Seed Investor · Clinical Trials Veteran · Biotech Analyst

DAN
SFERA

Backing the infrastructure of clinical medicine — before the rest of the market knows it exists.

21+ Years Clinical Trials 100K+ Audience FDA Strategy Early Stage Healthcare Technology

The Thesis

"The next billion-dollar clinical research company will be built by an operator — probably someone who's managed a site. That's not a prediction. That's pattern recognition from 21 years of watching where the real problems actually live."

The clinical trial and regulatory ecosystem is massively under-tooled. I've spent 21 years on the ground — site management, protocol design, FDA interactions, sponsor negotiations. I've watched billion-dollar drugs fail not because the science broke down, but because operations did: data errors, site dropout, patient retention failures, communication gaps that everyone accepted as just part of the job.

The normalized workaround is exactly where the biggest companies get built. When everyone treats the pain as inevitable, the person who removes it looks like a miracle worker. Most software in this space was built by people who never ran a trial — Veeva came from Salesforce. The exceptions — Creo, Realtime, Yisa — were built by operators who lived the problems first. That difference shows in the product.

Jensen Huang said the new programming language is English. The cost of building has collapsed. The scarcity now isn't technical ability — it's operator knowledge. The accumulated frustration of someone who has been in the room. That intel no VC can buy reading research reports, and no academic framework captures. I write a Substack read by 10,000+ retail biotech investors. I build free tools like this PDUFA calendar. My angle is earned from the inside.

What I Back

🏥
Clinical Operations
Software and services that make trial sites run better — patient recruitment, data capture, site coordination, and the day-to-day reality of running a clinical study.
🧬
Patient Technology
Tools that put patients at the center. Retention, engagement, remote monitoring, and decentralized trial infrastructure that makes participation actually feasible.
📊
Regulatory Intelligence
Data platforms and AI tools that help sponsors, consultants, and investors understand the FDA's patterns — approval history, CRL analysis, advisory committee trends.
🤖
AI for Drug Development
Intelligent automation that cuts the operational overhead of running trials — not AI that pretends to replace scientists, but AI that handles the work scientists shouldn't be doing.
🔬
Site Networks
Companies building better clinical trial site ecosystems — qualified investigator networks, site readiness infrastructure, and technology that connects sponsors to the right sites faster.
💡
Biotech Enablement
Platform companies that help small biotechs punch above their weight — pre-clinical strategy, IND preparation, FDA meeting support, and early commercial planning.

The Edge

21+
Years on the Ground
Two decades in clinical operations — not finance, not journalism, but actual trial work. Site management, protocol design, FDA interactions, sponsor negotiations. I know what breaks and why. That pattern recognition doesn't come from a spreadsheet.
100K+
Biotech Investor Audience
A growing audience of retail biotech investors across YouTube and Substack — tracking PDUFA dates, AdCom transcripts, and clinical trial data seriously. Direct signal from a market segment most VCs ignore.
56+
FDA Catalysts Tracked Live
The PDUFA calendar is a passion project — built because I genuinely love tracking small-cap biopharmas and following catalysts. But it's also grounded in operational reality: I understand what sponsors face from the inside, which makes the analysis sharper than what you get from a pure investor lens.
Co-Founded
Save Our Sites — Industry Conference
Co-founder of Save Our Sites, a major industry conference for clinical research sites. Built to address the sustainability crisis facing independent investigator sites — the operational backbone of clinical trials. This isn't an investment thesis. It's something that needs to exist.
Day 1
Access at Formation
My network spans founders, site directors, CRO veterans, medical affairs leads, and finance professionals across the clinical research ecosystem. Most of my deal flow comes before a pitch deck exists.

Companies

Seed

Browser extension that automates data entry for clinical research sites. Gleam lets site staff copy source data from any eSource directly into EDC CRFs — fast, accurate, and without the transcription errors that create downstream audit findings. YC S23.

Clinical Operations EDC / eSource Site Tools
Seed

Enables non-investigator treating physicians to host clinical trial appointments from their local practices without becoming investigators. MedVector keeps patients in their trusted provider's office — unlocking a pool of enrolled candidates that traditional site networks can't reach.

Patient Access HCP Recruitment Decentralized Trials
PatientAce
Pre-Seed

AI-powered patient navigator for clinical trial recruitment and matching. PatientAce connects patients who qualify for trials with sites actively enrolling — reducing the median time-to-first-patient-in.

Recruitment AI Matching Patient Access
Save Our Sites
Seed

Infrastructure and support network for independent clinical trial sites. Site sustainability is a real crisis — qualified investigators are leaving the business. Save Our Sites builds the operational backbone to keep them viable.

Site Networks Site Sustainability Investigator Support
SelectIQ
Seed

Data-driven site selection platform for clinical trial sponsors. SelectIQ uses enrollment history, therapeutic area expertise, and real-time capacity data to match sponsors with the sites most likely to deliver.

Site Selection Predictive Analytics CRO Tooling
VerSatrial acq. Florence
Acquired

Browser extension providing bookmark management, feasibility tracking, and collaboration tools for clinical research site teams. Built for coordinators managing multiple concurrent studies. Advisory board. Acquired by Florence Healthcare in September 2023.

Site Tools Feasibility Site Ops
Seed

Clinical trial site coordination platform built to reduce the operational drag that stalls enrollment. Coordinare streamlines communication, task management, and document workflows between sites and sponsors — targeting the coordination failures that account for most preventable trial delays.

Site Coordination Trial Operations Sponsor-Site

Contact

If you're building at the intersection of clinical operations, regulatory strategy, or patient technology — I want to hear from you.

I look at pre-seed and seed rounds. I'm most useful to founders who need someone who's actually been in the room — FDA meetings, site visits, sponsor negotiations, protocol reviews. Check/wire amounts are modest; time and pattern-matching are the real value.

If you're a GP, LP, or angel looking to co-invest alongside deep domain expertise in clinical research, I'm interested in that conversation too. Capital that knows what it's backing moves faster and makes better decisions. This space needs more of it.

Twitter DMs and email are the fastest paths in.