In episode 22 of ReBootHealth, I speak with Zain Kassam. Zain was a co-founder and former CMO of Finch Therapeutics, a publicly listed, therapeutic microbiome company in Boston. I’ve known Zain for a little over a year now and he’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to a ‘Kendall Square cluster founder’. I wanted to explore Zain’s thoughts from his unique lens of building ventures and how to do it better in Canada. I certainly could have spent a lot more time with Zain but we did manage to tackle a number of topics including the need to solve a problem, building teams to move life sciences forward, the importance of storytelling when raising capital, cultural challenges to innovation in Canada and where we might want to focus our efforts and ways to move forward. This is a great pod with clear articulate thinking and lots of food for thought for innovators, policymakers, and most of all builders of life science ventures. A great way to start out the show for 2023. As always, I hope you find the episode valuable.

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Episode recorded on March 10, 2023.

08:20—Moving from academics to venture building.

14:12—Building the right venture team.

22:50—Choosing the right ‘science’.

26:00—Storytelling for capital raises.

34:40—Overcoming operator and cultural challenges.

46:07—Re-re-visiting IP and commercialization.

56:01—Start at the beginning for cultural change.

1:04:00—Where should Canada focus in life sciences?