The funding gap that costs biotechs a year.
Biotech companies routinely lose 12 to 18 months between Phase 1b and Phase 2, waiting to secure funding. Companies wait for financing before engaging a CRO; the CRO then takes another 8 to 12 months to initiate. With 70% of biotech funding going to clinical development, every month of delay means higher burn and a lower valuation at the next raise. For an investor weighing a late-stage bet, that gap is both an operational risk and a financial one.
Could the trial actually run?
A globally active late-stage biotech VC, running roughly two investments a month, was evaluating an emerging spinal cord injury therapy. The decision hinged on one question: could the biotech execute a Phase 2b in Australia? Were there enough SCI patients? How many sites were equipped, and where? What was the optimal site count, and was Australia even the right market?
Feasibility and site selection consume up to 45% of a drug-development timeline, 15% of selected sites never enrol a single patient, and 37% miss their enrolment targets. The cost of guessing wrong was the whole thesis.
Feasibility in two weeks.
Yendou delivered a full feasibility analysis in under two weeks on its AI-powered CRM. Country feasibility, indication incidence, site infrastructure and patient availability, returned in minutes. Protocol feasibility came from seven KOL calls arranged inside three days. Site identification through to selection, with NDAs executed across every site, completed in seven days, ending in clear, data-backed recommendations with a per-site enrolment score and a mitigation plan.
As a bonus, Yendou benchmarked Australia against Europe and the US, and surfaced the competing trials already running in the indication.
“What stood out was Yendou’s ability to cut through ambiguity. Instead of a probability matrix or a heavily caveated response, we got a clear, data-backed answer: yes, this trial is feasible in Australia. That confidence is exactly what we need when evaluating clinical-stage biotech.”
Partner · Late-stage biotech VCBridging the Phase 1b–2 gap.
By pre-validating sites before funding was secured, Yendou turned a 12-to-18-month delay into an advantage. It eliminated more than $175,000 in sunk feasibility costs by filtering out sites unlikely to hit recruitment targets, and avoided roughly $3M in operational burn by cutting a 12-month delay in site selection. Site selection itself dropped from 16 weeks to 2.
The investor got side-by-side Australia, Europe and US feasibility and data-backed recruitment projections; the biotech gained KOL relationships in a new market. The payoff: a $5M lift in pre-raise valuation, a safer bet for the investor and a stronger next raise for the biotech.
“It wasn’t just a data dump, it was an investment decision enabler. The structure and actionable insights made it easy for us to assess the opportunity and decide the next steps with confidence.”
Partner · Late-stage biotech VC