SeedBlink Blog

With over a decade of experience in investment within the biotech and life sciences sectors, Daniel Oliver, the CEO of Capital Cell, has played a pivotal role in supporting over 104 investment rounds, totaling more than 53 million euros. As the Founder and Venture Partner at Nara Capital and Capital Cell, he has been instrumental in providing a secure and efficient platform for individuals to invest in selected life sciences companies, facilitating the growth of startups, and offering investors the opportunity to capitalize on high-impact, high-return assets.

Can you share the key steps in your career that led to the creation of Capital Cell and how your experience shaped your approach to life sciences investments?

Back in 2010, in the aftermath of the Lehmann Brothers financial meltdown, I became increasingly concerned about how we deal with money in our society – we all looked pretty stupid back then, after “vanishing” over 2 trillion dollars in a global speculatory festival. Sounds a bit grand, but that’s what led me to become interested in alternative ways of managing our wealth. Financial crowdfunding, which was just starting, seemed like a way to make people a lot more aware of what they did with their money, as well as a fair method of distributing the profits.

I started an equity crowdfunding platform in 2013 with a name too horrible to recall and worked for a couple of years in startup investment (even did the largest crowdfunding campaign in Spain, 3M for a digital newspaper) before pivoting to Life Sciences.

What motivated you to establish Capital Cell, and what gap in the market did you aim to address with this platform?

As a biologist, I became increasingly frustrated with the amazing difficulties biotech startups seemed to have in accessing early-stage capital. At a time when digital startups seemed to have no trouble whatsoever raising their first half-million or so, life sciences entrepreneurs had an extremely tough time finding capital to grow their companies.

I found it weird that people preferred investing in dog grooming marketplaces or targeted marketing technologies rather than in curing cancer or schizophrenia – especially knowing that biotechnology was more profitable than IT or Retail, at least back in 2015. So the idea of Capital Cell came into existence: a platform that would bridge the communication and trust gap between private investors and startups. We would teach scientific entrepreneurs to explain their projects better to the public, and we would help investors trust these companies by ensuring a tough process of deal selection and by asking expert scientists and doctors to endorse the projects.

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With over 100 investment rounds, could you highlight a few instances where Capital Cell significantly contributed to the growth of life sciences startups?

We have become pretty much essential in the Spanish ecosystem, and the platform accounts for between 6 and 10% of the overall investment in the country – probably around 40-50% in the early stage. Capital Cell has become the largest private deployer of capital in the life sciences sector in Spain, so we certainly hold a relevant part in the growth of many companies.

In fact, we know we have “saved” quite a few companies that had little to no option of finding capital in any other way, and some of them have gone on to become quite successful – companies like Bionure, who raised with us the money needed to survive back in 2017 and eventually went on to sign a billion-dollar licensing agreement with pharma in 2021.

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How does Capital Cell ensure a secure and attractive platform for investors entering the life sciences market?

We are very much aware of being the first contact with life sciences investment for a lot of people. Our basic philosophy is being very transparent, giving a lot of information, and being educational. To us, creating a new paradigm of personal investment is important: we want investors to become interested in science and in how their investment impacts their society, so we make sure that every investment opportunity is also an interesting story you can learn something from.

Since we attach a lot of importance to that, good writing and complete information are something we devote a lot of time and resources to. We constantly get good feedback about the platform and we love it!

In selecting high-impact companies, how does Capital Cell strike a balance between social impact and financial success?

We don’t have to! With very few exceptions, investing in medicine and healthcare is inherently positive, and investing in boosting R&D is inherently positive. If you want to do impact investment (and it’s the only thing we want to do!), early-stage scientific startups are a bit like fishing in a barrel.

Naturally, we can’t really have an impact on how these technologies reach the market (via big Pharma, pretty much always) in how these future medicines will be priced, or in whether they will be available outside rich countries… that part of the world’s problems are a little bit beyond our reach for the moment. But we know for a fact that investing in science you are generating a better society, a society of innovation and knowledge, and that part is certainly 100% positive.

For new investors in the life sciences sector, how does Capital Cell guide and empower them to make informed investment decisions?

By giving them information, and by accompanying them. Capital Cell usually has a great amount of information on each project. If you take the time to look at the projects you will certainly learn something about science (Is it bad if a cell decides to kill itself? How does an autoimmune disease start?...), but also about the medical market, about the realities of doctors and nurses, about how a drug is tested, how a company’s valuation is calculated or how the regulators approve new drugs. We like to think we give everything to make well-informed decisions.

We also make sure you’re not investing alone: every project on Capital Cell is backed by a specialist investor, and by a number of experts from our network (BioExpert Network). All these other investors are prominently displayed in the project, and their opinions and analyses are available for everyone.

What are the exit scenarios for investors backing Capital Cell?

Capital Cell has a very decent shot at becoming the number one player in early-stage investment for life sciences in Europe, and that certainly draws a lot of interest. We have already negotiated a corporate sale (fell through in 2022), and have had numerous conversations, mainly with financial companies or with life sciences consulting firms.

We intend to push for a 30-40 million exit within the next 2-3 years, which, based on our previous conversations, seems reasonably likely.

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Why should investors join this opportunity?

Capital Cell is more or less a sure investment. The company has been stable and profitable for years, the market gap is crystal clear, and we have little to no competition in all markets across Europe. And we think we have a good play at an Exit: the market of equity crowdfunding is now going through an extremely favorable phase, with mergers and joint ventures becoming more and more common. In this context, we are growing the company in order to get a bigger exit.