The Conversations That Keep Going
By Olesia Karvetskaia, Chief Operating Officer
September 1, 2026
From California and Nordics to Cambridge, London and Oxford, Venture Road has tested a simple idea: the real value of an ecosystem exchange appears in what happens after the programme ends.
Six weeks after Venture Road UK, Ben Davis had one deal signed and a second opportunity moving through follow-up. “That’s better than most events” said Davis, who works in business development at the Cambridge drug discovery company Vernalis. He had participated in only two parts of the programme, yet conversations formed there had already translated into business. It is a compelling result for an initiative built around bringing the right people together. The wider pattern across the participant interviews was just as important: people left with clearer decisions, useful new relationships and conversations that continued well beyond the week itself.
Venture Road is a joint initiative by Ventures Accelerated and Phosworks, combining life science growth expertise and capital connections with creative strategy and storytelling. It began in California in July 2025, where Nordic entrepreneurs and scientists met investors, laboratories and potential partners. In December, the journey returned to Stockholm and Uppsala during Nobel Week, bringing North American participants into the Nordic ecosystem for scientific sessions, Nobel lectures and opportunities to build new relationships. The third journey, Venture Road UK, took place from 7 to 12 June 2026 and connected the life science ecosystems of Cambridge, London and Oxford. The underlying purpose has remained the same: to make cross-border collaboration tangible by creating encounters that can turn into something more.
The UK test
Venture Road UK was envisioned as an Anglo-Nordic journey around precision health. The programme moved from investor discussions and AI in drug discovery in Cambridge to finance, technology and antimicrobial resistance in London, before continuing to Oxford for conversations about venture creation and the commercialisation of science. The initiative was rooted in the Sweden-UK life sciences relationship and presented itself not as another conference, but as a curated journey with direct access to founders, investors, researchers and industry leaders, structured discussions and time to build relationships.
The itinerary provided the setting, but the interviews conducted afterwards suggest that the most valuable part was the quality of the conversations. Participants repeatedly returned to the same words: honest, open and genuine. The programme did not attempt to make everyone agree. Instead, it created enough trust for people to describe what company building, financing and partnership formation actually look like.
For Emmelie Persson, CEO of BioReperia, this was particularly evident during the investor discussions in Cambridge. BioReperia is developing zebrafish-based models that can rapidly evaluate cancer drug response, both for oncology drug development and potentially for individual treatment planning. Persson valued the Cambridge panel precisely because the participants offered conflicting perspectives. One investor might argue for the United States while another made the case for Europe. The discussion moved between small and large financing rounds, platform companies and lead candidates, without trying to force a single conclusion.
“You could hear one thing and the opposite in the same quarter of an hour. In the end, you have to decide what fits your own company.”
That was the point. The panel did not give BioReperia a ready-made answer, but it helped Persson form a clearer view of what the company needs. One of her conclusions was that BioReperia should not assemble its next stage from a collection of small commitments. It should seek an investor that believes in the concept and is prepared to support the journey ahead. She also returned with concrete contacts and follow-up meetings in both directions.
The experience addressed a different need for Professor Lydia Tabernero, founder of TaBriX and Professor of Structural Biology and Drug Discovery at the University of Manchester. TaBriX is developing pathogen-targeted immunotherapies for chronic lung infections, including difficult mycobacterial infections. Its small molecules are designed to block mechanisms that pathogens use to suppress the host immune response, allowing the body’s natural defences to work more effectively.
Tabernero described one of the less visible problems of forming a company from university research. An academic scientist may have a strong network of researchers and collaborators, yet still be isolated from the investors, pharmaceutical companies and commercial partners needed to develop a medicine. Venture Road gave her an opportunity both to meet people from that wider ecosystem and to hear directly what investors are looking for. For Tabernero, stronger cooperation between the UK and the Nordics is part of a broader European necessity. With smaller pools of capital than the United States or Asia, European companies need to reach across national boundaries, learn from different ways of working and, in her words, “join forces and grow bigger together.”
Dr Meng-Han Kuok of Camtech Innovations saw the same bridge from the Cambridge side. Camtech is developing a microfluidic platform intended to accelerate DNA extraction and library preparation for next-generation sequencing, with potential applications in antimicrobial resistance analysis, personalised genomics and cancer sequencing. Kuok described the programme through Cambridge, London and Oxford as a valuable introduction to the different ecosystems and an opportunity to continue relationships that had begun during an earlier visit to Sweden. The journey also created new connections with Nordic companies.
His wider reflection was practical. As more small and specialised companies are created, many begin solving adjacent versions of the same problem. Partnership therefore becomes increasingly important, not only as a source of capital but as a way to combine capabilities and avoid duplicating work that already exists elsewhere. As Kuok put it, it is better to partner than to reinvent the wheel.
Sharing what company building really looks like
For Professor Andy Whiting, CEO of Nevrargenics, the value of Venture Road began with the opportunity to pitch but extended well beyond it. Nevrargenics was one of the companies selected to present to investors during the UK programme. Whiting travelled from Durham and joined the group for several days, creating more time for conversations than a conventional pitch event would normally allow.
Nevrargenics is developing novel medicines for neurodegenerative diseases using dual-acting retinoic acid receptor modulators. Its programmes initially target conditions including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia, with broader ambitions in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. Its lead candidate, Ellorarxine, is being developed for its potential neuroprotective and neuroregenerative properties.
What Whiting particularly appreciated was the honesty of his discussions with both investors and fellow company builders. Rather than limiting the exchange to polished company presentations, participants shared what it is really like to build and grow their organisations, including the difficult decisions, unexpected obstacles and changes of direction that rarely appear in a pitch deck.
“What stood out was the honesty of the conversations, both with investors and with other company leaders. People were willing to share what their growth journeys really look like, including the difficult parts that rarely make it into a presentation. That led to valuable exchanges and several conversations that have continued since Venture Road.”
Those exchanges have produced continuing discussions with several participants. They have also created a natural connection to the next stage of the initiative. Nevrargenics has expressed interest in participating in the forthcoming Venture Bridge, where the focus on unmet medical needs will include neurodegenerative disorders. For a company working in diseases where patients still have very limited treatment options, the link between the UK journey and the next Nordic gathering is particularly direct.
When the right conversations become business
The clearest commercial outcome so far came from Ben Davis at Vernalis. He joined the AI programme at Babraham and the antimicrobial resistance session in London. The AMR discussion stood out because the room had moved beyond debating whether the problem mattered. The real questions were how to solve it, how to build workable incentives and what commercial structures could make continued antibiotic development viable.
Davis sensed momentum in the room. He then saw some of that momentum turn into business.
“Even just from that one day in June, we’ve already signed one deal out of a discussion that came from it. I had my second follow-up meeting on another opportunity this morning. That’s two good leads, one of which is already signed, in six weeks. That’s better than most events.”
His explanation is central to the Venture Road model. Curation can improve the probability of a useful encounter, but it cannot automate the relationship itself.
“You still need the humans in the middle to have the conversation and to bounce ideas around. But identifying the people and putting the right people together worked really well.”
The distinction matters. Venture Road uses structured preparation, ecosystem knowledge and data-supported matchmaking to create promising constellations of people. The value emerges when those people meet, recognise something useful in one another and choose to continue the conversation.
The interviews also produced concrete ideas for improving the model. Persson proposed two structured rounds of shorter one-to-one meetings, one early in the journey before informal groups have formed, and another near the end when participants know which relationships they want to deepen. Her reasoning was simple: personal chemistry should remain organic, but the programme can do more to ensure that every participant has the opportunity to find it. The recommendation is now being carried into the design of Venture Bridge.
From Venture Road to Venture Bridge
The next stage makes the reciprocal ambition more explicit. Venture Bridge will bring the exchange back to Stockholm during Nobel Week and continue the work of connecting companies, investors, researchers, corporates and institutions across borders. Its focus on unmet medical needs, including antimicrobial resistance, women’s health and neurodegenerative disorders, will provide a common purpose around which more specialised partnerships can form.
The ambition is not simply to increase the number of introductions. It is to create the conditions for better ones: conversations in which people can disagree without becoming defensive, share experience without pretending that company building is easy, and identify opportunities that neither side would have found alone.
Bita Sehat, Partner in the Ventures team at Trill Impact, captured what made the UK journey distinctive.
I attend many conferences each year, but very few spark conversations that continue well beyond the event itself. Venture Road was one of them.
What stood out was not only its ability to bring together founders, investors, researchers and policymakers, but also how honest the conversations were. Whether the discussion was about financing and exits, artificial intelligence or antimicrobial resistance, the dialogue was thoughtful, grounded in reality and willing to tackle complexity rather than settle for easy answers. Those are exactly the conversations our ecosystem needs more of.
If you have the opportunity to join Venture Road next year, I highly recommend it. You’ll leave with new perspectives, meaningful connections and a much richer understanding of the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of European life sciences.
After California, the Nordics and the United Kingdom, Venture Road has grown into more than a sequence of journeys. It has become an expanding community of people willing to share knowledge, challenge one another and continue working together after the scheduled programme ends.
That is also the standard for what comes next. The success of the initiative will not be measured only by who attends or how many meetings take place. It will be measured by what participants understand more clearly, which relationships continue and what they go on to build together.