Vitalis Ortho's £1.2m pre-seed: our fastest ever deal

Written by Harrison Faull, co-founder of Aligned Syndicate. Harrison co-led this round and Aligned Syndicate is powered by ThatRound.

Our allocation in Vitalis Ortho filled in under six hours. The fastest in Aligned Syndicate's history.

The round closed in June, oversubscribed at £1.2m, co-led by Zinc and Aligned, with orthopaedic surgeons among the angels investing their own money. When a deal moves that fast, it's worth understanding why. The answer is simple: the founders. Previously exited from an adjacent healthcare company, mission driven, uniquely positioned to build the best knee replacement in the world.

The gap in knee osteoarthritis care

365 million people live with knee osteoarthritis globally [1], and the patients hit hardest are often active people under 65. Too young for a knee replacement, which carries a 1-in-3 lifetime revision risk when prescribed prematurely, but in too much pain to simply wait.

Vitalis Ortho is building a device for exactly that gap: a joint-preserving pathway for patients who've failed conservative treatment but aren't yet candidates for knee replacement. The funding supports device testing and early preclinical validation on the way to first-in-human use.

A team that's done it before

Olly Morgan and Mac Tuncer are repeat founders with PhDs in biomechanics and knee replacement, and have built and exited a leading orthopaedics company in ~4 years.

At Aligned Syndicate, we only present top quality deals to our members each month. Repeat founders with a medical device exit, working on a problem this well defined, cleared that bar quickly.

The round

The £1.2m pre-seed was co-led by Zinc and Aligned, with participation from:

Orthopaedic Research UK
Innovate UK Growth Catalyst
A group of angels that includes exited entrepreneurs and orthopaedic surgeons

When orthopaedic surgeons back a knee device with their own money, that's validation from the people closest to the problem.

The allocation was gone in under six hours, which made for a memorable signature. I was travelling when the documents landed, so I co-led this round from Machu Picchu, signing at 3am on one flickering bar of 4G. Deals this good don't wait for good signal.

What this deal says

Rounds like this are why we formed Aligned Syndicate: back proven teams, do the work properly, and move at the speed good founders deserve.

If you're an angel investor and this is the kind of deal you want to see before it's gone, get in touch. And if you're a founder raising: we source and manage our deal flow through ThatRound. If you want to be in front of investor groups like Aligned, that's where to start.

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