A 20-Year Journey of Partnership, Persistence, and Purpose

It began at a kitchen table with a laptop, a shoestring budget, and a wild idea: that scientists everywhere could be connected by a single digital marketplace; a place where research would move faster, cost less, and maybe, just maybe, save lives.

Our first investors weren’t venture capitalists; they were our parents, neighbors, high school friends and college professors. They believed in us before the world did. They backed a dream that an online marketplace could connect scientists and research organizations to make drug discovery faster, better, and more open. Those early believers, who wrote checks from savings accounts and retirement funds, have been with us through every single round since. Their faith and patience laid the foundation for everything that followed.

The “Paul Blart” Connection, Our Unlikely Series A1

Our first professional investor came from an unexpected corner of Hollywood. In 2009, Jack Giarraputo, the legendary producer behind films like Happy Gilmore and The Waterboy, had just scored a surprise hit with Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The movie was a global phenomenon, and Jack and his right hand man Keith Lehman decided to use some of that success to back our little scientific startup. When people ask how a life sciences marketplace found a Hollywood producer, I tell them it started with a Segway and an unexpected detour through a shopping mall. Jack’s sense of humor, optimism, and gut instinct helped keep us moving through the wild early years.

Bootstrap Ventures and the Series B Surge

A few years later, our Series B was led by Parker Hinshaw, Kyle Williams, and Jean Balgrosky of Bootstrap Ventures, a mid-western trio who had just sold their blockbuster healthcare IT company, maxIT Healthcare, to SAIC. They knew the hard road from startup to success, and they recognized in us the same stubborn belief that complex problems could be solved with great people, innovative technology and grit. Their backing marked a turning point; it gave us not just capital, but credibility.

Series C: Transformation and 5AM, Fueling the Next Phase

Our Series C round brought in two powerhouse healthcare investors: Transformation Capital, led by Jared Kesselheim and Vinay Shah, and 5AM Ventures, led by Andy Schwab, Paul Stone, and Max Farina. Jared and Vinay brought deep expertise from years of investing in companies transforming how care is delivered. Andy, Paul, and Max brought the creative spark and strategic discipline of 5AM, a firm known for spotting great science before anyone else does. By the time Transformation Capital and 5AM Ventures joined, we’d swapped duct tape for machine learning and realized our marketplace had grown into something much bigger; a platform orchestrating how science itself gets done.

Fifteen Years of Steady Hands

No long journey like this happens without a few people who quietly keep the wheels from falling off, and for us, that’s been our legal team. For nearly 15 years, Marty Waters and Brandon Shaw at WSGR have been the calm voices on the phone at midnight, the redline whisperers, and the guardians of our sanity during more financings, restructurings, pivots, and near-death moments than I can count.

They saw us when we were scrappy, underfunded, and duct-taping the company together, and they stayed with us as we grew into the global platform we are today. Their mix of sharp judgment, strategic thinking, and good humor helped us navigate some of the trickiest chapters of the company’s life.

A New Chapter with GHO Capital Partners

Now, nearly two decades after our founding, we are incredibly fortunate to welcome Edward de Nor, Leo Shui, Gillian Gude, Jim Datin, David Hall, Guillermo De La Torre, Stuart Quin and the entire GHO Capital Partner team as our next partner on this journey. GHO brings unmatched expertise in scaling global healthcare companies and has the kind of operational insight and international reach that can help us take our mission worldwide. Together, we’re embarking on the next phase of our vision: transforming how new medicines are developed, discovered, and delivered.

We’ve been lucky, not just to survive the near-death experiences, business pivots, pandemics, and Paul Blarts of startup life, but to do it alongside people who believed in us before the rest of the world did. Here’s to the next 20 years of science, laughter, and the long, improbable ride ahead.

What started as a bet on science became a lesson in faith; faith in people, in purpose, and in the idea that good science connects us all.

Kevin