From invention to impact: Inside NLC’s venture creation and selection process

At NLC Health Ventures, our ambition is to transform early-stage ideas into impactful healthcare ventures. Achieving this requires a rigorous selection process, one designed to identify and nurture innovations that address pressing healthcare needs while standing the test of market viability. Each year, we evaluate thousands of technologies, but only the most exceptional make it through to the next stage—reflecting our commitment to selecting high-impact, investable innovations that truly address unmet needs in healthcare.

The meticulousness of NLC's selection process serves a dual purpose: it identifies promising innovations and de-risks early-stage investments. By the time a venture reaches our investors, we have already tackled many of the challenges that typically cause healthcare startups to fail.

 "What we are really doing is front-loading the due diligence process. We have validated the feasibility of the technology, confirmed its clinical need and market potential as well as other important considerations such as, mapping out its regulatory pathway," says Annameta Gericke, venture developer at NLC and responsible for identifying inventions that align with our mission to address critical healthcare challenges and drive meaningful impact.

To gain deeper insight into this process, Annameta Gericke and Ellis Aune, members of the venture development team, share how NLC identifies and selects groundbreaking healthcare solutions.

Proactive sourcing: Finding the right opportunities
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‍Identifying the right opportunities is the cornerstone of NLC's venture selection process. The sourcing strategy combines an open-minded approach with a sharp focus on healthcare needs and scalability. Rather than simply chasing the next big idea, the team prioritizes innovations that address critical gaps in the healthcare system. 

“No matter how innovative a technology is, if there isn’t a need for it, it won’t survive. We make sure each venture we support has a clear path to impact and the commercial potential to attract follow-on investments,” explains Ellis Aune.

An ecosystem of experts: Strength in collaboration

The selection process at NLC goes far beyond the expertise of our internal team. We actively collaborate with a diverse ecosystem of clinicians, industry experts, investors, and corporate representatives.

“The ecosystem we engage with is crucial. By consulting specialists across diverse sectors, we gather valuable insights from those deeply embedded in the field. This external feedback not only sharpens our evaluation but also builds credibility with our investors, who appreciate knowing that we’re consulting the right people,” says Ellis Aune.

This collaborative approach is particularly effective in healthcare, where fragmentation often hinders innovation. By uniting expertise from academia, clinical practice, and industry, we create a cohesive platform that encourages impactful healthcare solutions. Our ecosystem partners are keen to support early-stage innovations, knowing their involvement can drive the success of ventures as they move from development to market.

Derisking Investments in healthcare innovation

This rigorous selection and validation process is particularly valuable in today's healthcare investment landscape, where capital efficiency is increasingly important. By filtering out inventions that don't meet strict criteria for both impact and investability, NLC ensures that investment capital is directed toward opportunities with the highest probability of success.

For investors, this translates to a pipeline of ventures addressing critical healthcare needs with a higher probability of return on investment. The selection process plays a pivotal role in derisking early-stage innovation. By tackling hurdles —such as navigating regulatory pathways, validating market potential, and confirming clinical relevance—early in the process, NLC transforms inherently high-risk ventures into more reliable and investable opportunities.

By bridging the gap between groundbreaking discoveries and scalable healthcare solutions, NLC fulfills its mission to find, build, and scale ventures that bring life-changing healthcare innovations to patients. In doing so, NLC not only drives impactful innovation but also reshapes the early-stage investment landscape, impactful for those committed to transforming healthcare for the better.

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