Known in the field for the reading, not only for the number.
What arrives here is mostly pre-adoption. Pre-track-record, as a product, and as a team. Not yet broadly known or understood. Early, from a broad market perspective and a templated risk assessment, though there may be decades of rigorous science behind it.
- Founder building something the market has no name for yet
- Innovation that will disrupt the mental model of a category
- Teams, investors and KOLs holding genuinely different views on where the core value sits
In the biopharmaceutical area, this is typically the complexity of first-in-class and best-in-class.
How, then, is value defined? There are methods — simple to sophisticated. Our founders contributed a fair share to the proper methodology of risk-adjustment, the understanding of option value, portfolio modeling, retro-engineering from comparators.
Yet we believe only strategy can be valued. IP with no mind convinced enough to develop and defend it erodes in value. Value moves with the science, the team, the capital structure, and the decisions made in the boardroom and at the negotiating table. More than value — value trajectory matters. It tells so much about a pioneer's readiness for this non-linear journey.
We see, model, explain, translate, value pioneer innovation. IP-backed, pathfinder-led.
Down to the intimacy of it.
Understanding the why behind pioneers´ decision: how investors think, how management teams operate, what actually drives perceived value. And the why behind a world that doesn't wait for them, doesn't always see their worth, and rarely makes room for what doesn't fit the mold.
Scanning the naked nature of financial performance is one part of the work. Scanning it in human systems is the other. None of it separable from the number, once you sit close enough to it.
Life sciences pioneers hold a 10, 20, 30-year vision against real short-term pressure, constantly. Knowing when to think long and when to act short is both, a talent and a discipline, and it is trained, not assumed.
A place pioneers happen to share.
Is it because we're Swiss. Because we pay attention to detail. Because we think in systems, cross silos, and can crunch complexity without losing what matters in it. Because we take the time to grasp a venture's context and its value trajectory, not just its numbers. Because we believe there is no enemy — only humans deciding, each reaching for what looks least risky from where they stand.
Science never settles. It's temporary, until pioneers prove their point. We believe in the diversity of opinion, and in the diversity of scientific focus and approach. We know the energy and will it takes, and the hurdles on the way.
Twenty years spent inside the science, the deal terms, and the governance room — building the view that holds, wherever it is tested. It became a place pioneers happen to share. Discussing, debating, slicing and dicing optionality. Finding precendents, analogs to extrapolate from. Translating views into the language of counterparts. Gaining distance. Seeing the broader picture to help pioneers grow confident in their distinctive edges.
A place respected and consulted by larger consultancies, corporate, M&A, IP and tax lawyers, IFRS specialists, R&D institutes and incubators, for the unique insight we hold into innovative uncertainty and pioneer complexity.
Independent, by nature of the role
We are appraisers, and we bring the right distance — enough to see clearly, challenge constructively, and stay independent of who is asking.
Our work is scoped to the situation — without dependency:
A focused intervention, when clarity is required
Continued analytical support across key stages, ahead of transitions
A sparring role alongside management, boards or investors
Fair value accounting and modeling support
Price is different from value and value is different from value trajectory.
For those who stay this long, and want one layer deeper into our valuation philosophy
Price is what a transaction settles on — a single point, agreed under the constraints, information and urgency of one moment. It reflects a deal. It does not always reflect the value of an asset.
Value is broader — an estimate of what the asset is genuinely worth in the hand a given team and cap table, stripped of the avoidable pressures of one negotiation. Closer to the asset's substance, but still bound to a given setting and strategy, taken at a single time.
Value trajectory is neither a point nor a snapshot. It is the direction an asset is moving — the arc of what strategy, science, team and capital are compounding toward, and how fast and how resilient to internal/external shocks. Two ventures can carry the same value today and diverge entirely on value trajectory. Reading price tells you what was agreed and why. Reading value tells you what something is worth. Reading trajectory tells you where an asset, team and cap table is going — usually the question that matters most, to everyone in the room.