Welcome Lucia Rodriguez Lacasa to the healthtech investment team

News, by AlbionVC

Healthtech

Posted
April 20 2026

Welcome to the team! Tell us a little about yourself

I started in science – Biotechnology at Edinburgh, with a year at UCLA. My honours project was in bioinformatics, mining hospital microbiome data for therapeutic opportunities. It was my first real brush with the gap between what science can do and what actually reaches patients. That gap never really left me.

I then spent three and a half years at Goldman on the trading floor. I learned a lot – central bank cycles, navigating the volatility that came with the Russia invasion, supply chain chaos. But I kept feeling like I was a step removed from anything being built.

I moved into venture building at Mavie Next, where I helped launch an at-home diagnostics startup, then into early-stage investing in digital health and biotech. That combination – scientist, operator, investor – is ultimately what led me to VC. I love being close to the science and the people building with it. And honestly, getting to learn from founders who are years deeper into a problem than I’ll ever be is a privilege I don’t take lightly.

What’s a moment that shaped your interest in healthtech?

During my MBA I worked on a venture around paediatric speech therapy – specifically for children with Developmental Language Disorders. It was partly personal; someone close to me had experienced speech delay, so it wasn’t just an abstract problem.

We spent weeks talking to speech therapists and parents. What we heard was hard. NHS waiting lists of up to a year just for a first diagnosis. Parents in limbo. Clinicians who were brilliant and dedicated but under-resourced – no tools, no infrastructure, no way to scale their impact.

It crystallised for me that healthcare is a space where the cost of not building is real and visible. Reimbursement, workflow integration, regulatory complexity are reasons why investors normally shy away from it but it’s exactly why the right people need to be in the room.

What areas of healthtech are you particularly excited about?

Two areas in particular:

1. AI-enabled clinical infrastructure: Tools that remove friction from clinical workflows – documentation, triage, decision support – and give time back to clinicians.

2. Clinical trials acceleration and research tech: Platforms speeding up patient recruitment, remote monitoring, trial data capture, and even predictive modelling to boost trial efficiency and success. We have players in this space but we have yet to see a player emerge in the UK.

What values do you think are important when working in VC?

Empathy and intellectual honesty.

On empathy – I’ve been on the other side. At Mavie Next I was doing venture building, which means I know what it feels like to cold contact 100 people for customer discovery, to spend weeks on something that doesn’t work, to pour everything into a pitch. None of that gets talked about in investor meetings, but it shapes how I show up for founder meetings now. In practice that means always taking the time to give feedback when I pass, being upfront about timeline and process so founders aren’t left hanging, and giving kudos where it’s due!

On intellectual honesty – the trading floor taught me that being wrong is expensive, and that being vague is never kind. I’d rather tell a founder something difficult and direct than leave them with false encouragement.

When you meet a founder early, what are the 3 signals that make you lean in?

First, founder-market fit.The best founders have an almost unfair relationship with the problem they’re solving – they’ve lived it, or spent years closer to it than anyone else. That gives me conviction early.

Second, their ability to pitch. I think this is underrated. A crisp problem framing and a clear GTM narrative tells me a lot more than the deck itself. In healthtech especially, if a founder can’t break down complex science into a simple, compelling message, they won’t be able to sell, recruit or raise. The best scientific founders I’ve met can do all three.

Third, how structured and driven they are on the call itself. Do they send materials ahead of time? Do they manage the time without me steering? Do they leave room for questions and come with a clear ask? The founders who impress me most are prepared, composed under pushback, and already thinking in a structured way about the plan they’re running.

What is something we wouldn’t know about you from your LinkedIn?

I had an R&B radio show at university – I’d interview friends about their music taste and occasionally artists too. One highlight was interviewing Hoodie Allen, which still feels surreal. It came from a deep curiosity about people and what makes them tick – I’ve always loved learning from whoever is in the room.

That thread runs through everything, honestly. I read fiction as a way to decompress but also to immerse myself in a different culture or history – Donna Tartt’s The Secret History is the perfect example of a book where I came out knowing far more about Ancient Greece than I expected. And I think it’s a big part of why I love investing – you get to meet founders who’ve spent years going deeper on a problem than almost anyone else, and your job is to learn from them as much as evaluate them. I feel very lucky that curiosity is essentially the job description.

What is the best piece of advice you have received?

Be patient. Invest in your career as a long-term play – even if that means making less money in the short term.

I made a conscious decision when I left Goldman to optimise for learning and impact over salary. It wasn’t the obvious move, but the path into VC wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

What is one book you would recommend?

I’ll cheat and give two – one fiction, one non-fiction. Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst, which I recently finished. It pulls you into the world of a West End actor in 1960s London in a way that’s completely immersive. Then, Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. Ostensibly about hostage negotiation, it’s really a masterclass in listening, asking better questions, and understanding what someone actually wants versus what they’re saying. I’d recommend it to anyone – founder, investor, or otherwise.