The Spark of Opportunity
Surbhi Sarna and Nate Smith found each other amid a broader transformation in healthcare and AI. Sarna, an experienced medtech serial entrepreneur, had started nVision Medical after a personal health challenge and created a novel early ovarian-cancer detection device, which was acquired by Boston Scientific in 2018.
While working in healthcare, Sarna encountered a recurring pain point: in life sciences — whether diagnostics, medical devices, or drugs — development is slowed not just by science but by documentation, regulatory data, and compliance workflows. Her insight: What if the paperwork and documentation processes could be dramatically sped up using AI and automation?
Nate Smith brought complementary experience. Previously the founder of Lever (talent-acquisition software), as well as a Visiting Partner at Y Combinator, he understood building software platforms with scale and mature product experience.
Together they set out to build Collate, a platform that uses AI and automation to streamline documentation in life sciences — from research and trials through regulatory submission, enabling companies to spend less time on “busy work” and more time on life-saving work.
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Founders & Roles
- Surbhi Sarna (CEO & Founder): Her background spans molecular biology (at UC Berkeley), med-device startup founder and exit (nVision → Boston Scientific). She was a General Partner at Y Combinator leading its healthcare practice. Collate is her next chapter, grounded in her lived experience of frustrating process hurdles in life sciences.
- Nate Smith (CTO & Co-Founder): Having founded Lever and worked with Y Combinator, Nate brings software scale, engineering leadership and product discipline. At Collate he leads technology, product architecture and engineering execution.
The combination — a founder who deeply understands life-science workflows (Sarna) and a founder who deeply understands SaaS & platform engineering (Smith) — is a strong pairing for tackling the complex interface between biotech/regulatory and software.
Building the Platform: What Collate Does
Collate positions itself as an AI-native enterprise platform for life-sciences documentation and workflow. According to their site:
“Accelerate life-saving innovations by creating accurate documentation for the life sciences industry… automate paperwork at every stage of development and commercialization.”
Key features and positioning:
- Supports medical-device, diagnostic, pharmaceutical companies with document generation, regulatory documentation, submissions and workflow.
- Leverages large language models (LLMs), natural-language processing and AI-automated drafting to reduce human hours in tedious documentation.
- Claims global scale & enterprise ambition: The startup announced a US$30 million seed round in January 2025.
- Their tech stack is modern: According to job listings, they use React/TypeScript, Python for AI/ML, Go for backend, AWS/Kubernetes infrastructure.
Sarna states that the documentation burden in life sciences is enormous, and Collate’s mission is to reduce time-to-market for drugs/devices by automating “the paperwork” so innovators can focus on science.
Traction & Growth
Although still early-stage, Collate has achieved significant early momentum:
- The seed funding of US$30 m validates investor belief in the founders and market.
- The company is headquartered in San Francisco and attracts talent across AI, life-sciences and software to build a high-performing engineering team.
- Reports indicate that they are already building enterprise-grade workflows for regulated industries and have backing from top investors (Redpoint, First Round, Conviction) alongside YC-links.
Their market is vast: life-sciences companies constantly dealing with regulatory documents, quality systems, clinical trials paperwork — automating this is not just incremental but high-value, low-velocity (high stickiness) business. Sarna is quoted as saying its “low velocity, high contract value” business.
Challenges & Leadership Insights
Building software for the regulated life-sciences industry brings unique challenges:
- Compliance & Regulation: Unlike many SaaS markets, life sciences require high regulatory standards, audit trails, quality management, validation and security. Collate must meet these demands.
- Domain Complexity: The workflows Sarna experienced as an entrepreneur (in nVision) — from R&D to regulatory submission — are complex, vary by device/drug/region, and are deeply domain-specific. Translating them into software abstractions is non-trivial.
- AI Trust & Accuracy: In regulated industries, automation errors can have huge consequences. Collate’s founders emphasise reliability, traceability, and human-in-the-loop. From job posts: the engineering stack emphasises “systems that touch real patients and providers”, “impact and safety matter deeply”.
- Go-to-Market: Selling to enterprise life-science companies typically involves long sales cycles, high reliability and heavy customization. The founding team (with Sarna’s startup exit experience) knows that speed plus product-market fit matter.
- Scaling Talent & Tech: From job listings, Collate is hiring senior engineers, AI researchers, implementing infrastructure; scaling has to maintain quality and domain specificity.
Sarna’s leadership philosophy emphasises that the business must have both science credibility and software execution. She has said that what she lacked in her first startup (paperwork friction) is what she now aims to eliminate in her next. She wants to build a culture where software profoundly supports healthcare impact.
Why Their Story Matters
The Collate story is compelling for a few key reasons:
- Mission-driven + tech-driven: Sarna’s personal experience in healthcare innovation plus Smith’s software platform expertise shows how founders with deep domain insight can partner with those who know scale.
- Addressing a “boring but huge” problem: Documentation, regulatory compliance and workflow in life sciences is not glamorous, but it’s essential — and Collate’s focus on that pain point positions them well.
- Bridging life-sciences & AI: Many startups focus on consumer apps or generic enterprise SaaS; Collate is specifically building for regulated, high-stakes science and healthcare. That intersection is difficult but high-value.
- Early momentum & credibility: The high seed funding, team background and domain validation suggest this is not just a concept but a serious platform play.
- Potential for real impact: If Collate succeeds in reducing time-to-market for medical innovations, the downstream impact on patients and care could be significant.
The Future: Vision & Next Steps
Looking ahead, Collate will likely start focusing on some strategic areas:
- Expanding product capability: Greater integration into workflows for clinical-trial, regulatory submission modules, quality management systems, device and drug life-cycle workflows.
- Scaling enterprise adoption: Moving from seed-proof to enterprise rollout; gathering case-studies, building platform reliability, global regulation support (US, EU, Asia).
- Talent & engineering scale: Hiring across AI/ML, backend infrastructure, healthcare domain experts; scaling the software architecture for solidity and compliance.
- Building partnerships: Partnering with life-sciences companies, CROs (clinical research organisations), device/diagnostic manufacturers, regulatory-consulting firms to embed Collate as the documentation backbone.
- Defining a brand of “AI for life-sciences workflow”: Differentiating in AI enterprise space by focusing on workflow automation in regulated industries (as opposed to generic productivity or CRM).
