On the TechTO stage ×1
First seen on the TechTO stage in 2024. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Vasu ↗
In their words
To be super clear, we're not successful yet, so I don't know if they're good lessons or bad lessons. It remains to be seen.
Really ambitious ideas attract ambitious people. They attract great talent.
The only reason we're able to attract the team to do it is because we drew a line in the sand and we set a level of ambition that attracted great people.
Quick answers
Who is Vasu Nadella?
Co-founder and CEO of Vital Bio, a Toronto-area diagnostics company building a blood-testing system for physicians' offices. He had an earlier exit with a Montreal company, then came to Toronto as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Inovia before starting Vital.
What does Vital Bio do?
It has built a countertop system that runs a comprehensive blood panel in a physician's office. A venipuncture or finger-prick sample goes in with two single-patient consumables, and results come back in about twenty minutes rather than going out to a lab and back.
What did Vasu Nadella say at TechTO?
Speaking in September 2024, he described a company then five and a half years old with about 120 engineers and scientists, working out of four warehouses in Mississauga, and said it had raised $65 million from backers including Sam Altman. He was explicit that the product had not been reviewed by regulators and that the company was not yet commercial. His lesson was about ambition as a recruiting tool: experts told them to scope the vision down, and refusing to is what attracted the team.