Medical

Craft a Clear North Star: Align Your Business Around Mission and Vision for Entrepreneurial Success!

Mick Lautt is an established entrepreneur, currently serving as the co-founder and CEO of SciMar Ltd. As CEO, Mick leads a family-driven business and a team of scientists, business development professionals, and investment relations specialists in developing and unveiling a new scientific approach for the prevention, detection, and treatment of type 2 diabetes. Under Mick’s leadership, SciMar has attracted over 100 investors and developed SciMar NuPa Test, a proprietary diagnostic test meal now in clinical trials.


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When is an intrapreneur an entrepreneur?

With a 10x growth from 40-400 franchises in the past decade Cathy Thorpe CEO of NurseNextDoor is a classic example of a founder bringing in a driven entrepreneur to build a business. Cathy Thorpe brings over two decades of leadership experience in the retail industry to Nurse Next Door. Cathy joined the company in 2014 with the mission of growing the business across North America. Cathy has achieved her goal by pushing boundaries to deliver measurable results and by disrupting the home care space. Cathy has been recognized for delivering strong results in the business community across North America. Nurse Next Door was awarded Canada’s most admired corporate culture by Waterstone in 2018 and was ranked #50 on Entrepreneur’s Franchise 500 list for 2018.


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Become an entrepreneur for the right reasons because it’s not an easy ride

Two Canadian entrepreneurs, Tyler Dyck, Co-Founder & COO, and Brandon Goode Co-Founder & CEO, have partnered with global leaders in the mental health space to solve a growing issue in Canada. Despite the increasing ubiquity of antidepressants, their use cases, treatment durations, and side effects are widely misunderstood. The drugs have undoubtedly helped many Canadians facing anxiety and depression (candidly, including myself), but a sharp rise in long-term use (treatment guidelines say they are only supposed to be used for six-to-nine months!) has led to a growing problem: people don’t know how to get off of them safely—and no one is talking about it.

When Tyler Dyck decided he wanted to discontinue his antidepressants after years of treatment, he was met with a lack of information and resources surrounding withdrawal and ended up yo-yo-ing, much to the detriment of his mental and physical health. He found a major gap in recommendations he was receiving from doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists, and chatted about this with his former colleague Brandon Goode, whose background in the healthcare space had him investigating similar issues. They quickly realized that there was no existing solution to a major issue more and more of their loved ones were facing.

Together with world-leading scientists and healthcare professionals, they created Outro Health, the first patient-focused, science-based off-ramp for antidepressants, which just launched in Canada. Outro’s user-friendly platform provides science-based, personalized tapering plans to slowly reduce medication dosage. It also provides proactive symptom monitoring, one-on-one chats and video appointments with practitioners trained specifically in safely stopping antidepressants, and a patient-first approach that minimizes the risk of relapse and maximizes the chance of successful tapering.


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The key to a long career in pharmaceutical R&D

Dr. Allen Davidoff is the founder and CEO of XORTX. Allen has 15 years of drug development experience across a broad range of clinical, regulatory and senior management roles in pharmaceutical R&D. He has led two investigational new drug (“IND”) applications or supplemental IND’s, two phase I studies (four of which were multi-country), seven phase II studies, and one new drug application (NDA). Prior to forming XORTX, Allen was the Chief Scientific Officer, VP Product Development and co-founder of Stem Cell Therapeutics Corp. (seven years) ( Trillium TRIL:NASDAQ) and Senior Scientist and Head of Pharmacology at Cardiome Pharma Corp.


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Running a public company is a whole business in itself

Payton Nyquvest is CEO of Numinus Wellness Inc., a leading, integrated mental health care company providing psychedelic-assisted therapies. Payton has an incredible personal healing story to share about his journey with psychedelics and what led him on this new path of conscious leadership and making psychedelic therapy available and accessible for everyone. Numinus Wellness Inc. is a leading, integrated mental health care company providing psychedelic-assisted therapies, with 13 wellness clinics across North America, four clinical research sites and a bio-analytical research lab. Numinus is one of the top revenue-generating companies in the psychedelics sector, working to address a growing societal need by providing a wide range of proven and innovative therapies to treat and potentially cure mental health conditions. Numinus is the only company in Canada with permission from Health Canada to grow and extract psilocybin for research for anxiety, depression and PTSD.


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Massage expert does it differently than the average bear!

Kimberly White-Vincent began her career as a Registered Massage Therapist and solo-preneur in 2002 after graduating from the Kine Concept Institute of Massage Therapy. Having grown up in the beautiful countryside of Southern New Brunswick, she pursued her career in Saint John, N.B. where she grew her practice. As the first entrepreneur of her family, she navigated entrepreneurship on her own while growing her practice and her business into the current multi-disciplinary wellness clinic Serene Physique Inc. She is an active member of the CMTNB (College of Massage Therapists of New Brunswick), ANBMT (Association of New Brunswick Massage Therapists), The Chamber of Commerce,. She also holds certifications in several complementary modalities such as Virtual Massage Therapy Care, TDR-WM Cupping and Aromatherapy and volunteers as Chair Mentor with the ANBMT, and works as an examiner with the CMTNB.

Upon receiving mentorship and coaching for her business, she has researched and established the need to pursue workplace care. It is her passion to improve soft tissue health and mental health in the workplace (including the work from home setting), a need she has grown increasingly aware of over the course of her 20 year career. Having served as a corporate Massage Therapist for many corporations during her career, she has proven the concept and witnessed the many benefits that massage therapy brings to employees and corporations. Kimberley and her team at Serene Workforce believe that healthy and happy employees make healthy and happy corporations. As a thought leader and expert in the field of corporate massage therapy, Kimberley brings years of trust and enthusiasm to employees and companies she works with.


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Connecting medical cannabis patients, licensed producers and processors

Joel Taylor, Co-founder of Patient Choice, has been at the forefront of the ever-changing cannabis industry for many years. He helped transition black market cannabis cultivators to the legal market, connecting them to the regulators of Health Canada and British Columbia.

Patient Choice is a licensed online medical platform that connects medical cannabis patients, licensed producers and processors.


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Entrepreneurship is more than just dreaming of ways to make money

The Canadian-based biotech company, Mountain Valley MD is changing the accessibility of vaccines to people around the world. With the mission of “more life, less death” the company is striving to make vaccines widely available to developing nations/ economies and people around the world.

This means:

  • Vaccine soluble tablet that rapidly dissolves
  • Does not have to be stored at dramatic high or cold temperatures
  • Can be distributed easily around the world
  • Helps more people in need and saves lives, due to access to high-quality vaccines
  • Working towards the goal of eradicating diseases such a Polio, COVID-19 and other highly infectious diseases or viruses

Dennis Hancock is a senior sales and marketing executive with over 25 years of experience spanning automotive, pharmaceutical, tech, telco, retail and financial services sectors. Initially providing consulting services to Mountain Valley MD in 2018, Dennis transitioned to assume the President & CEO position in early 2019 to lead the Company’s go-public strategy and develop the business strategy to pursue broad health and wellness opportunities across human, animal and plant health applications. Dennis spent more than 12 years in a leadership role at one of North America’s leading performance improvement and Loyalty providers, Maritz, who works with 70% of the world’s Super 50 companies. Previously, Dennis led publicly-traded ZENN Motor Company as the Vice President of Sales and Marketing. As a senior officer at ZMC, Dennis drove the establishment of ZENN – (Zero Emission, No Noise) as one of the most recognized “green tech” brands in North America. Dennis has several start-ups established, including PerformanceSPARK, an agency that works with leading organizations to identify and deliver on the key elements necessary to drive measurable performance growth, and co-founder of CrowdSeating Inc., an innovative social concert platform.

Mountain Valley MD is building a world-class biotech and life sciences company organization centred around the implementation of its patented Quicksome™️️️ oral drug formulation and delivery technologies and its Quicksol™️️️ solubilization technology for macrocyclic lactones, to innovate industry-leading products that are sought out globally. MVMD’s proposition for delivering Quicksome™️️️ formulations that have a rapid onset, high bioavailability, low variability and precision dosing is core to the Company’s success across key health and wellness categories. Consistent with its vision towards “Helping People Live Their Best Life”, MVMD applies its Quicksome™️️️ and Quicksol™️️️ technologies to its ground-breaking work for advanced delivery of vaccines and pharmaceutical drugs as well as the development of products for pain management, weight loss, energy, focus, sleep, anxiety, and more. The Company’s patented Quicksome™️️️ desiccation technology utilizes advanced liposomes and other stabilizing molecules to encapsulate and formulate active ingredients into highly efficient product formats that are consumed orally. The result is a new generation of product formulations that are capable of delivering vaccines, drugs and nutraceuticals into the body faster, with greater impact, efficiency and accuracy. The Company’s patented Quicksol™️️️ solubilization technology covers all highly solubilized macrocyclic lactones (including the drugs Ivermectin and Selamectin). MVMD’s solubility technology applied to the Ivermectin drug is the only form in the world that only uses excipients that are currently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), making it a leading candidate for human injection and sublingual applications as well as significantly broader husbandry and companion animal treatments based on its low viscosity.


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Bringing gamification into healthcare with Jim Feng of Phyxable

Dr. Jim Feng is a mission-driven serial entrepreneur located out of Markham, Ontario. In 2009, Dr. Feng founded Form & Function: Health which has transformed into one of the first truly integrated health models. Not only does Form & function host a repertoire of integrated health care services, it also created a business model that has been paying high dividends to its investors and franchisees year after year. This insight into healthcare and his love for technology-based companies has incubated several start-ups in disruptive healthcare technologies, content aggregation and real-time language translation. Seeing pain points in the physical injury and insurance industry, Dr. Feng has recently founded Phyxable Inc. Phyxable is an end-to-end virtual pain and prevention platform that uses machine learning, augmented reality and gamification to coach people out of pain, while empowering them with better human performance. Alongside his Chiropractic degree, Dr. Feng is also a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and Medical Acupuncturist, and has directed medical teams for world championships, professional and Olympic Level sporting events in the MMA and Wrestling. On a personal level, Dr. Feng enjoys high-performance individual sports, extreme adventures, diving deep into health-tech & lifespan solutions, Aquascaping, and giving back to what matters.


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Psychedelics and the future of treating substance abuse with John Lem and Timothy Ko

Entheon Biomedical CEO Timothy Ko and John Lem, the founder of Lobo Genetics are singular in their mission to research genetic driven approaches to developing personalized tools for use in psychedelic-assisted therapeutic treatments for substance use disorders.

With firsthand knowledge of the shortcomings of the current treatment system, Ko, and Lem, the developer behind a direct-to-consumer platform being used in HaluGen’s Psychedelic Genetics test kit, the two are working together to find the right solutions for patients faster and improve outcomes.


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