Hiring a CEO Who Could Speak Both Science and Scale for a Deep-Tech Life Sciences Instrumentation Company

The Challenge

This Amsterdam-based company builds instruments that measure the mechanical properties of cells, tissues, and biomaterials, technology used by pharma and biotech researchers to study disease, drug response, and regenerative medicine. At around 60 employees, it had grown into a commercial-stage business with customers across academia, pharma, and biotech, and had just closed a new funding round to accelerate global growth.

The company had been led since its early days by a technical, founder-style CEO. Scaling globally meant something different now: a leader who could hold scientific credibility with a research-driven customer base while running the company like a commercial operator, building out go-to-market, managing investor relationships, and preparing for the next stage of growth.

That combination is rare. Most executives are strong on one side of that line, either deeply scientific or commercially sharp, rarely both with real depth in each.

They turned to The Big Search.

Overview of the executive search

• Deep-tech life sciences instrumentation company, Netherlands
• One executive hire
• March 2025 → August 2025
• VC Value Creation: Science-to-Business Transition Phase

The company retained The Big Search in March 2025 to find a Chief Executive Officer who could take the business through its next growth phase. We closed the search in August 2025, roughly five months from kickoff, with the placed executive starting in November 2025.

Executive Search Across European DeepTech and Life Sciences Instrumentation Leadership

We targeted operators who combined genuine scientific literacy with proven experience scaling a company commercially, a narrower pool than a standard CEO search because both halves needed to be real, not adjacent.

Profile criteria:

• A life sciences or biotech background with real scientific literacy, not just commercial exposure to the sector
• A track record helping scale a company commercially through a period of significant growth
• Capital markets or investor-facing experience, relevant given the company's recent funding round and future fundraising needs
• Comfort operating in a founder-led, fast-moving deep-tech environment
• Based in or willing to work from the Netherlands
• Board or governance experience as a strong plus, given the CEO's exposure to investors and the board

We mapped 93 candidates in total.

First shortlist

21 days from kick-off

Of the 93, 38 were approached directly. 25 responded and 16 expressed genuine interest, a 66% response rate and a 42% interest rate, and all 16 went through a consultant interview. Six made the shortlist, and all 6 met the client directly before an offer was made. The gap between response rate and interest rate tells the real story: most people in life sciences leadership will take a courteous call, but far fewer, once they understood the seat, had the combination of scientific depth and commercial scale-up experience the company needed. Only 6 of the 93 mapped made it to a client conversation, a tight funnel that reflects how narrow this intersection of skills really is.

The Placed Candidate: A Life Sciences Financier Who Became a Scale-Up Operator Before Becoming a CEO

They came to the process with a career that ran in an unusual order: capital markets first, operations second, executive leadership third. They spent several years in investment banking, advising life sciences companies on more than 40 international capital markets and M&A transactions, including IPOs and secondary fundraisings. From there, they moved into a fast-growing consumer technology scale-up, building out a B2B data and insights function that served major global consumer brands. They then spent close to six years as Chief Financial Officer of a biotech company operating across multiple countries, including sites in Europe, the US, and Japan. Alongside that operating career, they built board-level experience, sitting as an independent director and audit committee chair of a publicly listed medical device company. They hold a master's degree in biomedical sciences.

That combination, real scientific grounding, capital markets fluency, and hands-on scale-up execution, mapped directly onto what the company needed from its first outside CEO.

• Real scientific grounding — a biomedical sciences degree and a career built advising life sciences companies gave them credibility with a research-driven customer base from day one.
• Capital markets pedigree — advised on more than 40 international IPOs, secondary raises, and M&A transactions for life sciences companies, directly relevant with a new funding round just closed.
• Scale-up execution — helped build a commercial function inside a fast-growing consumer tech company, proof they could operate at a different pace than a typical life sciences career path.
• Multi-site operating experience — served as CFO of a biotech company with sites across Europe, the US, and Japan, giving them first-hand experience running finance across borders and time zones.
• Board fluency — active board and audit committee experience at a publicly listed medical device company gave them a head start on investor and governance dynamics.

Deep-tech CEO searches fail most often because companies hire for one half of the job, either the scientist or the operator, and hope the other half develops on the job. We closed this search in about five months and delivered a leader who had already proven both halves, in capital markets, in a scale-up, and in a biotech CFO seat, before ever sitting in the CEO chair.

Of the 93 candidates mapped for this role, only 6 made it to a client conversation. That gap is the market being honest: executives with true scientific depth and true scale-up commercial experience are genuinely rare, no matter how deep the outreach goes.

If your next deep-tech leadership hire needs someone fluent in both the science and the business, let's talk.