The entrepreneurial journey: “We were left with the feeling that everything was crumbling in our hands.”

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The ecstasy coincides with the signing of the investment agreement, but it can quickly turn into a trip to the coal cellar if product development fails or the market turns.

All entrepreneurs experience big ups and downs. We focus on them in “The Entrepreneur Journey”, where every week an inspiring entrepreneur gets the opportunity to share their experiences, challenges and triumphs from startup life.

Having grown up with a mother suffering from an incurable lung disease, Line Debois, a PhD in nanoscience, has had a burning desire to help sick patients.

The dream came closer when, during a research project in 2019, she developed a prototype that can measure the amount of drugs in the blood. This was the start of the company MedicQuant, shortening the time from diagnosis to treatment for patients with blood clots in the brain.

What has been the wildest moment in your entrepreneurial journey?

A lot of crazy things have happened in the almost five years I’ve been an entrepreneur. Raising money in isolation has been a rollercoaster ride, so the wildest moment is when we raised 12 million DKK in our first chapter round last spring.

Before we raised the money, we were about to close a deal with a business angel that was actually as good as home. We were just waiting for him to sign, but he dropped out at the last minute. The box was running low and we were left with the feeling that everything was crumbling in our hands. It was intense, but today I’m glad he resigned because we weren’t a good match and I’m convinced he did us all a favor.

In turn, we found others, so suddenly we had a private equity fund and EIFO ready to invest in us. And on the flip side of it all, we’ve also celebrated several times. Because even though it ended a bit anticlimactically with us all sitting at home late one night and signing with NemID, it ended pretty well anyway.

What is the most important thing you’ve learned about yourself on your journey?

That you can do much more than you think. Being an entrepreneur means you’re constantly on a steep learning curve that never flattens out.

There are always new things that you need to sit down and learn about in order to solve the new problems you encounter. And you probably never really get to crawl back into your comfort zone. So it’s really important to have the right people around you – because you can’t do it alone.

Just last week I came home late and was in total despair. I was facing a problem with a customer that I was neither trained nor educated for. But somehow we managed to solve it – as always.

Where do you hope to be on your entrepreneurial journey in five years?

It takes a long time to develop medical devices, so I hope that in five years we will have an approved product that has entered both the US and European markets.

We really need to scale and grow. This requires us to expand the team and bring new skills into the company. Right now there are only three of us, so I’m really looking forward to the scaling up journey. Looking forward to. that we build a good culture where there is room for a good balance. MedicQuant is my brainchild, so even when we face resistance, I will try to be present and enjoy it.

So I hope we achieve the mission – to help patients. Because my goal is to be able to help as many patients as possible.