About
Chao Zheng
I help life science founders, investors, and executives turn complexity into conviction in early-stage healthcare innovation. Zonvic is built on the view of someone who has run development programs and also evaluated companies as an investor, because those two vantage points disagree more often than founders expect, and the disagreement is usually where a round is won or lost.
Zonvic is now a curated network for early-stage life science founders rather than a service sold by the hour. The reason is simple: the problems founders in this field face do not resolve in a single conversation, and the most useful perspective is rarely only mine. A network lets the work continue as a company develops, and lets founders learn from each other as well as from me.
What has not changed is who reads your company. Applications and feedback come to me directly. There is no associate, no delivery team, and no handoff.
An operator across the drug development lifecycle
More than fourteen years in pharmaceutical R&D, spanning discovery research and development, project leadership, strategy, external innovation, and CMC execution. That is the full arc of turning early science into real programs, including the stretches that rarely appear in a pitch and frequently appear in diligence.
That operator's background is what lets Zonvic engage with the science itself rather than only with how it is presented. It is the same lens an experienced life sciences investor brings to a first meeting, applied before that meeting happens.
An angel investor and advisor
As an angel investor and advisor, my work focuses on the questions that determine whether promising science can become a durable company:
- Is the problem meaningful?
- Is the evidence credible?
- Is the path realistic?
- Is the team complete?
- Are the key risks being reduced in a way that investors, partners, and future acquirers can trust?
Those are the same questions Zonvic asks of your company, before an investor does. They come from recurring patterns across many companies and conversations, never from any single company's confidential materials. Every founder gets the benefit of that broader experience while their own information stays theirs alone. How your materials are stored and handled is set out in the Privacy Policy.
I have written the whole method down. The Zonvic Investor Framework sets out the areas an experienced investor works through and what well-prepared companies tend to show, and it is published in full because a founder who works through it independently is better off either way.
Read The Zonvic Investor FrameworkThe best science doesn't always win the round. The best-prepared founders do.
Build your company alongside other founders
Apply to join the Zonvic Founder Network: candid feedback, investor readiness support, and founders working through the same problems.
Membership is currently free for accepted founders.
Prefer to start with a single working session? Investor Readiness Advisory can be booked directly, and Fundraising Partnership runs alongside an active raise. Both are optional and separate from membership.