We back people as much as mechanisms. At pre-seed, the data is thin and the science is early, so the founder is the most information-rich signal available. The hardest and most important judgment we make is whether a researcher or clinician can become the founder their company needs.
It is a real leap. The skills that make someone an excellent scientist, depth, rigor, patience with ambiguity, are necessary but not sufficient to build a company. Here is what we look for in the founders who make the jump.
Genuine depth, honestly held
The best scientist-founders know their field cold and know exactly where the uncertainty lives. They can tell you what would have to be true for the company to work, and what would prove them wrong. Confidence married to intellectual honesty is the rarest and most predictive trait we encounter.
A bias toward the world, not just the bench
Building a company means caring about the patient, the payer, the regulator, and the customer, not only the mechanism. We look for founders who are curious about the market and willing to be wrong about it, who treat commercialization as an intellectual problem worthy of their attention rather than a distraction from the science.
The question is never only “is the science good?” It is “will this person learn fast enough to build around it?”
The will to leave the lab
There is a moment when a founder has to commit, to step out of the academic track and accept the discomfort of building. We are looking for that resolve. It does not mean abandoning rigor; it means choosing to apply it to a new and harder problem.
Coachability, and the security to be coached
Strong founders hold their vision firmly and their tactics loosely. They seek out people who have done what they have not, and they update. That is also a statement about us: our job is to be the partner worth being coached by, operators who have built, sold, and navigated regulation, close enough to help on the decisions that matter.
Where the gap is, we close it
Few first-time founders arrive with all of this. That is the point of an operator-led pre-seed partner. We take board and advisory seats, help recruit the missing skills, and stand beside founders through the transition from researcher to chief executive. We are not looking for the finished article. We are looking for the person who will become it, and we are built to help them get there.