Get to know ACE startup founders & find out what drives them!

The ACE-List: We are proud and excited to introduce our awesome startup founders. The ACE-List is a regular installment where startup teams from the ACE Incubation Program introduce themselves and share a little insight into their startup journey!

Meet the founders!

Name(s): Claudia Persoon (PhD Neuroscience), Matthijs Verhage (Professor)
Company: Neurospector
Industry: Drug research and development
Founded in: 2019

In short

Neurospector performs drug screening for neurological and psychiatric disorders on human neurons.

Tell us more!

How did you come up with your startup idea?

Drug development for neurological and psychiatric disorders is very unsuccessful, while these disorders are very detrimental and have a huge impact on patients and society. We noticed that pharmaceutical companies are very interested in our research expertise to improve their drug discovery. So we decided to take the next step and start a company to work on the improvement of drug development for neurological disorders.

What is your company’s unique proposition?

Our expertise in measuring neuronal functioning in the lab and our high quality human neurons from patients themselves, provide a unique combination to study the function of new drug compounds. We improve drug development by testing on a representative model for humans in the lab.

What has been your ACE moment?

Pitching our startup at ACE Demo Day was a great opportunity to share our ideas with a large audience. We received great feedback, which is very encouraging and motivated us even more to continue with this journey.

What has the shift from academia to entrepreneurship been like for you

Our academic background is essential for Neurospector, we are leading experts into neuronal functioning and offer the latest techniques in neurosciences. During my PhD I learned to set up projects, be flexible and efficient and look outside my field of expertise for new insights. These skills are all very useful for starting a company.

What is the best advice you could give someone who wants to start their own business?

Go for it! Be confident in your own expertise and ask for help from experts on other topics, you will see that there are a lot of people willing to share their knowledge and insights with you.

What are your next steps for the coming months/half year?

We are going to extend our network, contact possible clients and setup collaborations to start new projects.