Sorbby Sarna, founder and CEO of Collate, discusses how her AI-driven startup aims to automate and streamline the complex paperwork processes in life sciences, potentially accelerating regulatory filings and enhancing cross-functional collaboration. Drawing from her experience in healthcare and life sciences, she emphasizes the unique opportunity AI presents today, the importance of patient-centered innovation, and the positive reception of AI within the industry.
In this interview, Amy Feldman, senior editor at Forbes, speaks with Sorbby Sarna, founder and CEO of Collate, a San Francisco-based startup that leverages AI to automate the extensive paperwork required in life sciences companies. Collate recently emerged from stealth mode and was named one of Forbes’ Next Billion-Dollar Startups. Sorbby shares that the past six months have been both exhilarating and demanding, emphasizing that the current technological landscape, especially with AI, presents a unique and exciting opportunity reminiscent of the early days of the internet.
Sorbby’s journey to founding Collate began during her time at Y Combinator, where she was the first general partner focused on life sciences and healthcare software. Having previously founded a life sciences company herself, she recognized the overwhelming burden of paperwork in product development and saw the potential of large language models (LLMs) to transform this process. After unsuccessfully trying to find existing solutions, she felt compelled to start Collate herself, driven by a deep personal and professional motivation to streamline the product development lifecycle in life sciences.
Reflecting on her entrepreneurial path, Sorbby contrasts her current venture with her previous company, which focused on early detection of ovarian cancer. She notes the significant differences in fundraising environments, with AI currently being a hot space attracting more investor interest. Despite these differences, she maintains the same customer-centric approach, valuing validation from physicians and patients over investor validation. This focus on real-world impact remains central to how she builds and scales her company.
Sorbby discusses the transformative potential of AI in healthcare and life sciences, predicting that it could accelerate the regulatory filing process by up to five times and enable simultaneous multi-country filings. She highlights the complexity of paperwork in the industry, which involves cross-functional collaboration and stringent safety checks, and explains how Collate’s AI-driven platform aims to reduce silos and automate these workflows. She expresses enthusiasm for dedicating the next decade to this mission, underscoring the importance of patience and commitment in building such a comprehensive product.
Finally, Sorbby shares some unexpected positive experiences, noting that the life sciences community has been more receptive to AI solutions than she anticipated. She attributes this openness partly to the increasing personal use of AI tools among professionals. Offering advice to other founders, she encourages them to seize the current moment, describing it as a warm and rewarding time to innovate with AI. She concludes by expressing gratitude for the opportunity to build impactful technology that ultimately helps patients, emphasizing the deep fulfillment that comes from this work.