Company Representative in the Organizing Committee
Ester Sklarsky
Principal at Sound Bioventures
ABOUT SOUND BIOVENTURES
Sound Bioventures is a European biotech venture capital firm with offices in Stockholm, Malmö, and Copenhagen. We invest in late preclinical to early clinical-stage therapeutics companies across Europe, the UK, and the US. As active investors, we work closely with our portfolio companies on clinical strategy, business development, and governance, not just capital deployment.
Who are we?
Why are we getting involved as a sponsor?
We believe the next generation of biotech leaders will come from the communities that are being built today. BiotechBuilders gives us direct access to ambitious people thinking about company creation and drug development from the ground up, which aligns with how we source and evaluate opportunities. For our team, it's also a way to stay connected to the entrepreneurial energy in the Nordic life science ecosystem and to give back by sharing what we've learned from building and backing companies at the earliest inflection points.
What challenges and opportunities do we currently see in the industry?
The biggest opportunity we see is in the depth of European academic science that still hasn't been translated into funded therapeutic programs. The challenge is that Europe's funding infrastructure and regulatory pathway still lag behind the US, which means too many strong programs either stall or migrate across the Atlantic. Policymakers can help by streamlining clinical trial approvals, incentivising institutional LP commitments to life science venture, and supporting the bridge between academic discovery and company formation. The industry itself needs to get better at building lean, milestone-driven companies rather than over-capitalising platforms without clinical focus.
What is currently at the top of our company’s agenda?
Alongside deal execution, we're investing heavily in our diligence infrastructure, from systematic deal-flow classification to KOL networks, to make sure we're seeing and evaluating opportunities with real rigour. Fundraising for Fund II is also ongoing, and we're broadening our LP base across Europe.
We're especially excited about the wave of translational science coming out of the Nordics. Several of our investment themes trace directly back to academic programmes at institutions like Karolinska and Lund, and we see a real opportunity to help build the bridge from Swedish clinical research excellence to biotech company creation. We're always happy to talk to founders and scientists who are thinking about that leap.