Meet PB&B CEO Anthony Aho and find out how Metallica helped him get into EPFL

01.12.2020 08:05, Isabelle Mitchell

Venture Leader China Anthony Aho co-founded PB&B, a life sciences startup that develops a new generation of fillers and soft tissue remodeling injections for plastic surgeons and dermatologists. Learn more about Anthony’s expectations for the Venture Leader China experience and find out how music and extreme sports help his productivity and happiness.

The Venture Leaders China 2020 will accelerate their expansion into the Chinese market and build a business network through meetings with top-notch investors and industry leaders. To introduce you to the members of the Swiss National Startup Team, we asked each entrepreneur to complete a short profile and choose four questions from a questionnaire about their personal and professional life.

Name: Anthony Aho 
Job title: CEO of PB&B
Location: Lausanne    
Nationality: Swiss 
Graduated from: EPFL 
Number of employees: 4 (plus lots of partnerships)  
First touchpoint with Venturelab: in 2013 with Venture Kick and Venture Challenge EPFL 

“PB&B develops a novel technology for aesthetic doctors to remodel the face and body with an injection.” 

How and where did you come up with the idea for your startup?
The idea is over 10 years old – how can we make plastic surgery natural and minimally invasive? That is, can we use the body’s own system to provide natural results, avoid surgery, and give patients the ideal results and product experience they dream of?
Seeing that fat tissue is the best biomaterial for plastic surgeons to remodel the face and body, we created the technology that allows doctors to achieve this with an injection. By removing surgery from plastic surgeons’ practices, we feared a backlash, but they have fully embraced and supported us from the very start. 
 
What do you expect from the Venture Leaders program, and how will it help you achieve your vision? 
We just registered our company in China in August, and we are opening a new office in Hangzhou in October 2020. We have participated in top startup programs and accelerators in Europe and the US, and Venturelab has always stood out as a world-class organization that has helped us propel our business forward since 2013. As we start our expansion into China, we have no doubt that Venture Leaders China will be an integral part of creating that success story by facilitating great connections to local partners and investors and preparing us entrepreneurs to best integrate into the ecosystem. 
 
Where and when are you most productive?
While listening to music—anywhere. The music allows me to dissociate myself from the world around and fully focus on the work at hand. I used to be a terrible student at school until I was around 15 years old—when my teachers in Canada let me listen to Metallica during classwork. That was when I went from the bottom to the top of the class, which allowed me to get into engineering studies at EPFL in Switzerland.  
 
Which business person do you admire and why?  
Elon Musk! What he has done with SpaceX and Tesla is just astonishing. These are both very complex and capital-intensive industries where everyone said he would crash and burn. Instead, he has taken the lead and is bringing disruptive innovations both to the technology and business side of these industries.  
 
What is your favorite book and why?  
The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. It is a high fantasy 12-volume novel (similar to The Lord of the Rings) that draws on European and Asian mythology, metaphysical concepts of balance and duality, and respect for nature. Foremost, it is an epic tale that allows the mind to venture into a grand adventure in a new world, where all odds are stacked against the protagonist.   
  
What are you most proud of?  
Practicing extreme sports and never having a bad accident. My week is sad and incomplete without an adrenaline-charged session of a high-speed sport such as surfing, freeride skiing, and downhill mountain biking. These are high-risk sports that require fast judgment, and bad timing can be the difference between crashing into a big rock or feeling strong and happy all week. 

Last but not least, could you show us your workspace? 



For more information and updates on PB&B and the Venture Leaders China, follow the Venture Leaders China 2020 team with #VleadersChina on social media or subscribe to our newsletter. 
 
This year’s Venture Leaders China is organized in collaboration with swissnex China and supported by EPF Lausanne, ETH Zurich, Gebert Rüf Stiftung, VISCHER, Canton Vaud, and the Canton of Zurich.