How Biossil is Rescuing Billion-Dollar Drugs Big Pharma Abandoned | Anthony Mouchantaf

Anthony Mouchantaf (0:02)

The only thing that really matters is God and family and the sort of limited time you have. Everything else is sort of secondary or tertiary, and I'm not good at internalizing it day in and day out, but I think when human beings do internalize that, I think it unlocks a much bigger risk appetite, and it unlocks sort of potentially very heroic exertions.

Matt Cohen (0:30)

Welcome back to Tank Talks. I'm your host, Matt Cohen, founder and managing partner of Ripple Ventures. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Anthony Mouchantaf, CEO and co-founder of Biossil. Anthony welcomes us into his beautiful offices in Toronto to share more about his company's mission to rescue abandoned drugs from Pharma's billion-dollar graveyard using AI, and in the process, build Canada's first homegrown large-scale biotech company. In this conversation, we trace Anthony's path from Lost Without U of T to co-founding and exiting Rhythm Technologies, to his time on the investor side at Omers Ventures in London and leading RBCX here in Toronto, before deciding to jump back into the founder seat with his old co-founder Alex Mosa. We dig into how he and Alex identified a powerful insight around failed late-stage molecules, why they spent three years in stealth quietly licensing ten of them, their deliberate choice to apply AI to rescuing existing assets, rather than designing new ones, and the hedge fund style discipline they're using to manage biotech's extreme volatility and binary outcomes. We also talk about raising funds from Founders Fund and OpenAI, the psychology of picking up assets that others spent over a billion dollars on and then walked away from, and what it really takes to build an end-to-end biotech platform in Canada. Now let's jump into the tank for this week's episode with Anthony from Biossil.

Anthony Mouchantaf, thanks for coming on the tank.

Anthony Mouchantaf (1:48)

Thanks for having me, man.

Matt Cohen (1:49)

We're not in the tank though, we're in their beautiful Biossil headquarters here in midtown Toronto. Tell us about this place, it's beautiful.

Anthony Mouchantaf (1:57)

It is a beautiful place. It is owned by Brennan Wood International, and they've graciously allowed us to take up some office space here.

Matt Cohen (2:05)

It's kind of cool that you came full circle back to where it all started for you. So tell us a little bit about that because you grew up in Toronto, you did law school just down the street, I believe, here at U of T, but never actually practicing law. And you did a little work for Brendan Words when you were in law school. So tell us a bit about your upbringing and sort of your early professional career.

Anthony Mouchantaf (2:24)

For sure. So I grew up in Toronto, part in Toronto, part just outside of Toronto.

Went to law school. You know, I was a bit of a weird high school kid. I was into law. I was really into constitutional law. I wanted to be a litigator type of thing.

Matt Cohen (2:40)

Did you have posters of lawyers on your wall growing up?

Anthony Mouchantaf (2:42)

You know, in law school...

Matt Cohen (2:43)

I know you had one in Churchill, for sure.

Anthony Mouchantaf (2:45)

I had Alexander Hamilton was my big hero. I was kind of a maladjusted kid, right? Kind of like only child immigrant parents, sort of looking for identity. And I found a lot of comfort weirdly in the American Revolution. People who know me well know the weird obsession of mine.

And I was really inspired by early lawyers in sort of the early United States. And then something kind of really inspired me. So I went to law school with a plan to be a constitutional lawyer or litigator. Ultimately didn't come to pass and went on a different path. I am fortunate though, I do teach a course at the law school. Full circle again for you. Full circle again and I always tell the folks at the law school, it's good for the soul to be on.

Matt Cohen (3:26)

You tell them you're never a practicing lawyer though, but teaching at the law school.

Anthony Mouchantaf (3:29)

Exactly.

Matt Cohen (3:30)

That's always the best. And so for you, startups and investing was something that I feel like was thrusted upon you when you chose not to be a professional lawyer.

How did that start and how did you get started with your first company?

Anthony Mouchantaf (3:42)

So we, my co-founder, Alex and I, and a bunch of our friends.

Matt Cohen (3:45)

Co-founder back then and we'll get to co-founder now.

Anthony Mouchantaf (3:47)

Exactly. Co-founder now, co-founder back then.

Dudes like family at this point. But we lived together at Massey College, which is a graduate residential college at the University of Toronto. And Alex at the time was doing his PhD in molecular virology. And it was based on the Oxbridge system, so sort of very regimented schedule. And we had dinner every night at 6.30, you know, bell rings and gowns, and then sort of a period after dinner to sort of mingle. And it was just one night after dinner, Alex kind of pulled me aside and said, hey, I want to talk to you about something. And that was what became Rhythm and kind of set me on this path.