Clinical trials take, on average, 12 years and billions in capital before a drug reaches a pharmacy shelf. Pedro Coelho thinks that the timeline can be cut in half.
In this episode, our very own Andreas talks with Pedro Coelho, founder & CEO of Biorce, fresh off closing a $52M Series A led by DST, with long-time backer Norrsken continuing its support. Pedro is Portuguese, built Biorce out of Barcelona, and is now relocating to the US for the company’s next chapter.
This conversation goes from deeply personal origins to AI-driven operating systems, hiring in the age of automation, and why conviction often means running straight at the wall instead of mapping it first.
What’s covered:
00:47 The personal story behind Biorce
02:07 What Biorce actually does
03:18 AI in clinical trials: from 12 years to 6
04:40 The “one-click clinical trial” vision
06:04 Would Pedro do it again? (serial founder reflections)
08:13 Building pre-AI vs building in the AI era
09:08 Build vs buy: why Biorce built its own CRM
11:46 Hiring in fast-changing phases
13:28 Conviction: gut, data, and running through walls
16:03 Moving to Austin: scaling R&D and building a second A-team
16:41 TAM vs TAP: what investors often misunderstand
17:53 Barcelona ecosystem misconceptions
18:15 What’s next for Biorce
The origin: when a clinical trial becomes personal
Biorce wasn’t born out of a whiteboard session.
It started with Pedro’s father being diagnosed with melanoma.
A clinical trial extended his father’s life by ten months. It also exposed Pedro to how complex, slow, and fragmented the clinical trial ecosystem is. After his father passed away, Pedro sold his previous company and turned fully toward fixing the system.
The answer, in his view, wasn’t incremental improvement. It was technology and specifically AI.
What Bios does: compressing the drug development timeline
Before a drug reaches a pharmacy, it typically spends 12 years in development and testing.
Biorce is building what Pedro describes as a clinical trial operating system that allows pharmaceutical and biotech companies to:
Design trials
Generate protocols
Select sites and endpoints
Execute trial workflows
All in one integrated AI-driven system.
One example: trial protocols with 100+ page documents that used to take three months to write can now be generated in 90 seconds at ~86% accuracy.
The broader goal is bold:
Reduce development timelines from 12 to 6 years
Cut development costs by roughly 50%
And eventually reach what Pedro calls the vision:
The one-click clinical trial.
They’re not there yet. Accuracy and consistency still need to reach near perfection. But that’s the trajectory.
Building before AI vs building with AI
Pedro has built companies both pre-AI and now squarely inside the AI wave.
His view is clear: this is the best moment in history to build if you’re a doer.
Instead of relying on off-the-shelf SaaS tools, Biorce builds internal systems from scratch. Pedro even built the company’s first CRM himself over a Christmas break.
The reasoning wasn’t ego. It was alignment.
Their sales playbook was so specific that traditional CRM systems didn’t reflect how they operated. So they built one that mirrored their internal logic.
This is the shift AI enables:
Faster internal tooling
Custom systems over generic stacks
Senior operators who automate low-leverage work
For Pedro, AI doesn’t just change the product. It changes team composition.
Hiring in phases: excellence and velocity
Pedro is blunt about something many founders avoid:
Different phases require different people.
A strong founder must be excellent at hiring and equally disciplined at recognizing when someone no longer fits the company’s stage.
In Biorce’s case:
The team is lean
Expectations are high
Operators are hired as “mini CEOs”
Ownership is extreme
He frequently changes course as new data emerges. Decisions are dynamic and the team has to be comfortable with that.
The standard isn’t comfort. It’s velocity.
Conviction: data, gut, and running through walls
How do you build conviction at this scale?
Pedro describes a blend:
Data as foundation
Gut as accelerator
Speed as default
He uses a metaphor:
They were a bullet train moving at 1,000 miles per hour. Walls would appear. Either they’d break through or they’d adjust and move again. But they wouldn’t slow down preemptively to study every possible obstacle.
Conviction compounds through motion.
Moving to Austin: global ambitions
Biorce is opening a new office in Austin, growing toward 100 people, and doubling down on R&D.
The move is about:
Access to talent
AI research velocity
Building a second A-team
Pedro sees it not as abandoning Europe but as expanding the company’s international center of gravity.
TAM vs TAP: what investors often miss
Pedro highlights a subtle but important distinction he believes many investors misunderstand:
TAM (Total Addressable Market)
vs
TAP (Total Addressable Platform potential)
Markets look one way on paper.
Platforms that reshape ecosystems expand the pie.
He references Uber as an example — few predicted its scale purely from TAM analysis.
In Biorce’s case, the ambition is not to serve an existing clinical trials market more efficiently. It’s to redefine how that ecosystem operates.
Barcelona misconceptions
One final note Pedro addresses is the stereotype.
Barcelona is sometimes perceived as slow-paced or relaxed.
Biorce ships at extreme speed.
They release new product capabilities monthly.
Their execution rhythm competes globally.
For Pedro, Europe’s biggest challenge isn’t talent or ambition but perception.
What’s next
The $52M Series A isn’t the finish line. It’s the beginning.
Immediate priorities:
Hiring across engineering, product, and operator roles
Expanding US operations
Accelerating AI research
Continuing to compress clinical trial timelines
The long-term ambition remains unchanged:
Transform clinical trials so fundamentally that the ecosystem never looks the same again.
One-line takeaway
Biorce isn’t just using AI to optimize clinical trials — it’s trying to rebuild the entire development lifecycle, with the conviction of a founder who has lived through why it matters.
