Julian McNamaraTreating founders like clients
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In this piece, we share how we support founders like Pedro from Biorce using a support ticket system, clear internal goals, and hands-on follow-through from day one.
Meet Pedro
Pedro Coelho is the Founder and CEO of Biorce, a Barcelona-based medtech startup that's reimagining the clinical trials process through the power of artificial intelligence.
After years in consulting for the life sciences industry, Pedro saw first-hand how inefficiencies in clinical research delayed drug development, drove up costs, and left patients waiting. In 2024, he founded Biorce to tackle these structural issues head-on.
Last year, we backed Pedro in his first funding round. Since then, Biorce has:
- Raised €3.5 million from investors including Plug & Play, YZR, Outsized Ventures, and Masia VC
- Begun expanding into the U.S. market with new entity structures and GTM planning
- Landed contracts and explored strategic partnerships with leading clinical and pharma players
Treating founders like clients
Listening to what founders need, and adjusting our support accordingly, helps us deliver what matters most, when it matters. It’s the same mindset great SaaS companies apply to their customers: reduce friction, anticipate needs, and respond quickly. At maze we apply this same approach to founder support. We treat founder support like a product with feedback loops that allow us to keep refining.
Treating founders like clients means recognizing that our job is to serve.
We serve our founders by making sure they feel backed at every step of their business’ growth trajectory. This is the story of what that looks like in action and how we are operationalising that approach across a founder’s journey with us.
We start supporting founders from the moment we invest. Whether it’s access to potential commercial partners or mentorship they are looking for, their request is routed to the appropriate person to reach a prompt outcome.
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For Pedro, that’s meant:
- When defining and measuring Biorce’s impact: we facilitated an impact workshop to help Pedro define an impact metric and 4-year goal to understand and demonstrate the business's positive impact.
- When fundraising: we made strategic introductions to aligned investors, several of whom backed his latest round.
- When looking for commercial partners: we initiated a potential partnership with Uphill (another portfolio company) and contacts at Roche.
- When considering international expansion: we connected Pedro with a peer and mentor with experience in U.S. expansion, legal structuring, and hiring.
- When structuring a new funding round: we provided hands-on help in navigating the round and managing cap table composition.
This level of engagement is possible because we’ve built infrastructure around our founder support.
The support funnel
We manage founder support through a simple ticket funnel system, which is a lightweight way to make sure nothing slips through the cracks. It lives in an in-house built tool, where we can log requests, track actions and keep a clear record of every step. Because it’s integrated with our founder and company records, we get a full picture of what’s happening with each venture we support.
How it works:
- Where tickets come from: Logged by investment leads after founder check-ins or board meetings, or auto-extracted from investor reports using AI agents and workflow tools.
- Categorisation: Each ticket is tagged by its area of support: Talent, Commercial, Fundraising, PR, Mentorship, Impact Management, or Other.
- Funnel stages:
- Not Started
- In Progress
- On Hold
- Closed (action taken, but no material outcome)
- Impact (action led to a meaningful result like a hire, investment, or strategic shift)
- Failed to Act
- Opportunity (the request was out of our scope or capacity to address → to be considered in the following cycle when iterating on our platform offering)
- In practice: Every week, we bring active tickets into our team meetings to tap into the collective experience and networks of the team. It's a moment to unblock progress, add new ideas, redistribute ownership where needed, and follow up on outcomes.
- Actions and outcomes: All actions and communications involved in resolving a ticket are recorded in one place and easily extracted for analysis.
The difference between tickets marked as “Impact” vs. “Closed”? When Pedro was gearing up for his next round, we introduced him to several investors. Two of those intros (Outsized Ventures and Masia VC) ended up investing in the round. That’s an “impact” ticket. It wasn’t just that we made the connection; it materially changed the trajectory of his raise. Had the introductions to Outsized and Masia not led to them investing, the ticket would’ve been marked as “closed”.
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Data-informed support: What the numbers tell us
Since founders, like clients, are people whose success we’re accountable to, our role isn’t just to write checks; it’s to consistently deliver value. We measure that value by outcomes, not just effort. Tracking support tickets isn’t just about being organised, it’s how we stay accountable and strategic.
Since launch, we’ve logged over 400 tickets across our portfolio. That data has helped shape how we evolve our support model.
By reviewing our tickets, we’ve been able to:
- Spot recurring needs across the portfolio and prioritise support accordingly
- Benchmark activity across founders and ensure equitable attention
- Identify when founders may need deeper or more structured support
- Inform our internal OKRs and team incentives
This work has led to key insights
- Fundraising is the most requested area of support, especially at the pre-seed stage, as seen in Pedro’s journey.
- Mentorship and commercial partner access generate more impactful outcomes. We have more influence over these than over investor decisions, reinforcing that not all support is equal in outcome.
- Top-performing founders, like Pedro, tend to request mentorship more than commercial intros, indicating the proactive and strategic approach of successful founders.
Platform OKRs: How we stay accountable
To make sure our support is consistent, responsive and meaningful, we track a few key internal metrics. These OKRs (Objects and Key Results) serve as internal service standards, guiding how prioritise, follow through and measure our involvement.
Our current OKRs include:
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- 75% of all tickets closed or Impact → ensures high follow through
- <5 active tickets > 10 days → ensures momentum isn’t lost
- 1 structural moment → ensures we are hands on in pivotal decisions like a raise, international expansion, or organisational restructuring.
We define a ticket as “closed” when we’ve taken meaningful action but the desired outcome was not achieved. A ticket becomes “impact” when that action results in a tangible milestone, like securing a new investor, making a critical hire or unlocking a strategic partnership.
This system keeps us focused on outcomes, not just activity.
Support starts with listening, and scales with systems
As we reflect on what this all adds up to, supporting founders like Pedro means building more than relationships, it means building systems. Systems that listen, respond, and evolve with their needs.
At Maze, we believe that once we invest, we have a duty to serve: to be reliable partners who help founders navigate what’s ahead, not just fund it.
Treating founders like clients means showing up when it matters, with trust, good timing and follow-though.
The term “platform” in this article refers to platform in the VC realm: the non-financial support that venture capitalists offer their portfolio companies. It does not refer to a digital platform.