Allison Gaw
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“I am a venn diagram, working at the interface of science and business, to accelerate the development of novel ideas through critical growth and commercialization stages.”

Canadian transplant from California. Ex-BD and strategy. Biotech start-up growth operator. Previous life sciences consultant at BCG (Boston Consulting Group) and LEK Consulting.

Specialties
  • translating science to 'english'
  • translating finance to 'english'
  • setting companies up for growth
  • asking the hard questions
Allison Gaw
Principal
Riccardo Cardilli
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“I strive to support the practical and financial aspects of businesses so that ideas and innovation can flow unencumbered.”

Proud CPA in life science. Former Shared Services Controller at CellCarta. Enthusiastic VC convert. Lifelong student of everything.

Specialties
  • establishing financial processes & structures
  • extracting meaning from data
  • delivering exceptional dad jokes
Riccardo Cardilli
Controller

Our
Intent

The Amplitude culture mirrors the outlook of the founders. We are equal parts visionary and pragmatist.

We see the promise that medicine holds. We see a healthcare environment where Canadian entrepreneurs with cutting-edge technologies can enable patients to live longer and happier lives

The Amplitude team is bolstered by a strategic advisory board of the leaders in the Canadian life sciences industy. All company builders with deep experience taking biopharma and medical device companies from idea to exit.

Innovation Potential

Canada boasts an innovation-rich healthcare ecosystem teeming with world-leading academic and research centres. For too long, however, the capital and expertise necessary to scale potentially game-changing ideas into break-out companies has been largely missing. Our mission is to unite innovators with the necessary capital and our builder vision to create and scale great companies. This is where we focus and thrive.

Where we focus

We believe the future of healthcare lies in today’s tremendous Canadian innovation ecosystem. Our current investment focus is on precision medicine where world-class innovators are driving the future of healthcare by:

  • Enhancing the quality and accuracy of diagnoses, delivering more precise treatments, reducing financial costs and side effects.
  • Leading the world by combining software and biology by applying artificial intelligence to accelerate therapeutic development, working with next generation imaging to enable robot-assisted surgery, and combining microelectronics and living cells to enable 3D printing of tissues and organs.
  • Selecting the right treatment for the right patient with targeted therapies (including antibodies, immunotherapy, and cell & gene therapy).

We direct our efforts towards those opportunities that allow us to create, build, and grow hyper-growth companies with real potential to deliver accelerated growth and build and deliver sector leading value.

We have offices in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, home to world-leading centres of excellence in the field of precision medicine.

The Amplitude Model

Put simply, we exist at the nexus of need and solution. Our mantra is creating, building, and growing companies that bring breakthroughs to patients. The Amplitude team has screened thousands of opportunities during our careers and our first question is always “what problem are you solving?” with the second being, “how big can this be?”

We target companies that are at the acceleration stage, investing capital and leveraging our networks and strategic alliances to help entrepreneurs attract the team and assets needed to enable hyper-growth.

As proven builders, we know how and when to scale teams to propel companies at the acceleration stage. We have forged key strategic partnerships that we leverage on behalf of our portfolio companies to help build critical mass and attract the top talent required to accelerate to hyper growth.

Pre-Amp

To amplify
output

Pre-Amp is Amplitude’s internal engine to discover, incubate, and fund innovation on jet-fuel. Our team of inventors and entrepreneurs partners with academics and company builders around the world to advance proof-of-concept data that will enable breakthrough treatments to patients.

Fellowship

The Amplitude Fellowship is a crucible where Canada’s brightest health-focused PhD candidates, post docs and MDs - many of whom are also inventors - come together each summer to explore “what if” biotech concepts as the first step in creating novel, life-changing health science companies.

Learn more

Portfolio

Our portfolio is the best example of how our team helps founders and entrepreneurs create, build, and grow their companies. This hands-on approach is hard-wired in the Amplitude culture as we know that investment capital alone is never enough. The Amplitude team is responsible for the initial investment or significant additional investment and value creation in the following companies while at BDC Capital and now at Amplitude.

  • Xap
    Xap
    Xap

    Early stage company from the founders of CRISPR Therapeutics.

  • Gandeeva
    Gandeeva
    Gandeeva

    Gandeeva Therapeutics is revolutionizing the way drugs are designed. Using cryo-electron microscopy, Gandeeva aims to add the unique insights of protein visualization and molecule structure to design of safer and more effective therapies.

  • Prilenia
    Prilenia
    Prilenia

    Prilenia is focused on developing novel treatments for neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders. Their lead program, Pridopidine, is a late stage clinical asset currently in phase 3 trials in Huntington’s disease and ALS. Pridopidine is the most advanced candidate in clinical development for maintenance of functional capacity in Huntington’s Disease.

  • Congruence
    Congruence
    Congruence

    Congruence is developing a unique computational platform utilizing machine learning to focus on protein stabilization and identifying novel small molecules to treat rare diseases.

  • Celsius
    Celsius
    Celsius

    Celsius is leveraging the power of single cell genomics to advance precision medicines against complex autoimmune diseases and cancer. Using the world’s largest database of longitudinal, clinically annotated patient samples, Celsius uses machine learning to identify novel targets and unique patient biomarkers in a variety of complex diseases.

  • Valence AI
    Valence AI
    Valence AI

    Valence is leveraging their leading AI small molecule design platform with exceptional chemistry and biology expertise to design better drugs in a variety of diseases.

  • Drugbank
    Drugbank
    Drugbank

    Drugbank is building one of the world’s largest databases of structured drug and target information used by thousands of institutions, researchers and companies globally.

  • Notch
    Notch
    Notch

    Notch is a leader in the development of cellular therapeutics originating from pluripotent stem cells that are specifically engineered to address the underlying biology of complex disease systems. The company has unlocked the ability for large-quantity production of T-cells and other cells from any source of stem cells to bring best-in-class cell therapy products to thousands of patients.

  • Thryv Therapeutics
    Thryv Therapeutics
    Thryv Therapeutics

    Through the collaborative work of world-class experts, Thryv Therapeutics has been pioneering a precision medicine approach to treat Long QT Syndrome via SGK1 inhibition. The Thryv Therapeutics’ portfolio, previously LQT Therapeutics, has evolved to include the treatment of resistant and rare cancers.

  • Radiant Biotherapeutics
    Radiant Biotherapeutics
    Radiant Biotherapeutics

    Radiant Biotherapeutics is advancing a first in class biologic therapy platform that combines multi-specificity and multi-valency on a single molecule to create transformative therapies. Built upon the IgG framework, Multabodies are plug and play, with superior potency over existing monoclonal antibodies and antibody cocktails.

  • Deep Genomics
    Deep Genomics
    Deep Genomics

    Deep Genomics is leveraging a powerful artificial intelligence platform to identify new disease targets and accelerate drug discovery and drug development. The company is developing a rich pipeline of disease modifying oligonucleotide-based therapeutics for previously unaddressed rare diseases.

  • Repare Therapeutics
    Repare Therapeutics
    Repare Therapeutics
    (IPO June 2020. NASDAQ: RPTX)

    Repare, a 2017 FierceBiotech Fierce 15 company, is leveraging deep expertise in synthetic lethality and DNA repair to develop precision oncology drugs targeting tumour-specific vulnerabilities. Repare is combining a proprietary, high throughput, CRISPR-enabled discovery platform with high-resolution protein crystallography, computational biology, and clinical informatics to build an innovative therapeutic pipeline.

  • Milestone Pharmaceuticals
    Milestone Pharmaceuticals
    Milestone Pharmaceuticals
    (IPO May 2019. NASDAQ: MIST)

    Milestone is developing a self-administered treatment for paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT) episodes and other episodic conditions. We believe that self-administered treatment at home has the potential to significantly improve the quality of life for patients and reduce the cost of care by avoiding emergency room visits. We were one of the first institutional investors in the company and have advanced the company to the initiation of a Phase III study and an IPO on NASDAQ.

  • Profound Medical
    Profound Medical
    Profound Medical
    (IPO June 2015. TSX: PRN)

    Profound has developed real-time MR-guidance as the imaging platform, and ultrasound as the energy source for delivering non-invasive ablative tools to clinicians. Its lead product is TULSA-PRO®, which combines real-time Magnetic Resonance Imaging with transurethral, robotically-driven therapeutic ultrasound and closed-loop thermal feedback control that is designed to provide precise ablation of the prostate while simultaneously protecting critical surrounding anatomy from potential side effects. We believe that surgical care is rapidly moving to integrate real-time imaging technology, robotics and human experience to reduce and remove limitations to surgeons. We were one of the first institutional investors in the company and have grown it to commercial stage and a public market listing.

  • Zymeworks
    Zymeworks
    Zymeworks
    (IPO April 2017. NYSE: ZYME)

    Zymeworks’ suite of complementary therapeutic platforms and its fully integrated drug development engine provide the flexibility and compatibility to precisely engineer and develop highly differentiated therapeutics. We believe that Zymeworks’ platform enables the company and its partners to develop highly effective, targeted therapeutics that can deliver significantly improved patient health. We led the mezzanine round that enabled the acquisition of Kairos and the company’s subsequent IPO.

Advisory Board

Exceptional leaders with deep experience building companies from idea to IPO provide advice and mentorship to us and our companies. Each member has entrepreneurial experience, experience as venture capital investors and public company senior executives in biopharma and medical device companies.
Shaun Foy
Shaun Foy
Giles Day
Giles Day
Arun Menawat
Arun Menawat
Tara Nickerson
Tara Nickerson
Arthur Rosenthal
Arthur Rosenthal