The Investment Thesis You Can Be Held To
A thesis binds only through its exclusions. LeverVenture's investment thesis as one table: what we underwrite and what we do not, by sector and by structure.
By Peleg Chevion, Managing Partner
9 min read · Life Sciences and Healthcare
In this note06 · 9 min
An investment thesis is useful only when it can be held against the firm that wrote it, and its exclusions are what make it binding. LeverVenture's thesis, set out here by Peleg Chevion with José Vasquéz as co-author, reduces to one table: what we underwrite and what we do not, sector by sector and structure by structure, with each row traceable to a page the firm has published.
01The Standard a Thesis Must Meet
A thesis written as a list of preferences cannot be failed, so it cannot be relied on. The firm's published thesis states the alternative directly: "A thesis that excludes nothing is not a thesis." Its exclusions are what turn the rest of the page from a preference into a commitment.
The thesis also names seven conditions and explains why they are public: so that a founder can disqualify the firm as quickly as the firm can disqualify the founder. The conditions are market, position, evidence, unit economics, management, exit logic and impact. They are not averaged. A company must meet all seven, and the thesis is specific about the consequence of missing one: it "is not a smaller position; it is a decline with a reason written down."
That rule governs the table below. Each entry in the right-hand column produces a decline on its own; it is not a weight that a strong score elsewhere can offset.
02The Mandate and Its Five Sectors
Life sciences and healthcare is the whole of the mandate. Inside it, the firm names five sectors: Biopharma & Therapeutics, Diagnostics & Precision Medicine, Devices & Robotics, Digital Health & Delivery, and Longevity & Neuro. Each has a published pillar page, and the thesis treats a sector as "a starting filter, never the thesis": mandate fit is decided on stage, position and the seven conditions, in that order.
Artificial intelligence is the accelerant across all five sectors and is never a sixth. The thesis underwrites it where it shortens a specific timeline in a specific company, and the firm's page on the AI layer credits that compression only when it appears in a dated record, such as an authorization, a coverage decision or a signed contract.
Crossing sectors is part of the thesis itself. A healthcare-driven company that is also deep tech in its engineering, that is also digital in the way it delivers care, or that carries a clean tech dimension, with an artificial intelligence layer that makes it work, is the company the firm looks for. The sector pages underwrite such a company as a single object, not only the half that fits a label.
03The Underwriting Table
Each row states a commitment in the firm's published words or a close paraphrase and names the page that makes it. Sector rows come first, then structure. A row that restates the firm's own posture rests on that published page alone. The company-size row instead takes its band from an outside definition of the mid-market, and published definitions differ by source.
| Row | We underwrite | We do not underwrite | Published basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Biopharma & Therapeutics | Companies whose clinical risk is substantially retired: an approved product in early launch, a late-stage asset with positive pivotal data and a defined filing plan, or an enabling business whose revenue already depends on approved products. Manufacturing, market access, reimbursement and exclusivity are underwritten as separate risks. | A program whose remaining question is whether the biology works. | Biopharma & Therapeutics pillar; thesis, section 14 |
| Diagnostics & Precision Medicine | A validated test with paying customers whose next constraint is coverage, payer contracting, laboratory capacity or a regulatory submission, underwritten on clinical utility, reimbursement and the ordering habit. | A test whose analytical risk is not yet retired, or an analytical validation file presented as proof of clinical utility. | Diagnostics & Precision Medicine pillar; thesis, figure 4 |
| Devices & Robotics | Instruments, machines, implants and software regulated as devices whose technical and clinical risk is substantially retired, underwritten on authorization, reimbursement and revenue per procedure, with scale-up, supplier qualification and the first reference accounts setting the date. | A device whose remaining risk is technical or clinical rather than commercial. | Devices & Robotics pillar; thesis, figure 4 |
| Digital Health & Delivery | Companies whose paying channel is proven and whose unit economics already hold at a small scale, read through acquisition cost, engagement and renewal in each payer channel. | A pilot list in place of repeatable commercial motion, or a product a clinician wants and nobody can pay for. | Digital Health & Delivery pillar; thesis, section 13 |
| Longevity & Neuro | Companies with a named indication, an endpoint regulators accept and a payer with a stated route to payment. A therapy aimed at the biology of aging is underwritten on the named disease, population and endpoint that can support a label. | A base case that depends on expansion into further age-related conditions. That expansion is treated as upside, not as the base case. | Longevity & Neuro pillar |
| The AI layer, across all five | A model underwritten as part of the regulatory record, with timeline compression credited only when a dated record shows it. | Artificial intelligence as a sector of its own, or a claimed acceleration with no dated record behind it. | AI as accelerant pillar; thesis, section 14 |
| Stage | The commercial inflection: the science is settled enough to be a company, the first real buyers exist, and the next constraint is commercial rather than scientific. | Early-stage science risk without clinical or commercial evidence. Whether the science works is a venture question. | Growth equity pillar; thesis, sections 5 and 14 |
| Ownership | Minority growth equity positions sized to matter to the company, led or co-led where the company wants an operator at the table, and shared where another investor is better placed to lead. | A controlling position. Every position the firm describes is a minority one. | Healthcare growth equity pillar; thesis, section 5 |
| Role | Operator-led value creation: a board or observer seat where the position warrants one, information rights, and a first-hundred-days operating plan agreed with management before terms. | Passive positions, meaning a check with a board observer seat attached, or a management team that does not want operators inside the work. | Thesis, sections 5, 11 and 14 |
| Company size | Middle-market companies, which the National Center for the Middle Market defines as U.S. companies with annual revenues between $10 million and $1 billion. The firm treats the band as a discipline on where it looks, not as a statement about its own scale. | Companies outside that band. The firm's healthcare page states that it limits its work to the band by choice. | Healthcare growth equity pillar |
| Geography | Companies that operate in the United States, with innovation sourced globally into that market; the United States and Israel primarily, together with the partnership's European relationships. | A company the partners cannot get to. | Thesis, sections 5 and 13 |
| Impact (ROI²) | One impact measure named at entry, with a baseline, an owner and a reporting cadence, under one of three outcomes: access to care, healthy life extended or system cost removed. | A company whose growth and good come apart under stress; a cost claim with no payer or provider measurably better off; a composite impact score assembled to look complete. | Thesis, sections 1, 2 and 6 |
| Decision rule | All seven conditions met, and a rating on the six-dimension LeverRating, expanded to ten dimensions for a device, a diagnostic or a therapeutic. | A company that misses any one condition, and a rating that holds under only one of the two rulers, which is reported as unresolved. | Thesis, sections 6 and 7 |
04The Authorities Behind the Exclusions
Several of the exclusions follow lines that federal law already draws. For a new drug, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act defines substantial evidence as "evidence consisting of adequate and well-controlled investigations, including clinical investigations" (21 U.S.C. §355(d)). The firm's position is that the boundary between a venture question and a growth question in Biopharma & Therapeutics sits where that evidence exists in human data, and a plan to generate it does not meet that line.
In diagnostics, 42 CFR §493.1253(b)(2) requires a laboratory that introduces a test system not subject to FDA clearance or approval, including a method developed in-house, to establish accuracy, precision, analytical sensitivity, analytical specificity and the other listed performance specifications before it reports patient results. Those are analytical properties. A file that satisfies the regulation shows that a test measures what it claims to measure; it does not show that the result changes what a clinician does next. The table separates the two for that reason.
For an AI-enabled device, section 515C of the same Act, codified at 21 U.S.C. §360e-4 and added in 2022, provides that a change to an approved device that is consistent with its approved predetermined change control plan requires no supplemental application, and that a change to a cleared device consistent with its cleared plan requires no new premarket notification. That is the dated record the AI row asks for: in the words of the firm's AI page, a model that changes after authorization either sits inside an authorized plan or turns each update into a regulatory event.
The structure rows follow market convention. Cambridge Associates describes growth equity investments as "typically minority stakes using little if any leverage at investment," often accompanied by negotiated negative control provisions and approval rights that mitigate the risks of owning a minority position. The operator-led role is the firm's addition to that convention: the thesis describes the work in its seat as operating work.
05What the Thesis Leaves Unpublished
The thesis is explicit that terms, structure and anything concerning the investment vehicle itself are discussed directly and are not published on a marketing page, and that nothing on the page is an offer of any security. The table follows the same rule and states no price, size or term.
The firm also publishes no diligence files, company names or investor relationships, and keeps no logo wall, because a logo wall is not evidence. No investment is approved by software: the firm's diligence methodology holds the file, enforces the evidence rule and applies the same scorecard to every company, but the committee decides and the partners sign the memorandum.
What remains public is the part that can be checked. A founder can test a company against the rows above before a first meeting, and every decision is written up so that a decline is as legible as an approval. A thesis held to that standard needs to promise no outcome. It needs to say, in advance and in writing, what it will refuse.
06Frequently asked questions
What does LeverVenture not underwrite?
The published thesis rules out unproven science, passive positions, artificial intelligence treated as a sector of its own, and companies the partners cannot get to. A company that misses any one of the seven conditions is declined with a written reason rather than offered a smaller position.
Is artificial intelligence one of LeverVenture's sectors?
No. Artificial intelligence is the accelerant across all five sectors: Biopharma & Therapeutics, Diagnostics & Precision Medicine, Devices & Robotics, Digital Health & Delivery, and Longevity & Neuro. It is credited where a dated record, such as an authorization, a coverage decision or a signed contract, shows that it shortened a specific timeline.
Does the thesis publish position sizes or terms?
No. The thesis states that terms, structure and anything concerning the investment vehicle are discussed directly and are not published. The underwriting table describes the shape of a position in general words, such as a minority growth equity position with an operating role, and states no price, size or term.
Nothing in this piece is investment, legal, tax or accounting advice, and nothing in it is an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security.
Three decades of operational leadership across agriculture, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, climate, food and defense. He has spent that career doing the work this seat requires: strategic partnerships, licensing and business development, executed transaction by transaction. He sits with a company as an operating partner and a growth strategist rather than as a name on its board. A corporate finance and intellectual property attorney, an INSEAD MBA, and a former Air Force officer in aerospace. He also brings strong private equity experience.