Highlights from MedStart’s First CEO Roundtable
We kicked off our first MedStart CEO Roundtable—and it delivered. A sharp, no-BS conversation among founders and leaders on what it actually takes to build and scale in healthcare and biotech. Below are the takeaways, the tech that inspired us, and how to get in the room next time.
What We Talked About
Regulatory strategy isn’t a box—it's a roadmap.
Founders shared practical ways to design trials and submissions that de-risk the path to market (and to your next raise). Build your regulatory plan early, align it to clinical endpoints, and make it a living document you update as data comes in.
Fundraising: velocity over vanity.
We compared notes on investor fit, evidence milestones, and pacing. Consensus: don’t pitch “potential”—show line-of-sight to value inflection (pre-IND package, first-in-human data, payer signals). Reduce friction with clean data rooms and a crisp “why now.”
Founder self-care is a strategic asset.
Burned-out founders make bad decisions. We discussed simple practices—ruthless prioritization, peer accountability, scheduled recovery—that keep you sharp through long clinical and regulatory cycles.
Community support compounds.
Intros, shared playbooks, and lab access speed everyone up. Several founders walked away with concrete connections for trials, manufacturing, and grants. That’s the point.
Founder Spotlight: Ariz Precision Medicine
Big thanks to our host, Brad Niles, CEO of Ariz Precision Medicine. His team is developing next-generation cancer therapeutics using highly targeted siRNA delivered via a novel nanoparticle system—aimed at silencing oncogenic drivers in tumor cells while sparing healthy tissue. If successful, this approach could reduce off-target toxicity and address cancer at its root cause: aberrant gene expression. Inspiring science, clear translational plan.
Field Trip: Inside Inventopia
We toured Inventopia, a flexible innovation hub where local bio companies can rent affordable wet lab space and access shared equipment. It’s exactly the kind of infrastructure the region needs to turn promising science into validated products. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look at their offerings at Inventopia and imagine your proof-of-concept running there.
Key Takeaways You Can Use This Week
Write your evidence plan first; let it drive your clinical, regulatory, and fundraising timelines.
Treat quality and safety as design constraints, not afterthoughts.
Build a target list of 10–20 right-fit investors mapped to your next milestone.
Schedule founder maintenance (sleep, exercise, thinking time) like any critical meeting.
Leverage the MedStart community for lab access, intros, and peer reviews—speed beats secrecy.
Join the Next MedStart CEO Roundtable
If you’re a health or biotech founder, executive, or investor, we’d love to have you at the next roundtable. Expect candid conversation, practical frameworks, and a room full of people who get the grind. You can apply to be part of the CEO Round Table here.
