Phoenix Fire Invests in VoxCell BioInnovation on The Startup Talk Podcast

Thealzel Lee of Phoenix Fire Joins the Startup Coach to talk about their fund and their first investment in VoxCell BioInnovation on The Startup Talk Podcast.

* Phoenix Fire Fund

* VoxCell BioInnovation

* Thealzel Lee of Phoenix Fire on LinkedIn

Automated Transcript of Phoenix Fire Invests in VoxCell BioInnovation on The Startup Talk Podcast

Announcer

Direct from the sixth world renowned Canada’s largest city, with Canada’s biggest thinkers, visionaries and hustlers. This is startup talk featuring the founders, funders, innovators and community leaders who’ve led Canada’s startup ecosystem right here in Toronto. You’ll hear the challenges, the failures, the successes, Toronto StartUp podcast gives you the full story direct from the entrepreneurs and influencers who’ve made a difference. Now, the host of startup talk, the founder of Toronto starts this startup coach.

The Startup Coach

Welcome back to startup talk. I’m your host, the startup coach, founder of Toronto Star. It’s one of the largest startup communities in Canada. And with me today is Thealzel Lee, a general partner of Phoenix Fire, part of the Archangel Network. Welcome, fellow.

Thealzel Lee of Phoenix Fire

Thank you very much for having me, Craig,

The Startup Coach

it’s great to have you. Why don’t we get started with you telling us about Phoenix Fire?

Thealzel Lee of Phoenix Fire

Well, Phoenix Fire is a fund that’s dedicated to supporting women entrepreneurs in Canada. And we closed our first round. And we really proud to say that we have all of our limited partner investors. They’re all women. We just did our first investment in a woman founded opportunity as well.

The Startup Coach

And I understand you closed your first investment round for Phoenix fire back in March. How was that process?

Thealzel Lee of Phoenix Fire

It was actually quite a very intense and disciplined process. We came across Phoenix fire for one of our partners e fun, which is an angel investment fund based on the west coast in British Columbia. They had invested in Vauxhall and they brought voxel forward to Phoenix fire because it really felt that it was an ideal fit for Phoenix Fire, given that it was a woman led entrepreneur in a very exciting deep tech area.

The Startup Coach

So tell us about voxel bioinnovation.

Thealzel Lee of Phoenix Fire

Voxel bioinnovation is a 3d tissue engineering company. And what was very interesting was the technology that the founder, Dr. Karolina Valenti, had worked on while she was doing her graduate studies, she has the ability to develop bio inks and 3d tissues that are vascularized and mimics very much though human tumor tissues. So that’s ideal for a lot of these big pharma companies who are trying to test their anti cancer drugs at this org. So that was one aspect and the other aspect was that there was a market for what she had developed because of the 3d tissue that is in the marketplace. Very few have the same level of vascularization that Dr. Valenti was able to offer and she had attracted quite a few potential customers in Big Pharma and the third most important, it was Dr. Karolina Valenti herself. She was extremely intelligent, she’s professional, she had the very coachable she, she was a quick learner, she had the ability to attract very smart people to her team, not just fellow scientists to develop the technology that could be turned into a viable product for the customers. But she also had the ability to attract some very top notch business people business development people with a lot of deep experience in to the big pharma industry,