Dion Madsen

Dion Madsen, Partner

Dion Madsen, CFA, is co-founder and Partner at Physic Ventures. Dion focuses on life science opportunities that address the increasing consumer involvement in prevention and care of chronic disease. He is currently a Board Director for Elixir Pharmaceuticals, HealthLoopOn-Q-ity, and Pharmaca. He was formerly on the boards of HaloSource and SurfaceLogix until they successfully exited.

Prior to co-founding Physic Ventures, Dion served as Managing Director and leader of the investment practice of Unilever Technology Ventures. From 1998 to 2003, he served as a Partner of RBC Capital Partners, the private equity arm of the Royal Bank of Canada, where he was responsible for opening an office covering the Western Canadian market and, in 2002, for opening the RBC Life Sciences Fund's first U.S. office in San Francisco, California. At RBC, he led RBC's investments in early-stage North American healthcare companies such as Cytovax Biotechnologies, Hemosol, Inex Pharmaceuticals, Sembiosys Genetics, Idun Pharmaceuticals, Corus Pharma, Conforma Therapeutics and NeuroMed Technologies. While at RBC, Dion also served as Chief Financial Officer of Cytovax Biotechnologies Inc., raising a private placement and taking Cytovax to its IPO in 2001. Prior to joining RBC, Dion was Chief Financial Officer of Cyberion Networking Inc., then a publicly traded national Internet service provider. At Cyberion, Dion restructured the operations of the troubled company, successfully completed a private placement financing, achieved positive operating cash flow, and repackaged the company's consumer Internet assets for sale. While at Cyberion, Dion initiated technology development on a secure Internet application that was spun out and ultimately sold by The DocSpace Company Inc. to Critical Path for $568 million.

Dion previously worked in Commercial Banking with the Royal Bank of Canada in Edmonton. He has also been a member of the Investment Committee of ENSIS Investment Limited Partnership, a Canadian venture capital fund, and the Burrill AgBio Capital Fund, L.P. In addition, Dion has served as a director of Biostar Inc., Idun Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. and has been a board observer on numerous biotechnology companies.

Dion holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and holds a Bachelor's degree in Commerce specializing in Finance from the University of Saskatchewan.