JP

Johan Pontin

CEO, Entrepreneur, Board Director, and Investor

Boston, Massachusetts

Overview 

Johan Pontin is a CEO, entrepreneur, and board director based in Boston, Massachusetts, known for leading successful business reorganizations and restructuring efforts in companies such as The RNA Medicines Company and Beryllium Discovery. With a background in mergers & acquisitions and leveraged buyouts, he has also co-founded a stealth mode startup in Ag-BioTech and served as a managing general partner at Pod Investment AB. Pontin's career highlights include leading strategic consulting initiatives and providing organizational leadership in early-stage ventures, showcasing his expertise in growth capital and cross-functional team leadership.

Work Experience 

  • CEO & Co-Founder

    2024 - Current

    Focusing on combating inflammation and promoting sustainability by building an Ag-BioTech Startup to sustainably produce anti-inflammatory functional natural product ingredients and their analogs.

  • Managing Director

    2020

    Family office for start-up ideation projects, focusing on innovative healthcare and wellness bioplatforms. Healthcare Innovation: Driving the creation of intellectual property portfolios & bioplatforms that leverage the convergence of the biorevolution to achieve transformative healthcare outcomes while supporting planetary health. Key Projects: 1. Proprietary biomanufacturing platform for natural product ingredients, aiming to make scarce resources abundant. 2. Prebiotic ingredient IP creation, novel manufacturing processes, and organic whole food functional ingredients. 3. Establishing a functional ingredient bioplatform to combat inflammation and promote sustainability.

  • Chief Executive Officer

    2014 - 2019

    The RNA Medicines Company was a subsidiary of Beryllium Discovery (2014-2017) and subsequently a subsidiary of UCB (2017 - 2019). The company was engaged in the build out of a proprietary small molecule drug discovery platform targeting small non-coding RNAs.

  • Chief Executive Officer

    2009 - 2017

    Beryllium Discovery was acquired by UCB in June of 2017. Beryllium Discovery was a leading Rational Drug Discovery platform with a long standing integrated collaboration with UCB as well as a number of CRO engagements in Fragment Based Ligand Discovery as well as structural biology (crystallography). Beryllium was founded in 2009 through the acquisition of Emerald Biosystems and deCode Biostructures from deCode Inc.

  • Managing General Partner

    2000 - 2008

    Pod Holding (Pod Venture Partners) was founded in 2000. Pod Holding (Pod Venture Partners) was a lead venture investor and incubator of early stage companies in Software, BioTech, FinTech and ICT with $180M under management. In 2009 Pod Venture Partners became a closely held investment company with a name change to Pod Investment AB (podinvestment.com). Pod was a lead investor in Paratek Pharmaceuticals, Inion Oy, Transmode AB, OP5 and Corestreet Inc, to name a few lead investments.

  • Member Board of Directors

    2005 - 2008

    Sting Capital was the initial seed fund to support the companies being mentored by STING (Stockholm Innovation and Growth, Sting.co). I was a founding Board Member of Sting and Pod Holding was one of the original lead investors in Sting Capital. Sting has been a huge success given support to over 200 Stockholm based start-ups with over €1,2 billion in market value.

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