Debiopharm + FounderNest: Turning the long tail of AI startups into clear investment insight.
“FounderNest helps us quickly capture a comprehensive view of a given space, and even the adjacent sub-spaces. It allows us to stay on top of emerging players and trends far more efficiently than before.”
Nicolas Stalder, Senior Investment Associate at Debiopharm Innovation Fund
Company.
Debiopharm is a Switzerland-based biopharmaceutical company focused on developing oncology treatments. Through its Strategic Innovation Fund, the company invests in early-stage startups leveraging AI, data, and advanced analytics to accelerate drug discovery and improve R&D productivity.
The fund’s mission is clear: identify and support innovations that can transform the pharmaceutical value chain from early discovery to clinical trials by using technology to make R&D faster, smarter, and more predictive.
“We look for startups that can help accelerate development cycles and improve productivity in pharma R&D,” explains Nicolas Stalder, who leads the Strategic Innovation Fund. “That includes innovations in AI, data science, and digital technologies that help predict clinical outcomes or optimize trials.”
Because Debiopharm invests at the seed and pre-seed stages, its team must continuously track emerging technologies and founders before they become visible through traditional funding announcements or news alerts. FounderNest plays a key role in helping them do exactly that.
Challenge.
Before using FounderNest, Debiopharm’s Strategic Innovation Fund faced the same challenge that a lot of investors in deep tech and pharma do - the innovation landscape was moving fast, but visibility wasn’t keeping up.
“We often got to know about startups only once they had raised,” Nicolas recalls. “That was fine when we focused on Series A and beyond, but now that we invest earlier, we need visibility the moment these companies emerge.”
For a fund that invests in early-stage tech bio and AI startups, that early signal is everything. Yet finding those companies meant spending hours across scattered sources, from news alerts to manual searches, often without much certainty that they were seeing the full picture.
Then there’s the sheer volume of innovation. At the early stage, there’s a long tail of startups with many overlapping, some brilliant, some still defining what they do. For a focused fund like Debiopharm’s, that meant needing to know every player in the space, not just the obvious ones. “Because our approach is so focused, we have to go really deep,” Nicolas adds. “We need to know who’s out there, what they’re building, and where the real differentiation lies.”
All of that made it clear they needed a smarter, more dynamic way to scout companies and map markets - one that could surface the most relevant startups early, cut through the noise, and evolve alongside their strategy.
Why FounderNest?
When Nicolas and his team started using FounderNest, several things stood out immediately:
AI-first discovery: FounderNest’s AI market intelligence analyst interprets context and meaning, not just keywords, making searches more precise and reducing noise.
Dynamic data: The platform surfaces emerging startups automatically, including those not yet visible in traditional databases.
Custom insights: With AI Columns, users can instantly ask specific questions across an entire dataset, such as “Does this company have a pharma partnership?”, and get structured answers with source transparency.
Signals tracking: Continuous updates on each technology space, from M&A to research papers, give Debiopharm an always-on view of activity and momentum.
“FounderNest’s approach is much more dynamic than other tools,” says Nicolas. “We can tailor the search, use semantic criteria, and see sources right away. It’s faster, more exhaustive, and lets us focus on what really matters.”
Benefits.
Today, FounderNest is fully embedded in Debiopharm’s investment scouting workflow.
Startup scouting: The team uses FounderNest to identify new startups working in AI for drug discovery, clinical prediction, and workflow automation, often before they appear on the radar of other investors.
Market monitoring:The team tracks developments in key technology spaces from funding rounds to regulatory updates to identify emerging momentum early.
Custom AI Columns: By adding tailored questions like “Has this company raised a Series A?” or “Does it operate in oncology?” Debiopharm can quickly filters large datasets into focused shortlists.
Iterative learning: As they mark startups as “interested,” the FounderNest AI analyst learns from these decisions, refining future results toward higher-quality matches.
Nicolas highlights how this improves efficiency:
“Before, we spent a lot of time reviewing broad outputs. Now, with FounderNest, we can immediately narrow down to the 20 or so companies that fit our strategy and track them closely.”
Results.
Since adopting FounderNest, Debiopharm’s Strategic Innovation Fund has seen tangible improvements in how it scouts and prioritizes startups:
Earlier visibility: The team now discovers startups before they raise funding, gaining valuable first-mover advantage.
Faster qualification: Screening cycles that once took weeks can now be completed in a matter of days.
Higher relevance: FounderNest drastically reduces irrelevant results, improving precision in deep thematic areas like AI in R&D.
Enhanced engagement: The fund has initiated outreach to multiple startups surfaced by FounderNest, several of which are now advancing through internal evaluation.
Smarter competitive landscape mapping: Understanding the competitive landscape is key for Debiopharm. Nicolas stated that previous mapping was “a bit one-dimensional, more of a list than a landscape.” Now being able to visualize companies by clusters such as business model, customer type, or technology helps the team quickly spot emerging players, established incumbents, and where the real innovation clusters are.
“We’re going from quantity to quality,” Nicolas says. “FounderNest helps us move beyond just mapping the landscape, but instead helps us identify the startups with the highest potential.”
What's next?
Debiopharm’s collaboration with FounderNest continues to evolve as both teams shape the future of AI-powered company scouting and mapping markets.
Nicolas is particularly excited about new developments like reinforcement learning, where the platform will automatically suggest startups that resemble the Fund’s past selections, and advanced visualization tools that map competitive clusters.
He also sees potential in FounderNest’s upcoming financial data integration, which will help the Fund analyze companies’ financial performance and risk more efficiently.
“Over time, we expect FounderNest to not only surface startups, but also to help us visualize how they fit together - who’s emerging, who’s established, and where the innovation clusters really are.”
For Debiopharm, FounderNest is a strategic partner in understanding and shaping the future of pharmaceutical innovation.
“FounderNest helps us identify the few winners in a long tail of startups,” Nicolas concludes. “It gives us the market intelligence we need to make faster, more confident investment decisions.”
Testimonial
“We’re excited about FounderNest’s roadmap, especially its potential to help us better separate the wheat from the chaff by integrating more signals over time. For now, it already makes it much easier to continuously monitor and understand fast-evolving markets.”
Nicolas Stalder
Senior Investment Associate at Debiopharm Innovation FundUncover the 20% of opportunities others miss.
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