News

i-STAT Founder Heads New VC-Backed Startup

Brian Salisbury
Ottawa Business Journal
November 19, 2001

The founder and former executive vice-president of I-Stat Corp. has secured $3.2 million for his new startup from Genesys Capital Partners.

Imants Lauks, who founded I-Stat in 1983, is leading the charge at biochip developer Epocal. The company plans to market its advanced biochips to the pharmaceutical and health care markets.

This is the second investment for Toronto-based Genesys Capital in as many weeks.

Last week, it announced a $2-million investment in National Research Council spin-off Ionalytics Corp.

For Lauks, this is his first project since leaving I-Stat in 1999, as he had to serve out a two-year non-compete clause with I-Stat. He is regarded as one of the leading minds in biochip technologies and has ambitious plans for Epocal.

"Our plan is to be a global player in biotechnology. I see no reason why Epocal couldn't be a whole lot bigger (than I-Stat)," says Lauks.

His first order of business will be to hire six employees over the next 30 days, as well as to secure office space for Epocal. Epocal will spend the bulk of its money on research and development.

The company plans to address a specific concern in the biochip market with a more efficient chip in terms of performance and cost per data point. Currently, the industry is having trouble scaling biochips that are accurate and cost effective, says Genesys Capital managing director Kelly Holman.

"There are a lot of people who make a lot of noise about the whole nanotech biochip area, but there are some huge issues about why customers aren't adopting them en masse. We believe that Imants has some solutions for that."

As the point man for Genesys Capital in the deal, he is betting on Lauks' history of building a Nasdaq-listed company.

"Imants has done it before," says Holman, who sits on Epocal's board of directors. "He built I-Stat and took it public. The products that I-Stat have on the market are really based on his technical vision. The entrepreneur startup risk is not as high with a guy like him."

Genesys Capital first planted its seed in Ottawa in August 2000. At that time, co-founders Holman and Damian Lamb were trying to raise the firm's first fund. And, as with all new things, Ottawa's telecom-centric crowd had to be educated about the merits of biotechnology infrastructure.

"The actual opportunity is in the infrastructure, not drug discovery," Holman previously told the Ottawa Business Journal. "Where investors get burned is they invest in the hope and hype of an early stage drug discovery company, and seven years later when the drug makes it to clinical human trials and doesn't work, you've lost your shirt."

Since that time, Genesys has closed its $85-million equity fund (March 2001) and has announced Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt lawyer Kent Plumley as the firm's other co-founder. In addition, Celtic House's Andrew Waitman has been added to the firm's advisory board.

And besides these obvious ties to Ottawa, Lamb and Holman have taken a genuine liking to Ottawa and are ready to spend here.

"We like the culture in Ottawa," says Holman. "There is a belief that things can happen and that entrepreneurs can succeed versus some other centres that we deal with."