Max Seignette quickly realised that he was not cut out for the traditional research path. Unlike many of his peers, he couldn’t envisage himself hunched over a laboratory bench, pipetting in silence. ‘’I realised then that a career in pure science wasn’t for me’’, he explains. ‘’I missed the complex dynamics of the real world. To be a career researcher, you need a level of singular focus that just didn’t suit my personality.’’

This realisation formed the basis of his career when he founded Ensemblate in 2022, a consultancy firm dedicated to helping early-stage biotech and life sciences companies navigate the complex path to market. Today, he bridges the gap between the solitary world of the laboratory and the social world of fundraising. In pursuit of his mission to democratise access to capital, Max Seignette recently launched RAISE, an innovative platform that accelerates investor research and streamlines the fundraising process for aspiring scientist-entrepreneurs. ‘’RAISE’s slogan is ‘Adding fun to fundraising‘, and we want to achieve this by speeding up the nitty-gritty of investor research and fundraising preparation. Ultimately, this will allow founders to spend more time pitching to investors and building their business.’’

Finding the right fit

Max Seignette studied Psychobiology at the University of Amsterdam. ‘’It was mostly because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do after graduating from high school. However, I was intrigued by the medical world because my mother is a general practitioner (GP). I grew up immersed in the world of medicine. If I had a health issue, I would always call my mother, and she’d have medicine ready for me. I didn’t have a GP until only a few years ago. Because of this, I knew I wanted to work in healthcare, but I didn’t want to do the same job as my mum.’’

The first years of Psychobiology covered many biomedical subjects. ‘’I got introduced to the brain, some very difficult concepts. For example, I learned how emotions and addiction work on a biochemical level. I also learned about perception, how external stimuli come together, such as how light enters your eyes and sound waves enter your ears. How do I see you and not just hear sound waves or see colours? How is that turned into consciousness in my head? It was fascinating. I also learnt a lot about anatomy, brain diseases, and conditions such as autism and ADHD.’’

Towards the end of his bachelor’s degree, Max Seignette completed an internship at the University of Copenhagen. ‘’The internship focused on neuronal readiness potentials, and how they could be a key component of free will on an electrophysiological level. While enjoying the experience in the lab, I realised that a career in pure science wasn’t for me. What got me most excited were the implications of the study in the real world rather than conducting the experiments and analysing the data. At that time, I realised that perhaps I lacked the patience and persistence to pursue a career in science. Then I went on to study Management, Policy Analysis and Entrepreneurship in Health and Life Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. It’s a very broad degree and I did a specialization in Life Sciences Management, in which you learn about every aspect of the pharmaceutical industry, including how innovations are developed from bench to bedside. Among many other career paths, the programme prepares students for consultancy roles.’’

From backpacking to biotech
After graduating at a young age, Max took a gap year, during which he worked in the hospitality industry and travelled through Central America, backpacking through Costa Rica and Nicaragua. While he was in Costa Rica, a recruiter from Catalyze, a consultancy firm that supports biotech companies with securing non-dilutive funding, reached out to him. He asked them to try again in a few months. They did. ‘’I knew about Catalyze because a fellow student had completed an internship there, but I wasn’t sure what the company did. They approached me again just when I had returned. At that point, my gap year was coming to an end and I needed to start looking for a job. I wasn’t in a hurry, but I thought I should start looking. When they asked, I thought: good timing. Both rounds went well, and eventually, I was hired. I started with the idea that I could learn a lot there.’’ 

At Catalyze, Max Seignette tested theoretical university frameworks against the messy reality of biotech entrepreneurship.

‘’In your studies, you have lectures that simply state: ‘You have a start-up, you are in the seed phase, and you need to raise money. Then you do preclinical development, raise more money, go to the clinic and complete Phases 1, 2 and 3, after which you are approved’. When I witnessed the reality first-hand, I learnt that this process is far from linear.

I saw many companies in different stages of development who were struggling for funding. You learn what they must do and how long it takes. It always felt like a personal victory when a company I worked with manages to reach the clinic or raise follow-on funding from a large VC, even though my contribution may have been very small. On the other hand, it also taught me how cruel biotech can be when decades of R&D do not translate to desired results and start-ups eventually go bankrupt.’’

‘’Although it’s more of a soft skill, you learn how the world works and what’s important’’, Max Seignette emphasises. ‘’It’s a bit of a reality check. While theory suggests a fixed pattern, reality dictates otherwise. So, you learn how things work in practice, as well as things you won’t learn in books, such as how difficult fundraising can be. You learn why certain start-ups constantly get rejected and why they aren’t good enough.’’

Democratising access

Even more importantly, Max Seignette recognised how difficult it is for life science start-ups to raise their first institutional funding rounds. ‘’After dedicating a large portion of their professional lives to a very specific problem, such as finding a new medicine for a rare disease, new biotech entrepreneurs usually have little experience in fundraising and commercial pathways. They will spend far too much time chasing the wrong investors, only to find out later that their fund is fully invested or that a certain investor does not invest in start-ups in their country. Or, when pitching to investors, founders tend to zoom in on the science but often fail to present a compelling narrative on how their invention will ultimately make its way to the market and secure sufficient returns for investors taking a very risky bet.’’

This realisation became the driving force behind Ensemblate’s mission to support scientists in fundraising.

‘’We leverage years of knowledge about life sciences investors, emerging technologies and marketing strategies to prevent early-stage founders from making the same mistakes over and over again. By working with us, founders do not have to reinvent the wheel every time when it comes to fundraising, making the process more efficient while also increasing their chances of success.’’

To further lower this barrier in the future, the firm recently launched RAISE, a platform designed to democratise access to fundraising support in health & life sciences. ‘’The majority of companies we speak to don’t have any money. They either live on a very small budget or are supported by a side job. They are often still at university. Naturally, everyone would want to work with the best consultancies and marketing agencies if they could. But the reality is that they can’t. That applies to us, too. Not everyone we speak to can afford our consultancy services, even if they would like to work with us.’’

RAISE is a platform that combines a large database of early-stage life sciences deal flow and investors with CRM functionality at a founder-friendly pricing. Start-ups can input parameters such as location, funding stage and sector to stay up to date on deal flow and receive a curated list of relevant investors, complete with portfolio data and contact details. ‘’It automates much of the market research we do and makes it more accessible, a form of democratisation. For example, startups can see exactly who has recently invested in medical devices at the seed stage in the Netherlands and use this information to approach the right investors, tracking their progress in our fundraising CRM. This saves a lot of desk research and avoids that start-ups spend a lot of time on approaching and interacting with the wrong targets.’’

You noticed the difference between fundraising for biotech and tech. What makes biotech trickier?

‘’The differences are significant. On the one hand, larger investments are needed in biotech. Software companies become profitable faster because they don’t have clinical trials and complex regulatory approvals. At best, a biotech company takes seven to ten years to become profitable. This is a significant difference. Secondly, the entrepreneurs are often scientists who are less tech-savvy in a business sense. In tech, you often see serial entrepreneurs who have set up ten companies. In biotech, however, the person with fundraising experience is rarely the scientist who spent ten years in a lab inventing a new design. Also, tech entrepreneurs often have the capital to invest themselves or can bootstrap more easily. If you make money in tech at the beginning, you don’t necessarily need another job. The risk is much lower. I think that is one of the reasons why what we do fits well with health and life sciences. This is where the greatest need often lies, although people are often unaware of it because they come from a lab.’’

RAISE is an integrated investor CRM and fundraising platform that helps early-stage founders in the bio, health, and life sciences streamline investor outreach and manage their fundraising campaigns from pre-seed to Series A.

Moving beyond the scientific discussion

Academics and scientists who start businesses often have to adopt a more assertive attitude, according to Max Seignette. ‘’Communication must be approached differently. You have to be able to manage. This is not necessarily something you have experienced in a lab over the years. You have to start selling much more. Scientists are naturally good at making analyses and publishing data in a scientific way. But pitching is selling, too. It doesn’t have to be purely objective. You have to win people over and make them believe in you. Rather than just presenting the facts, you need to create a narrative. You must include emotion. It’s much more about people than just presenting the results of a study. Scientists are often very focused on their own technology. They don’t take a step back. How will you distinguish yourself and your team? Where exactly do you stand against the competition? Why should someone choose you over another company? These are all critical parts of your strategy.’’

To secure investment, it is necessary to move beyond the constraints of academic reporting. While a scientific paper focuses on the neutral presentation of data, a pitch requires a more active approach from the presenter. ‘’It’s not as if: ‘This is what I want; now give me the money’. It’s a process that you develop. You create a storyline and convince people to believe in you, partly by showing them: ‘This is where we stand now, but a year ago we were here. We have moved forward’. You have to demonstrate your ability to execute. At the end of a scientific paper, there is often a discussion about the results and the validity of methods. In a pitch, you want to guide people naturally. You have to sell it. Ultimately, people will have different opinions about whether a scientific presentation was good or bad. Not everyone will agree with you. But nobody will lose any sleep over it. However, you have to win over the people at a pitch meeting. That’s the big difference.’’

That’s why Max is helping the scientists. ‘’When supporting a fundraising campaign, we heavily focus on preparing founders on the social dynamics when pitching to investors. Who are you talking to? Are they a scientist? Or do they have a financial background? Which companies has this investor invested in previously? Are they actually a pharmaceutical investor who only invests in therapeutics? Do they invest in other areas of the life sciences? Or do they occasionally invest in pharmaceuticals as part of a broader strategy? We hope that, with this information, they will feel more confident going into those conversations.’’

‘’In the next year, we will keep working on RAISE to support life sciences founders with all aspects of fundraising’’, Max Seignette continues. ‘’Instead of only providing dealflow updates, investor-matching and a fundraising CRM, I can see RAISE becoming a place where founders can get warm introductions or participate in pitching events to investors. To accelerate biotech innovation, I thoroughly believe that entrepreneurs should fundraise smarter and not necessarily add more hours to their already long days at the office or lab. Working towards that goal and seeing new start-ups grow and thrive is what makes me passionate and gives me a lot of positive energy in my work.’’

Biography

Max Seignette is a fundraising strategist and the founder of Ensemblate and RAISE. Having studied Psychobiology and Life Sciences Management, Max honed his expertise at Catalyze Group, where he helped biotech companies secure non-dilutive funding.

Recognising that his strengths lie in bridging the gap between the laboratory and the boardroom, he now uses his experience to help early-stage ventures secure capital and build meaningful investor relationships. Blending commercial insight with a deep passion for science, Max is committed to making funding more accessible for the next generation of scientist-entrepreneurs.

This article is part of a partnership between BiotechNews and BioPitch. See here for the original article on BioPitch.