Venture Founder is Innovation UBC's flagship entrepreneurship program, a 16-week deep dive that turns bold ideas and research discoveries into real startup companies. Open to University of British Columbia (UBC) faculty, staff, and students, the program offers experiential workshops on everything from customer discovery to go-to-market strategy with hands-on mentorship from a network of 250+ founders, investors, and industry leaders. Since its launch over a decade ago, Venture Founder has helped dozens of cohorts, spanning AI, biotech, climate tech, and beyond, move from early-stage ideas to validated, investable ventures.
In this blog post, meet the Cryo-Analytics co-founding team: Dr. Paul Bieber, Paris Salamon, and Annalise Tsoromocos. Paul and Paris are associated with UBC's Department of Chemistry, while Annalise is associated with UBC's Department of Microbiology & Immunology and Sauder School of Business (Robert H. Lee Graduate School). Together, they're building Cryo-Analytics with the mission of making the most advanced biomarker-detection technology accessible to every research lab. Read more about what brought them to entrepreneurship and how they're achieving Cryo-Analytics' mission.
Tell us about yourself. Your background, your UBC connection, and what drew you to entrepreneurship.
Paul: I was in the middle of my PhD in atmospheric chemistry when an idea struck me: why not use a phenomenon we studied in the atmosphere to develop a detection tool for diagnostic purposes? I built a team with diversely skilled co-founders and advisors, and we started brainstorming the idea on a drawing board, built out the chemistry in the lab, and later decided to apply for the Venture Founder Program. I hadn't thought about entrepreneurship at the beginning of this project, but I started to fall in love with the idea of transforming our technology to unlock its full application potential.
Annalise: I have a BSc in Microbiology & Immunology from UBC and recently completed my Master of Management at UBC Sauder. I have always been drawn to both how science works and what you can build with it, which is what led me to pair my science degree with a business one. For me, science is the most exciting when it makes it out of the lab to positively impact people’s lives. So, along the way, when I got a taste of the early-stage startup world, it became clear that entrepreneurship was the right direction.
Paris: Creating things, whether it be art, food or tools, has been a pervasive itch I have been scratching my entire life. After completing my Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Victoria, I began a PhD at UBC Chemistry where I now study how bacteria accomplish complex tasks by creating functional molecules of their own. At UBC, science has become the oculus for my creative focus, and I have found working collaboratively with others on an early-stage startup, to build and realize new ideas, to be some of the most satisfying work of my academic career.
What is your venture, and why does it matter?
Cryo-Analytics is on a mission to make the most advanced biomarker-detection technology accessible to every research lab.
We've built a novel platform that can detect biomarkers — the tiny biological signals that can indicate disease — at extremely low levels, a level of detection that today is limited to a handful of specialized facilities. This gives researchers studying diseases a powerful new tool to work with, paving the way for earlier detection and new diagnostic tools down the road.
Since entering Venture Founder, what has been your biggest pivot or challenge in building your venture? How did you get through it?
Our biggest challenge has been figuring out which problem to solve first. Our technology can be adapted to countless proteins, which means it could support diagnostics for many different diseases: a great problem to have, but a hard one to navigate without getting stretched too thin.
Early on, we set out to build a diagnostic tool for one specific disease. Through many conversations with mentors in the Venture Founder program and discovery interviews with potential end users, we realized a stronger path forward: rather than picking a single disease and building the whole diagnostic ourselves, we could build the underlying detection platform and let researchers and diagnostic developers apply it to the diseases they know best.
What's one piece of advice you'd give to an aspiring founder?
Be open to exploring different paths and thoughtfully listen to what others have to say. It is so easy to get excited about your own idea of what you are building; however, you don’t really know what you're selling until you know what people are buying, so ask them, early and often. Interviews can shape the way you think about your own ideas, your technology and even your vision.
What's next for your venture? What are you working toward in the next 12 months?
Over the next 12 months, we're refining our technology into a product ready for labs to adopt, growing our network of advisors and collaborators, and staying close to potential customers so we're building exactly what they need.
Our Venture Founder program is for UBC student ventures, UBC student companies, and UBC spin-offs with an idea worth building. Applications for our Spring 2027 cohort are open, so don’t miss your chance to develop your strategies, gain mentorship, and commercialize your startup idea! Learn more here.
