Front Row Ventures

FRV is Canada's leading university-focused and student-operated venture capital fund. We invest in Canada’s most daring founders. By students, for students.

[Front Row Ventures @frontrowvc]

Before it’s obvious.
Before it’s proven.
Before it’s consensus.

Someone believes first.

At FRV, that’s where we show up. Working closely to where innovation begins, seeing the potential before others and having the conviction to act before there is proof.

#FirstBeliever

[Front Row Ventures @frontrowvc]

This is exactly the kind of ambition we love backing at FRV! 🚀

Incredibly proud to support @blankbio_ as they tackle one of the biggest challenges in drug development. The launch of Ladon is an exciting milestone, and we can't wait to see what's next!

Congratulations!

[Jonny @hsu_jonny]

Today, we are excited to introduce Ladon, a state-of-the-art biological foundation model that predicts disease trajectory and treatment response in patients. There is immense complexity in the individual biology of every patient. Two patients can have the same diagnosis and receive the same treatment, yet have very different outcomes: one responds well and lives for years, while the other’s disease continues to progress. Understanding and resolving this heterogeneity to predict outcomes is how we accelerate our delivery of medicines for patients and unlock clinical trial abundance.

Ladon is our first step towards this future: one where we can learn more from every patient enrolled so that we can run smaller, faster trials with higher success rates. We built it to give drug developers quantitative support on billion-dollar clinical trial decisions. Today we're excited to share Ladon's capabilities in our blog and technical report.

Ladon is a 3B parameter model trained on millions of RNA-seq samples spanning decades of technical and biological variation across tissues and species. Ladon beats gene expression baselines, established biomarkers, and existing RNA foundation models at predicting patient prognosis and therapeutic response in 140+ oncology tasks, including external validation on past clinical trials. This is significant because clinical trials are fundamentally generalization problems. We show that Ladon-derived predictions are robust across indications, treatments, and sequencing platforms.

Reach out if you’d like to get started with the model today!

Read more about Ladon in the blog: https://t.co/dpDCYE4wRv
Find more technical details in the white paper: https://t.co/dpDCYE4wRv

[Front Row Ventures @frontrowvc]

@hsu_jonny @blankbio_ Incredible milestone for the team! 🚀 Tackling one of the biggest challenges in drug development with this level of scientific ambition is no small feat. Excited to see the impact Ladon will have on the future of clinical trials. Congratulations! 👏

[Mateo Q. @Mateoqr_]

Hosted our first Founders & Builders Mixer in Ottawa with @frontrowvc.

70+ founders and builders, great food, good music and even better conversations.

Ottawa has the people. We’re just curating the room.

Next one gets the VCs and angels involved.

[Front Row Ventures @frontrowvc]

@martincsweiss1 Exciting stuff! Looking forward to seeing what you and the team build next!

[Martin Weiss, PhD @martincsweiss1]

Each dot a coding agent search from the last 7 days on our ML research map, Lacuna.

Devs from 34 countries, running through Claude, Codex and local installs.

[Front Row Ventures @frontrowvc]

Read more about our new investment: https://t.co/jW5VL2gtRI

#VentureCapital #Startup #BehindTheDeal #MassSpectrometry #LabAutomation

[Front Row Ventures @frontrowvc]

We're excited to back MendAI Labs, building a virtual scientist for MS that automates method development and signal analysis.

Their platform handles experimental design, instrument control, and peak deconvolution end to end, returning expert time to researchers worldwide.

[Front Row Ventures @frontrowvc]

Building something on campus? We’d love to hear about it.

Exploring how AI can support your investment team? We’d love to compare notes. 5/5

[Front Row Ventures @frontrowvc]

What happens when you give a campus scout the context of an entire #VentureCapital fund?

At Front Row Ventures, our scouts are our eyes and ears on campus. They meet builders early, often before there’s a company. 🧵 1/5

[Front Row Ventures @frontrowvc]

Analysts (Y2+) can build on those conversations when a company enters diligence.

FRV is a lab for testing how AI can help knowledge travel across campuses and generations of students, giving scouts more room to build relationships. 4/5

[Front Row Ventures @frontrowvc]

Spots are limited, register here: https://t.co/JocjiXHJVi

[Front Row Ventures @frontrowvc]

GradConnect is back, trivia night edition!

On November 5, FRV and @boxonexyz are bringing grad students, founders, and investors together at @Mila_Quebec for startup and science trivia.

📅 Nov 5, 6–9 PM
📍 Mila Agora, MTL
🍕 Food and drinks provided
🧵Sign up at the link below

[Mateo Q. @Mateoqr_]

I'm hosting a Founders & Builders Mixer on Oct 23 with
@frontrowvc x Sip & Scale, alongside @mosmanhq

Meet builders and founders, and leave with new connections.

Sponsored by @spacexai and @Base44

Food, free credits, good conversation, and more!

Luma link below 👇

[Josh Syer @SyerJosh]

The UBC Tech Map is live: every startup, fund, program, club, lab and recurring event at UBC on one page. 237 entries, each with a public source.

SFU's map is live today too, built by Ethan Cratchley. Both are Front Row Ventures projects.

Start here: https://t.co/KYgyZn1TpK

[Front Row Ventures @frontrowvc]

The founder of https://t.co/K4LNd6SvI2 and the firm that wrote its first cheque, on one stage. 🚀

Omar Asaker (https://t.co/K4LNd6SvI2) and Omar Eldesouky (FRV). UBC Sauder, Wed Oct 14, 12:30 PM.

https://t.co/9i4MM56JWN

#FirstBeliever #UBC #StudentFounders

[Josh Syer @SyerJosh]

In 2025 and 2026, at least seven companies with UBC founders got into Y Combinator. Each one a potential unicorn.

What if the next one could start here?

The UBC Tech Map goes live Tuesday 13 October.

[chris @chrislevan]

the future of 🇨🇦 tech @frontrowvc

[Front Row Ventures @frontrowvc]

@pranav_vinodrg @_yasharya1 See you all there!