HealthTech Hiring and Growth: A Q&A With SciPro's George Carroll Ahead of HLTH

For early-stage HealthTech companies, building the right team is a critical part of navigating growth. With funding pressures, evolving commercial priorities, and increasing scrutiny around hiring decisions, founders must carefully consider when and where to invest in talent.

Ahead of HLTH, we spoke with George Carroll, Head of SciPro USA, about the challenges facing early-stage HealthTech businesses, the importance of strategic hiring, and how founders can make informed talent decisions while managing limited resources.

With SciPro's focus on supporting Seed to Series B companies across HealthTech, MedTech, and Biotech, George shares his insights on everything from go-to-market priorities and capital efficiency to senior recruitment and US market expansion.

In your conversations with HealthTech founders and leaders, what’s coming up most often as they plan for the year ahead?

Most of the founders we work with are early stage, often pre-revenue or with only their first few customers, and that shapes every conversation. The biggest theme is go-to-market, how to take the product to market, what we’ve seen comparable companies do, and how they executed each stage. Close behind is capital efficiency. With funding harder to secure, founders are thinking carefully about runway, and every hire is weighed against how many months of cash it costs.

How do you help a founder work out which hire their business needs next, particularly when there are several competing priorities?

We start with the business, not the role. We take the time to understand the product, the market, and what the founder needs to achieve in the short and medium term. From there, we want to understand, what is the biggest risk to the business over the next 12 months? Is it product, regulatory, commercial traction, or the next raise? The next hire should be the one that reduces that risk. It doesn’t always need to be a permanent hire either. Contract and interim hires can be a smart way to fill a gap while the longer-term picture becomes clearer.

What do you wish more early-stage businesses considered before making a senior hire?

Simply: do you really need this hire? Or is it happening because other companies at your stage have made it and it feels like the norm? Cash is usually the biggest constraint on growth, so a versatile person who can solve several problems at once is often worth more than a narrow specialist. If the hire is the right move, be clear on what success looks like in the first six to twelve months before you start the search. If you can’t define it, the person you hire will struggle too. Finally, think about how you’ll compete for talent. Early-stage companies often can’t match big-company salaries, so equity, mission, and the scope of the role need to do the work.

What makes you confident that SciPro can be a useful partner to a HealthTech business? It would be great to hear an example if possible.

We focus specifically on Seed to Series B companies across Biotech, HealthTech, and MedTech, so early-stage challenges are what we deal with every day, not an occasional project. And we’ll be honest with you, even when it isn’t the answer that earns us the most. A recent example: a small, bootstrapped TechBio company asked whether they should keep working with their CRO or bring the work in house with one or more full-time hires. We advised them to keep the CRO and bring in an advisor with the expertise they were missing, treating it as a trial period. If the relationship works, that advisor can step into a full-time role. Recommending they drop the CRO and hire a team would have been far more lucrative for us, but it wasn’t the right call for them. We want to be a partner from start to finish, not an agency that shows up for one transaction.

Who would you most like to connect with at HLTH, and what would make it a useful conversation for them?

Founders who are pre-revenue or working with their first few customers, and European HealthTech companies looking at the US market. We’ve worked with a wide range of early-stage companies and seen what drives success and what leads to failure, and we can open up our network so you can tap into the experts we’ve worked alongside. As a founder you should be protective of your company, and that’s exactly why you should gather as many perspectives on growth as you can, rather than relying only on your investors and close peers. If you’re working out your next hire, or whether you need one at all, come and find me. Even a 15-minute conversation could save you a costly mistake.

Connect With SciPro at HLTH

For early-stage HealthTech businesses, an effective hiring strategy starts with understanding the company's immediate priorities, commercial objectives, and potential risks. As George's insights highlight, making the right talent decisions is not always about growing headcount, but about identifying the expertise needed to support sustainable growth.

George Carroll, Head of SciPro USA, and Lauren Placencia, Senior Consultant at SciPro in New York, will both be attending HLTH. Whether you're navigating your next senior hire, evaluating your talent strategy, or exploring expansion into the US market, the team welcomes the opportunity to connect.

Attending HLTH? Get in touch with George or Lauren to arrange a conversation about your HealthTech recruitment needs and growth plans.