It started with one story

Dave Koolbergen, a leading thoracic surgeon in the Netherlands, noticed a recurring problem: each day, over 250 patients worldwide die due to post-surgery complications related to blood clotting. Dave was certainly not the only one experiencing these complications, but the first to understand that if the patient’s arteries were flushed with warm saline prior to closing, this complication would be resolved. 

He invented a method that would allow surgeons all over the world to avoid these complications by flushing patients after surgery.

But Dave is a surgeon, not an experienced entrepreneur. There was an excellent idea with clinical value, but no team, no viable business model and no money. Dave was stuck with his idea, even though it could save patients’ lives. 

But the tale is bigger than one story

We all know stories from our family, friends and colleagues about people with life-impacting health issues. Whether it being cancer, heart disease, miscarriage, stroke, COPD, diabetes, Alzheimer’s or any other disease. Sometimes, those stories feel far away; sometimes, they come painfully close. 

It is hard to accept that most scientific inventions do not reach medical specialists and their patients, even though we know that they could positively impact patients’ lives.

Furthermore, the increasing demand placed on healthcare, the surging costs, the growing shortage of healthcare workers and the growing environmental footprint of the sector indicate that the world’s healthcare systems have reached a pivotal juncture. It is our conviction that the only solution to these challenges is innovation. 

Bringing science to life is life-saving - for patients and the healthcare system alike

This is where we come in. At NLC, we understand the need to innovate, but we also know how hard it is to bring healthcare innovations to life. So we step in when inventors need us most. Together, we build a company (venture) around the innovation and bring an experienced entrepreneur on board to take it forward. We provide extensive support to grow the venture and, with a team of over 80 people and a large network, are able to tackle the challenges the company faces and mitigate a lot of the typical start-up risks. Finally, when the time is right, we connect the venture to follow-on investors who can help accelerate its growth. 

That is what we did for Dave: we co-founded Haermonics, recruited a dedicated CEO to support in developing the technology, and together with the team helped raise over €10M in funding over the years and built a strong company with 11 FTE to bring the technology to the market. Of course, we faced substantial challenges with the venture over the years, but are happy we persevered as the clinical results are astonishing: Haermonics prevents unnecessary reoperations, reducing the chance of death due to complications caused by blood clotting. Dave was truly onto something, but without NLC, his invention would have never made it to the patient. Only by working together, we were able to create Serious Impact.

Building one company is great, building 100+ companies is more effective, efficient and has more impact

But we did not stop there. In fact, Dave was just the beginning. Since 2015, we have evaluated over 20,000 healthtech inventions and built more than 100 ventures that improve or save patients’ lives. Since 2023, we are also the most active early stage healthcare investor, according to Financial Times' Sifted. 

We build companies across all therapeutic areas: technologies that save babies, that support the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, and improve the lives of patients with an amputation. We work on potential treatments for Alzheimer’s, mental health issues and osteoporosis. And many, many more. 

Our current portfolio consists of medical device companies, biotechnology assets, digital and green health solutions. These ventures collectively raised over €100M and impacted more than 120K patients so far. The current net asset value of the NLC portfolio is approximately €90m (value of NLC stake); to date NLC created approximately €280m in total company value (aggregated enterprise value created).

Our starting position is simple: if there is a technology that can improve a patient's life, we transform it into a company. And there is an incredible advantage in doing this at scale:

• More technologies, mean more partners 
• More partners mean more knowledge and expertise
• More knowledge and expertise means better decisions and thus better ventures that can save patients’ lives. 

Additionally, by doing this at scale, we make the early-stage investible for investors like you, because there is less risk involved investing in >100 ventures than in just 1. 

Below you can find some more examples of our ventures:

For more information visit our list of ventures and their websites https://nlc.health/ventures/

Nobody changes the healthcare system alone, we do this together with an inspiring network. Will you join us? 

These ventures make it to patients not only because of the NLC team. As a matter of fact, you make these innovations happen, whether you invent them, use them, sell them, advise them or invest in them. 

Because nobody can change healthcare on their own, community is core to our company culture and values. So why shouldn’t this apply to our funding model, too? Raising from our community is the best way to live our values. And only together can we really transform the future of healthcare. 

We have an extensive global network in place of inventors, universities, medical specialists, hospitals, corporates and investors. Every day, new innovators are joining our ecosystem for the better: because bringing science to life is a collective effort, we are only as strong as our ecosystem. That's why we invite you to join us and become part of a movement that really makes a difference.

The largest healthtech venture builder at a glance:

• > 2,500 inventors and experts work with us to develop their technologies and support us in the assessment of new technologies 
• 7 leading hospitals have invested in NLC, representing >1,200 medical specialists
• > 300 renowned corporates and universities partner with us to transform their technologies into impactful ventures  
• 350 investors like you who already participate.

Questions? Join an online Q&A session with the board.

Our Venture Building approach: attract, grow, exit

Attract: We source promising technologies at corporates and academic institutes followed by a strict due diligence process, negotiating intellectual property rights, CEO recruitment and incorporation of the venture by NLC. NLC typically starts with something like 70% of the equity (the rest allocated to CEO/team and, if applicable, the IP owner). NLC dilutes over time when new shareholders join the captable in financing rounds.

Grow: As the founder of the venture, we are actively involved in the growing process as we provide ongoing operational, legal and finance support as well as access to seed and follow-on funding through NLC’s captive funds (our fund management practice is currently raising for our fourth venture capital fund, with a target size of €100M).

Exit: Once our job is done, we exit to a strategic or financial player who can help accelerate growth. Actual historical data of our venture building model shows that we are able to generate a money multiple of ~7x for each venture we build, we aim to continue this in the future. This includes the cost of failure for discontinued ventures. Exit proceeds help further scale our venture building platform.

Join us to accelerate growth and advance health together

This WeFunder campaign is part of a larger €10M round that we are raising of which €6.14M is already invested. We are raising money to further grow the number of ventures we build, to successfully grow our fund management practices (and set up more investment funds that can invest in the ventures NLC builds) and to open offices in the USA and the Gulf Region. We have a strong shareholder base of investors in our home market and are currently looking to expand our investor network internationally. 

In order to grow our investor base, we offer the opportunity to invest in NLC (the Venture Builder) through a convertible note at investor-friendly terms. Upon conversion, this note has a valuation cap of €150M. This is substantially below NLC’s valuation of €231.5M as estimated by a Big-4 valuation’s team as per end 2022. NLC and its network are highly determined to create more value and hence the valuation is expected to increase further towards the conversion date (estimated to happen in 2025 Q1). We estimate to generate a money multiple of 2x to 3x in the next 2 years on this note, although returns cannot be guaranteed. From time to time, NLC will organise and facilitate an internal market for existing shareholders to trade their shares amongst them (sellers can monetise their investment and buyers can acquire more). Actual execution of each trade will be based on a match-making principle with pro-rated allocation (NLC is not necessarily a party to these trades). Once NLC is cash flow positive, NLC will start distributing dividends to shareholders and/or buy-back shares, both of which provide liquidity to shareholders. But next to the financial return, the positive impact we create through our portfolio will be even more impressive. 

If advancing healthcare for all sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, we’d love to have you join us!

Questions? Join an online Q&A session with the board.

Team

In May 2014, Bert-Arjan (BA) became the proud father of a baby girl. Unfortunately, she was born prematurely, leaving him helpless next to her incubator. He desperately wanted nothing more than to hold his little girl and bring her home. At the time, BA didn’t know that a inventor across the country was working on an technology that could have prevented his pain but got stuck in a similar way that Dave did.

Luckily BA’s daughter developed into a healthy and happy child. But from this experience, NLC was born. With 20 years of experience in business development and growth strategies, BA founded NLC in 2015. Together with a team of entrepreneurial and healthcare specialists they built the first few ventures that are currently on the market. One of which is Bilihome, founded when the inventor mentioned above met NLC. Our management board, existing of BA, Ruben and Sylvia, each have more than 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, growth and financial management. 

A passionate and highly experienced team of 80+ employees is highly dedicated to further scale NLC and all invest alongside you. Next to that, the entire team is incentivized via a Long Term Incentive Plan (carried-interest like structure) to ensure retention, please refer to the document below for more information.

NLC is supported by the supervisory board with industry leaders from the healthcare industry (Rob ten Hoedt & Dirk Pekelharing) and Venture Capital & Private Equity experts (Antoinette van Lier & Erica Young).

Key Links

• Our Investment Proposal
• Our venture portfolio
• Our core team, venture CEO’s, inventors and advisors
• Our Impact
• Our team incentivization structure and how this impacts equity holders
• Join a Q&A session