From science risk to market fit - Cradle’s Stef van Grieken on building a biotech venture in Europe
Update: 2025-07-10
Description
Most founders wait until Series A to clean up their cap table. Stef did the opposite - and spent $70K upfront just to get the foundations right.
As co-founder of Cradle, he built a biotech company for global scale from day one: navigating European legal complexity, validating science in skeptical labs, and paying early customers out of pocket to prove it worked.
In this episode, we get into:
- Why Cradle paid its first two customers—and how that unlocked top-tier pharma clients
- How to structure your company early to avoid massive headaches later
- Why European startup culture struggles with ambition—and what needs to change
- How to hire ML talent in Europe when OpenAI is knocking on the same doors
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