Know what drives value.
Be ahead when it matters.
For founders, executives, boards and investors who need to see what will drive decisions tomorrow — and act while options remain open.
Deal making
Value perception
Optionality
Governance
... in a world of at-risk science, asymmetric outcomes event-driven value requiring targeted choices.
Why we are made for this Our take on Life Sciences
✽ Our view on value
Outcomes are created long before they become visible
In innovative Life Sciences, value does not emerge linearly. It results from a series of decisions that influence how future opportunities, risks and strategic choices unfold. It thus results from readiness, and from the signals — intentionally built, or mistakenly sent.
The most important decisions are often made long before their consequences become visible. Financing structures, alignment, incentives and governance arrangements, partnering strategies and development priorities create a framework that can either expand or constrain future possibilities.
The best companies do not wait until a financing, partnership or transaction is on the horizon to think about leverage and optionality. They build the conditions that preserve them years in advance.
That is why we focus on the strategic foundations of value: understanding how different stakeholders make decisions, what signals they respond to, and how today's choices influence tomorrow's room to maneuver.
We believe value truly emerges when:
- a team can execute
- capital structure allows action
- governance enables the right decision at the right time
Ideas inspire.
Decisions create value.
Readiness anchors value
R&D doesn´t sell by itself.
Value materializes when a company is ready to operate in the real.
We assess how close a company truly is to market reality, investor expectations and deal making— beyond scientific progress alone.
Value is signal-sensitive
In High Growth / High Risk markets, signals amplify outcomes.
We capture how market participants decide — individually and collectively:
- which signals they recognize,
- which they discount,
- which they are compelled to price.
✽ Who this page is for
For those who carry the full picture
Read the full game
Building in life sciences or deep tech. Facing a financing event, a partnering decision, or a governance inflection. You need someone who reads the full game — science to term sheet — without needing to be brought up to speed.
Responsible for decisions
Responsible for decisions where the margin for error is asymmetric. You need a perspective that crosses silos — not just the financial model, not just the strategy, but their intersection at this specific stage and structure.
Generate alpha & beta
Holding High Growth / High Risk assets. Playing a long game and short moves in a field where the signal that matters is subtle and early. You need longitudinal exposure to what elevates and erodes value across market, stages and deal structures.
✽ What the work actually is
Four dimensions into one coherent picture
FINANCING INTELLIGENCE
How the next round should be structured to maximise future optionality — not just this raise.
Analysing the downstream consequences of current term choices, the signals the cap table sends to the next investor type, and the narrative consistency between the equity story and the asset reality.
Decisions made here are felt at the next round, at partnering, at exit.
VALUE ARCHITECTURE
What makes value in this asset, at this stage, for this investor type — and what is currently limiting it.
Mapping the asset reality, the capital structure constraints, the governance dynamics, and the ecosystem signals that determine what is visible to the market and what is not.
This is the analytical base from which every subsequent decision should be made.
PARTNERING & DEAL INTEL. PREP. AND EXECUTION
What the pharma partner, strategic acquirer, or co-investor will actually read — and what they will not say out loud.
The executive is the deal. Surprise is where emotion takes over. Preparation is where it does not get the chance.
In the background: asset positioning, deal structure scenarios, term analysis, counterpart logic — so the executive arrives at every conversation with the full picture, and holds it visibly.
GOVERNANCE & THE LONG GAME
The decisions that appear minor today and become structural three years from now.
Alignment, incentives and governance arrangements, milestone design — each one is a signal to future investors and a constraint on future decisions.
Readiness means identifying the fractures before they become visible. That is when they are still cheap to address.
✽ Context is where value lives
Every company is a different playboard.
Two companies can face the same financing decision, the same governance tension, the same partnering question — and require completely different responses, because the asset reality, the capital structure, the stakeholder dynamics and the competitive window are never the same twice.
Therefore we start with value reality.
Our work is built around 1 question: where is the true value and what limits it?
Value is not only embedded in the asset or product itself — it lives in the human and organisational dynamics around it. What a company, its board, cap table, and partners are able to make of it. That is why our reading begins at the first conversation — and never really stops. Three dimensions, held simultaneously:
Asset reality
What the science actually supports, where the value is genuinely defensible, and where the gaps are that others will find before you do.
Financial & structural readiness
What the current capital structure signals to the next investor type, what the governance arrangements constrain, and what the incentive design rewards or undermines.
Ecosystem & execution context
Who the relevant counterparts are, what they are optimising for, and what the competitive and regulatory signals are saying that the company may not yet be reading.
This scan is the playboard. What follows is faster, sharper, and a step ahead — because the reading is already done.
✽ Typical situations we work on
Eight situations, one of them is yours
"It's a combination: out-of-the-box thinking with a very thorough understanding of the overall ecosystem of innovative companies — especially in life science — from science through development, through regulatory, through market and its financing, and the people's psychology."
— Client, managing director, 500m+ raised, European biotech, 2026
The science that needed a language
Not just an equity story — a strategic framework that holds when the questions get hard
Early stage · founding team · spin-off
A scientific founder with a genuine breakthrough cannot translate it into investor language. The science is excellent. The asset is real. What is missing is not a slide deck or a number — it is a strategic framework that connects the science to the economic footprint it will create for the company, and from there to the yield it represents for the investor. Every attempt to build this without an external eye produces either an overclaim or an underclaim.
An asset story that overlooks adoption mechanics, or an equity story that cannot survive the first hard question, is worse than no story — it establishes a credibility deficit at the moment that sets the reference point for every negotiation that follows. The difference between an equity story and a strategic framework is defensibility: the story is a narrative, the framework is an argument that has already incorporated the counterarguments. Investors who have seen many decks know immediately which one they are reading.
We build the chain in three stages. First: the science translated into the economic footprint it creates for the company. Second: the asset/equity value modelled under multiple scenarios (rNPV, Monte Carlo, VC model) with explicit assumptions the founder can defend. Third: the investor yield framed in terms specific to the investor type in the room — family office, early institutional, venture fund, pharma co-investor. The analytical and strategic frameworks are built together so that any question the investor asks lands inside the framework rather than outside it.
The founder arrives at the first institutional conversation with a position they can defend — not because the numbers are optimistic, but because the whole game is elevated and every assumption has been stress-tested. The investor stops saying "too early" or "out of my scope" and starts asking what conditions need to hold for the asset to be worth that.
The round that resets the rules
Economics, control, and the governance architecture that will govern every decision that follows
A company is entering a financing round — or a significant transaction — that will restructure the rules under which it operates. This is not necessarily the first round. It may be Series A, B, or C. It may be a collaboration deal with governance clauses that transfer effective decision authority over the development programme. What defines this moment is not the stage: it is that this round will set the terms — economic and governance — that the company will live under for the next several years.
The clauses that cause problems in the next round are signed in this one without anyone flagging them, because they appear standard. Liquidation preference, anti-dilution provisions, drag-along thresholds, veto rights on strategic decisions, director appointment rights, steering commitees, IP rights and duties — none of these are incidental. Each one determines who controls what when the company and its investors or partners disagree. A founder who reads the term sheet for the economics alone and leaves the governance architecture to the lawyers is making decisions about control with missing information.
We analyse the full term sheet across three dimensions simultaneously: economics, control, and probabilities. On the economics side, we model the cap table and distribution waterfall under the proposed terms across real scenarios. On the control side, we map all key governance provisions: who holds veto, decision and appointment rights, what requires board approval versus management discretion, and how each clause interacts with those already in place. On the probability side, we anticipate opportunities inherent to the strategic framework, risk accumulation, and their downstream consequences — because this happens more often than not, and it is crucial to protecting alpha and generating beta.
The round closes on terms the management team understood when they signed, suited to the requirements of the company's next stages, with a clear roadmap. In the next due diligence, they can explain every roadmap choice and governance clause without hesitation — which reads, to the incoming investor, as institutional maturity rather than founder inexperience.
All R&D stages ·
Fundraising · Financing · Up/down/flat rounds · Collaboration · Partnering
The term sheet — What it says and what it signals
Standard or off — in neither case does the first read tell the full story
In-licensing ·
Out-licensing · Option deal · Partnering · Financing · Fundraising
FACE B / Term sheet looks punitive
A biotech receives a term sheet that looks completely off. The valuation is too low. The milestone structure is punitive. Before the rejection is sent, no one has asked the prior question:
what signal did the company send to produce this offer?
FACE A / Term sheet looks fair
A biotech receives a term sheet. The headline economics are within market range. The management team reads it as a fair offer. Three clauses in the body of the document will transfer effective decision authority, create a cash gap at the worst moment, and step down mitigation capacity precisely when scrutiny or control requirements are highest.
WHAT CANNOT RESOLVE ITSELF
There is technically no standard term sheet. Every term sheet is situation-, company-, stage-, and key-stakeholder-dependent. The upfront valuation figure is almost always over-weighted by all parties. What is systematically underestimated: the strategic rationale for both organisations — what each party actually needs from this transaction, at this stage, given their constraints. The three-party rule: a transaction should only be pursued if three parties can win downstream — the innovator, the new entrant, and the ultimate user of the product.
WHAT THE WORK LOOKS LIKE
In both cases, we start with the same step: we read the term sheet from the counterpart's position. What are they protecting? Where is the real flexibility and where are the genuine constraints? We map the transaction as a chess game — every possible move, by player, in sequence. We identify which clauses are negotiable and what the leverage on each one is. We prepare the counter-proposal and the negotiation sequence: what to offer, what to hold, and in what order — so that each concession creates movement toward the optimal structure for both parties.
WHAT CHANGES
The negotiation that follows is not reactive to the term sheet received. It is informed by a complete read of the deal from both sides of the table, by a map of how the positions will move under each scenario. The deal that closes is the one both parties can execute — not just sign.
The CEO or CFO who thinks in systems
A cognitive partnership — not a mandate, not a project, not a report
Ongoing longitudinal ·
CEO · CFO · Managing director · Solo-centraliser
A founder-CEO has built something real. The science is excellent. The strategy is rigorous. The company has survived situations that would have ended others. And still: every institutional conversation requires translating years of thinking into language the other side can process. Every board meeting requires managing people who do not fully understand what they are governing. The energy of translating, repeatedly, to people who are not at the same level and who focus on a different perspective — that is the cost.
The bottleneck is not intelligence. It is perspective and bandwidth. A CEO or CFO who cannot delegate to people who think at sufficient depth and speed on complex topics does not have an organisational problem — they have a cognitive resource problem. The company is constrained not by the quality of its science or strategy but by the management ability to hold every function simultaneously without a peer-level thought partner to share the load.
We become the sparring partner. We hold the full picture — valuation model updated at all times, market intelligence across relevant BD players, governance dynamics as they evolve, board preparation before each meeting, and the reading of counterpart behaviour that the managing director cannot always afford to spend time on. We are the independent external contact that leadership can reach when they need a signal-level conversation that is not their bandwidth. The context, the model, and the relationships are already held — you never have to start from zero again.
The CEO, CFO or managing director stops losing time to translation and spends it on the work only they can do. The company operates at a level that appears, from the outside, to have a full finance and BD team behind it. The investor and partner relationships benefit from a continuity of analytical context that no project-based mandate could provide.
One client estimates that re-engaging us rather than identifying and onboarding a new advisor reduces re-onboarding costs and time by up to 80%.
Cap table aligment
At the end, everyone says "of course." At the beginning, nobody sees it.
The signal the triplet was sending
Cap table, management, board — the three reads an incoming investor makes before the first conversation
A company's capital structure has been built one decision at a time. The convertible loan was the fastest bridge available. The governance arrangement was the compromise that allowed the round to close. The management team on the cap table reflects who was available and committed at each stage, not necessarily the team that will carry the next phase. Together — cap table, management, board composition — they form the triplet that every incoming professional investor reads before the first conversation. And they are reading it like bloodwork: not as a list of facts, but as a pattern that predicts what they will find when they look further.
All R&D stages ·
Fundraising · Financing · Bridge · CLA · Warrants · Incentive and stock option
programs · Deals with equity component
WHAT CANNOT RESOLVE ITSELF
An incoming investor who reads a problematic triplet does not flag it in the first meeting. They note it, and they let the management team and most engaged shareholders do the cleanup work — with existing shareholders, with the board, with convertible holders and incentive programme beneficiaries — before they commit. The company that arrives at this moment believing it has done its job discovers instead that the next investor says: clean your mess, this is the discount. The double hit: the market is ready, the company has performed, and the triplet is blocking the round.
WHAT THE WORK LOOKS LIKE
We analyse the triplet from the position of the relevant incoming investor types — whether an institutional lead, a family office considering a larger position, or a strategic acquirer running a pre-exit read. We identify in context which element of the triplet creates friction and what the realistic cleanup sequence looks like — because restructuring a cap table incorrectly is itself a signal. We pay particular attention to convertible instruments: the mechanics, the downstream valuation consequences in the next round, and the communication the management team owes to board, lenders, and future investors at each stage.
WHAT CHANGES
The company that understands
its triplet before the next investor reads it can correct the signal or explain
it. Either way, it
arrives at the next conversation from a position of understanding rather than
surprise. The investor spends due diligence on the asset, not on unravelling
the governance history.
The alignment that resists
When the parties are not actually against each other — but the framework for deciding together does not yet exist
In an innovative biotech company, capital and science come from different parties by design. The investor holds the financing mandate. The management team holds the scientific and operational mandate. The board sits between them. This is not a dysfunction — it is the structural condition of the sector, fundamentally different from traditional companies where the asset and the equity come from the same pocket, or where recurrent profits make assets more liquid for investors. Without a framework for processing this diversity, it becomes friction. And friction, in a development-stage company, is very expensive.
R&D stage · Internal alignment · Cap table · Board · Investors · Management · Governance friction
WHAT CANNOT RESOLVE ITSELF
The moment a CEO, a CFO, a board member or an investor senses that something is misaligned — that a position is not moving when it should, that a conversation is being avoided — is the moment fear and anxiety enter the room. Not because the parties are adversarial, but because there is no agreed framework for resolving the difference. The absence of a governance structure is rarely visible until alignment is needed urgently. And by the time a financing round arrives, the absence becomes a liability.
WHAT THE WORK LOOKS LIKE
We work across four levels simultaneously. First, the financial: we produce the number that allows the investor to engage in their language. Second, the social-science level: we help map the expectations between investor, board, and management so that the mandate of each party is clear and the sources of misalignment are named rather than managed around. Third, the emotional: we absorb the charge that accumulates when alignment resists. Fourth, the market anchor: we bring the business model and the addressable market into the conversation as the shared objective that realigns parties whose interests would otherwise diverge.
WHAT CHANGES
The parties do not need to agree on everything. They need a framework that makes it safe to disagree — and a process for converting disagreement into the best decision. When that framework exists, the diversity of views becomes an asset. The board meeting produces better decisions than any single party would have reached alone.
Our continuous exposure across stages, outcomes and market cycles gives us a longitudinal view of what elevates — and erodes — value, and how this differs across FO-, VC-backed and listed companies, depending on founder involvement, top management composition, incentives and governance practice. This enables founders, management teams, boards and investors to align capital, governance and strategy with science and turn complexity into greater, durable value.
Deal outcomes are often determined before the process even begins.
Because readiness — of assets, teams and counterparts — sets the play.
To improve outcomes, you must read the game early. Understand how others see it and decide before options quietly expire.