Engagements executed, outcomes delivered.

This global leading bioingredients group had built up years of venturing without defined structure, management and governance, accumulating a broad portfolio of opportunistic yet neglected minority holdings across 5 continents. The firm wanted to turn it into a focused, high-performing venture arm that could put real strategic weight behind the technologies it backed.

A new corporate investment function was designed and built end to end, restructuring the 22-investment legacy portfolio by strategic fit, and installing institutional-grade guidelines, process and governance, with clear and transparent anchoring with internal stakeholders. The arm was repositioned as a disciplined investor for the group and a value-add partner for founders.

A global biosolutions corporate held a biopharmaceutical ingredients business that no longer fit its strategic direction. Undercapitalised and under-invested for several years, the asset faced closure — with significant site-rehabilitation costs and around 40 jobs at stake — unless a credible alternative could be found.

A divestment as a management buy-out (MBO) was structured while allowing the corporate to remain as a minority investor, keeping upside with minimal effort. We remained involved post-MBO, managing the corporate-new entity relationship, supporting management and Board through the company's growth, and turning down two private-equity (PE) offers prior to a sizable sale to a European life sciences group.

A first-time founding GP set out to build a new early-stage venture fund dedicated to industrial biotech, synthetic biology and digital biology. As an emerging yet under-explored thematic fund strategy, the GP required help stress testing and defining the fund mandate and investment moat, building the right capabilities and sourcing the most compelling deals. While the GP envisioned building a biofoundry for scaleups, it lacked the capabilities to do so solo.

As GP Advisor and Strategic Partner, we advised on fund establishment, investment strategy, governance and LP engagement. Following launch, we supported sourcing and led the technical, commercial and financial due diligence on investments. We also co-designed and helped launch an integrated biofoundry and accelerator platform, giving early-stage ventures and portfolio companies direct access to biomanufacturing infrastructure.

Technical founders and professors had developed promising data covering the application of novel proteins for the human and animal gut microbiome, but were unsure about the appropriate model and partners required to form a company, attract investors and strategic collaborators, and turn the science into a commercial venture with global reach.

The founders and a biotech manufacturer were brought together to set up a new company, with the manufacturer providing in-kind R&D services for a minority stake. We joined the Board, helped secure institutional investors and foundations, installed institutional-grade governance, and shaped the product, regulatory and commercial pipeline. We also guided a strategic shift from pharma applications toward functional foods and supplements, and took the company from formation through its Series A.

A Nordic-based, global biosolutions corporate had taken a stake in a yeast-breeding startup whose technology appeared to threaten one of its own highly profitable biofuels businesses. Internally, the corporate's R&D team believed it could replicate the work itself, putting the planned co-development, and the investment, at risk of being scrapped. Corporate management needed an independent assessment of the case to decide on its next move.

After reviewing the investment, technology, and corporate R&D pipeline, we repositioned the case entirely: rather than a threat that would cannibalise existing products, the startup's technology was an opportunity to lead an adjacent new market and capture sales the corporate would otherwise lose to competitors. We subsequently joined the startup's Board and helped put in place development, manufacturing and sales agreements that aligned both sides and translated into sizable sales and market share gains.

An Australian company — holding a unique technology stack for cryogenic biosample management and a clear market fit — had entered liquidation and needed a fast buyer for the business or its assets. A group of investors saw the opportunity but lacked deep understanding of the assets and market opportunities, and did not have a clear way to structure an acquisition or to restart the company once they had acquired it.

After carefully assessing the assets, we designed the optimal structure based on an asset purchase rather than a company acquisition. Over a focused 3-month process we built the growth plan and financials, won the bid, secured funding from multiple investors, and placed the assets in a newly formed US company. We then stayed on for 6 months as acting Chief Business Officer — standing up governance, finance and the team, refining the commercial strategy, and landing the first major customers, including 3 leading pharma groups.

A US growth-stage company-building studio wanted to expand its pipeline of assets for the new companies it forms. Compelling assets at attractive valuations were hard to find and access across the industrial biotech spectrum — and corporates were reluctant to share early-stage assets, IP, technologies or businesses proactively with external parties like the studio.

We developed and executed a deprioritised asset strategy — researching, mapping and drawing on our global corporate networks to build a strong pipeline of non-core assets that could be attractive as stand-alone businesses or as add-ons to smaller companies. It included a compelling case for why corporates should consider the studio as a route for such divestments and the realisation of stranded capital.

A US startup in portable antigen and enzyme testing and diagnostics was a non-core holding of its majority shareholder. Starved of sales and marketing investment, operationally constrained and boxed in by exclusivity arrangements, it could not grow into its addressable market — and the major shareholder's own sale to private equity was squeezing its funding and flexibility further.

Acting as a shadow CEO, we restructured the company's key agreements and arrangements with shareholders, suppliers and customers, built a clear growth strategy, and repositioned the startup around its unique technology stack to unlock new markets. The mandate targeted one of two outcomes — new funding or a strategic exit — and culminated with its sale to one of the startup's own major customers, a leading global biosolutions company.

A major biosolutions corporate sought to strengthen its internal microbiome research, discovery and development capabilities for human and animal health applications by leveraging external innovation. Its R&D team needed assistance identifying and assessing assets and partners to address critical gaps across data analytics, bioinformatics and AI infrastructure, as well as guidance on structuring a transaction and securing buy-in from the C-suite.

Out of 14 qualified targets, we identified a US-based microbiome diagnostics candidate whose technology — at that time only deployed for oil exploration — could be applied to the corporate's own microbe R&D needs. While initially contemplated as a minority investment + partnership model, we developed an alternative case for the assets to be acquired by the corporate, providing unique capabilities and freedom to operate. We then structured the carve-out of the relevant assets, negotiated and closed the purchase in a short timeframe.

A Canadian public-private partnership — providing long-gestation incubation, trialling and scaling capabilities for early-stage agtech, foodtech and biotech — was seeking an investment model where its partners could invest in and support some of the local and international startups joining its hub, while retaining the independence and credibility of its incubation program. One key caveat was that 90% of the hub's startups were international, which added another dimension of complexity to this partly publicly-funded platform.

After assessing the hub's capabilities and the different requirements of its stakeholders, we designed, structured and helped implement a new investment strategy and mandate for a co-investment fund where the hub could invest alongside other investors. We established clear protocols, procedures and governance — including constraints around deal leads, board involvement and relocation requirements — providing room for cross-border startup investments and positioning the hub as a strategic contributor rather than a lead investor pushing public agendas.

The Board of an established industrial biotech ingredients producer was seeking to perform an audit of past capital transactions related to new or emerging technologies. Given the embedded involvement of multiple internal stakeholders in certain deals considered to have failed, the Board required an independent assessment to evaluate those capital projects in a more objective and constructive manner — particularly one where over €70M had been deployed by the company, and where the Board needed to decide whether to shut the remaining internal activities down completely or redeploy the technology.

We were tasked with the audit of a major, now-closed renewables project. We reviewed all available documents, gathered intel and additional material from internal and external parties, researched the technology and the market opportunity, and then dissected the actual transaction to form a full, unbiased view of the internal and external factors that led to those capital decisions. We provided an extensive report to the Board which — contrary to its initial thesis — showed that the undesired outcomes were primarily driven by decisions around structure, design, diligence, market bias and capital allocation, rather than the technology simply being early in its maturity cycle. We then helped the corporate recoup some of its original investment from the new asset owners.

A US fund was considering an investment in an 11-year-old startup which had spent US$60M building a unique patented biomanufacturing platform but had run out of money before crossing into commercial revenue. The fund sought help on due diligence of the assets and the opportunity — and, more importantly, on how to restructure and recapitalise the company as lead or co-lead investor.

We conducted an extensive review of the opportunity — including the factors that had led to the distress situation, the roles existing investors could play in a recapitalisation, and the capital required to reach profitability. We then helped draft a term sheet and align key existing investors to give the company a clear reset of its capital and ownership structure. The initial raise targeted US$12M but resulted in US$18M in commitments, with a new board setup and a more focused management team.