As venture funding becomes more selective, thoughtful decision-making and careful use of capital are becoming advantages in the startup landscape, especially for companies centered around life sciences.
“If you build the foundation correctly, everything else can come later,” said Francisco Leon, founder of biotech startup Tolerance Bio.
“If you build the foundation correctly, everything else can come later.”
Francisco Leon, Tolerance Bio
Analysts have noted a national shift toward fewer, more durable startups overall (unless you’re able to carve a fit in the AI space), as investors and customers prioritize resilience over rapid growth.
That shift is visible in four trends that surfaced across Technical.ly interviews this year with founders of ventures in biotech, medtech, healthtech and wellness.
1) Working to fix systems, not symptoms
Instead of building tools that solve one narrow issue, ambitious startups are trying to change the big picture.
Nyron Burke, founder of Lithero, a life sciences software company helping pharmaceutical teams move regulated marketing content through compliance faster, said small improvements weren’t enough for the companies he works with.
“The goals my clients had were speed, cost and compliance,” Burke said. “To really do something transformative, we had to fundamentally change how the work gets done.”
Anna Greenwald, founder of workplace wellbeing platform On the Goga, described a similar shift away from one-off programs. “You can’t just have a yoga class,” she said. “If you apply [our] practices throughout the organizational culture, you can build an organization where people want to be.”
Studies show buyers increasingly want platforms that change behavior over time, as opposed to short-term add-ons — to use On the Goga’s example, they want more than a single wellness workshop, they want a lifestyle change.
2) Prioritizing caution, especially in high-stakes industries
In areas where errors have real consequences, whether it’s regulatory violations, patient harm, or loss of trust, startups in many sectors must be careful about how much variability and automation they introduce.
As technology becomes more embedded in healthcare and the workplace, companies are being judged on how responsibly they handle risk. A report from Deloitte notes that trust, data handling and clear boundaries are becoming deciding factors for buyers in people-centered industries.
Burke explained that predictability matters in regulated settings, where inconsistency can create real risk. “In a compliance environment, getting different answers every time is scary,” he said.
Greenwald, of On the Goga, drew a similar line when talking about employee wellbeing. “An employer’s job is to create an environment in which employees can thrive,” she said, “not to police their private medical information.”
3) Accepting long timelines for funding and fit
Venture investors are increasingly cautious, especially in healthcare and enterprise tech. PitchBook data shows fewer deals overall, but more focus on companies that can demonstrate real progress and survive long development cycles.
They’re designed around long sales cycles, slow adoption and proof that takes years, not months.
For Tolerance Bio, scientific validation comes first. “If we can prove the principle in humans,” Leon said, “that opens up everything else.”
Joe Rafferty, founder of medical device startup Vesteck, which is developing a minimally invasive suturing system for aortic grafts, described the same reality from a clinical perspective:
“You’re never healthier five years later than you are today,” he said. “You have to get this right the first time.”
4) Embracing the potential of pivots
Research shows that companies with a clear core mission tend to weather disruption better than those built around a single delivery method. The strongest ones adapt without reinventing themselves every time conditions change. When external factors force them to adjust, it can make them more resilient.
For On the Goga, the pandemic pushed years of in-person work into a digital product.
“We took all of our trainings and made them virtual,” Greenwald said, “and built the first version of our product to scale the consulting we’d already been doing.”
At Lithero, changing industry attitudes opened doors without changing direction.
“The AI wave was very helpful. It normalized what we were doing,” said Burke. “Now customers are bringing ideas to us.”
