Companisto • CrystalsFirst
Aktien-Crowdfunding
CrystalsFirst
DeepTech startup for drug development: patented crystallography and AI platform accelerating drug discovery for international pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
Key project data
Target amount
0,85 MEUR
Valuations
8,0 MEUR
Potenzielle Rendite
946%
Erwartetes Austrittsjahr
2030
Would AI invest?
50/100
1
100
KI-generierte Übersicht
AI project overview
Condensed summary based on project data
<p><span style="font-size:19pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>CrystalsFirst GmbH — Crowdfunding Investor Memo</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><em>A German laboratory company that grows and analyses protein crystals, and combines the resulting 3D pictures with its own artificial-intelligence software, so that pharmaceutical and biotech companies can design new medicines faster.</em></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Sector: </strong>DeepTech — structural biology and AI-assisted drug discovery<strong> · Stage: </strong>Seed<strong> · HQ: </strong>Marburg (registered) and Hamburg (operations), Germany<strong> · Raise: </strong>€850,000 on Companisto</span></span></p> <div style="border-bottom:solid #8fa9c4 1.5pt; padding:0in 0in 3.0pt 0in"> <h1><span style="font-size:14.5pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Snapshot</span></span></h1> </div> <table cellspacing="0" class="Table" style="border-collapse:collapse; border:none; width:6.5in"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f0f4f8; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:167px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">1 · Is the price fair? 💶</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#faece7; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:457px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">2 / 5</span></strong><span style="color:black"> — above the benchmarks we could find. The company is priced at €8.0m before this round, which is 5.2 times its 2025 sales. The two closest public reference points in the same line of business sit at around 1.0 to 1.3 times sales: Evotec, the listed German drug-discovery company (stock market value roughly $0.9–1.1bn against sales above €850m), and Charles River's February 2026 sale of its European discovery business — which explicitly included structural-biology services — to IQVIA for about $145m on $144m of 2025 sales.</span></span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f0f4f8; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:167px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">2 · Can they reach an exit stage? ⭐</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#faece7; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:457px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">AI SCORE 50 / 100 — Capped, deal terms</span></strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">The strongest evidence is the science and the people behind it: the company is a confirmed spin-off from Professor Gerhard Klebe's laboratory at the University of Marburg, sits inside Germany's national synchrotron centre DESY in Hamburg, and its named customers and research partnerships check out against public sources. The largest concern is that the terms of this particular offer allow outcomes far below the advertised return while giving an investor no way out — read the deal-terms box below before anything else. Sales also fell in 2025, and the first four months of 2026 are running behind both the plan and the year before.</span></span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f0f4f8; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:167px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">3 · If they do, what could it pay? 🎯</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#f0f4f8; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:457px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">Target 10.5× over 4.5 years</span></strong><span style="color:black"> — the company's and the platform's own figure, advertised as 946% in total and 69% a year. For that to be paid, the whole company would have to be sold for roughly €95m–€141m. In cash terms that is smaller than drug-discovery deals on record — Recursion bought Exscientia for about $688m in 2024, and Otsuka bought the fragment-based discovery company Astex for about $886m in 2013 — but it would need a price of about 1.9 to 2.7 times the company's own 2030 sales plan, roughly double the 1.0 to 1.3 times we found for comparable businesses. On those same benchmarks, a successful sale could correspond to roughly 4× to 9× before fees. These figures do not include dilution from future fundraising rounds, which would reduce actual returns — see the dilution section.</span></span></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>How to read the score</strong></span></span></p> <table cellspacing="0" class="Table" style="border-collapse:collapse; border:none; width:6.5in"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="background-color:#d9ebc2; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:167px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">85–100 · Excellent</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:457px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">All key preconditions for reaching an exit stage are evidenced and strong — rare at this stage</span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#faeeda; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:167px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">70–84 · Good</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:457px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Preconditions largely in place, with specific gaps — named in the questions section</span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#faece7; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:167px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">50–69 · Average</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:457px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Meaningful preconditions missing or weakly evidenced</span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#fcebeb; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:167px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">30–49 · Weak</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:457px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Several core preconditions absent, or the evidence points against them</span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#fcebeb; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:167px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">1–29 · Critical</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:457px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Fundamental preconditions are not visible in the evidence</span></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p> </p> <table cellspacing="0" class="Table" style="border-collapse:collapse; border:none; width:6.5in"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f0f4f8; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">What we could check. </span></strong><span style="color:black">We verified the company's origin, its founder, its base at the DESY research centre, its joint project with DESY, its licensing relationship with NexMR, the existence of a patent application for its crystal-soaking method, and every drug-discovery deal the platform cites as a comparison — all against named public sources. Twenty-two claims were tested: nine confirmed, four confirmed with an important caveat about how they were presented, three partly confirmed, three not found either way, one that could not be tested because no counterparty or amount was given, and none contradicted. We found no litigation, insolvency filing or regulatory action against the company, its founders or the investment vehicle. The company's own operating figures — customer numbers, the size of its data collection, and the 2026 sales plan — rest on its own materials and on the accounts it supplied. See the questions section.</span></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">Your money is locked in. </span></strong><span style="color:black">Crowdfunding investments normally cannot be sold early — expect your money to be tied up for several years, until the company is sold or a similar event happens. Here the certificates cannot be ended by ordinary notice before the end of the 2041 financial year.</span></span></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Three answers, one honest note. </strong>The fairness score says whether the entry price is supported by the industry benchmarks we could find. The AI Score is our read on whether the building blocks needed to reach a stage where a sale or similar event can happen are actually visible in the evidence — it is a readiness check, not a probability of success, and even companies with every building block in place fail more often than they succeed, which is why this kind of investing only works as a small part of a spread-out portfolio. The returns range is an illustration built from named industry benchmarks, not a forecast. Where something was not in the pack we reviewed, it did not lower any score — it appears in the questions list instead, so you can ask the company directly before investing. The listing was reviewed by a licensed crowdfunding platform before it went live. Nothing here is a recommendation.</span></span></p> <div style="border-bottom:solid #8fa9c4 1.5pt; padding:0in 0in 3.0pt 0in"> <h1><span style="font-size:14.5pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">At a glance</span></span></h1> </div> <table cellspacing="0" class="Table" style="border-collapse:collapse; border:none; width:6.5in"> <thead> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:312px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">✅ Three reasons to look closer</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:312px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">⚠️ Three reasons for caution</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:312px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The science and the setting are real and independently confirmed. The company is a spin-off from Professor Gerhard Klebe's group at the University of Marburg, has been based at Germany's national synchrotron centre DESY in Hamburg since 2022, works metres from the P11 X-ray beamline, and runs a joint project with DESY called LigandML that DESY itself announced in December 2023.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">It has paying international customers and published partners. Named clients include Merck KGaA, AiCuris, KSQ Therapeutics, Flindr Therapeutics and Think Bioscience; the chief executive has stated publicly that clients come from the USA, South Korea, Japan and Europe; a Hamburg city publication recorded more than 40 completed collaborations as of February 2025.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">It has secured more than €1m of grant money it does not have to repay — €912k from IFB Hamburg for the LigandML 2 project and €160k from the Jülich Project Management Agency running to 2028 — and it built a new laboratory in Hamburg during 2025, publicly reported as a seven-figure investment.</span></span></li> </ul> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:312px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Sales went backwards and the company moved from profit to loss. The accounts supplied show 2024 sales of €2,005,999.88 and a profit of €444,266.30, against 2025 sales of €1,530,414.47 and a loss of €870,445.57. German domestic sales fell 57.5%. The 2024 figures do not appear in the presentation or in the platform's analysis.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The balance sheet at 31 December 2025 shows no remaining shareholders' funds at all, and carries a shortfall of €272,263.89 on the asset side. Cash was €145,729.78 against bank borrowings of €2,223,908.74 on which repayments began in December 2025 and June 2026.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Trading so far in 2026 is behind plan. Sales for January to April were €408,871.44 against a full-year plan of €2,107,847 — about a fifth of the plan in a third of the year, and about 20% below the average monthly rate of 2025.</span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p> </p> <table cellspacing="0" class="Table" style="border-collapse:collapse; border:none; width:6.5in"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="background-color:#fcebeb; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">⚠️ Deal terms — read before anything else. </span></strong><span style="color:black">Two features of this offer work against the advertised return, and both are written into the documents supplied.</span></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">First, one euro in five never reaches the company. </span></strong><span style="color:black">The certificate terms state that the vehicle issuing them will use the money paid in "except for i) a flat-rate administrative fee equal to 10% of the paid-in participation certificate capital … and ii) a placement fee amounting to 10% of the paid-in participation certificate capital … for the acquisition of the Target interest" (Participation Certificate Terms, clause 3.1.1). A further deduction for issuing and transaction costs sits in clause 3.1.2 and is not given a figure in the pack we reviewed. So €100 invested buys about €80 of exposure to CrystalsFirst, and the underlying stake has to grow by 25% before you are back to your starting point.</span></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">Second, a majority can force you to sell at a price that would leave you with a loss. </span></strong><span style="color:black">The shareholders' agreement lets a 75% majority compel every shareholder to sell (a "drag-along"), and sets the floor price at "at least the par value of the amounts paid in by the seed investors into the company's share capital, plus all additional payments made by them into the company's capital reserve (the 'Minimum Price')" (Seed Shareholders' Agreement, clauses 12.1 and 12.2). Because only about 80% of what you subscribe reaches the company, a forced sale at exactly that floor returns roughly 0.80× of what you paid — a loss of about a fifth — and you could not refuse. A separate clause sets a floor of 1.5× for a fast-tracked sale after five years (clause 18.3), which works out at roughly 1.20× of what you paid, or about 3.7% a year.</span></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">What this means for the advertised 946% return. </span></strong><span style="color:black">The contract permits outcomes far below it while giving you no way out: the certificates cannot be ended by ordinary notice before the end of the 2041 financial year (Participation Certificate Terms, clause 4.1.1), and any earlier termination needs unanimous agreement among holders of at least 25% of all certificates (clause 4.1.3). Verify all of this against the German-language originals of the Participation Certificate Terms and the Seed Shareholders' Agreement before investing — the versions supplied are machine translations, and the issuer states that only the German text is legally binding.</span></span></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p> </p> <table cellspacing="0" class="Table" style="border-collapse:collapse; border:none; width:6.5in"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="background-color:#e6f1fb; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">ℹ️ Information, not investment advice. </span></strong><span style="color:black">Capital at risk — you could lose the full amount invested. Full notes are at the end of this memo.</span></span></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <div style="border-bottom:solid #8fa9c4 1.5pt; padding:0in 0in 3.0pt 0in"> <h1><span style="font-size:14.5pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">🏢 What the company does</span></span></h1> </div> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">CrystalsFirst grows crystals of the proteins involved in disease, then fires X-rays at them to produce a precise three-dimensional picture of how a candidate drug molecule attaches itself. That picture is the blueprint a chemist needs in order to design a medicine. The company's core method, which it calls SmartSoak, is a way of soaking candidate molecules into fragile protein crystals without cracking them — the step where standard laboratory protocols most often fail. It has added two further techniques: SmartDEL, a way of testing millions of molecules at once using DNA tags, bought from a Dresden company called DyNAbind; and SmartSpin, a magnetic-resonance screening method licensed from a company called NexMR. On top of these sits its own artificial-intelligence software, FragAI, which the company reports is trained on the 3D structures its own laboratory produces.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The customers are pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The company reports about ten active international clients, with named partners including Merck KGaA, AiCuris, KSQ Therapeutics, Flindr Therapeutics and Think Bioscience. Most income today comes from project work: the company reports that a typical campaign is priced above €100,000. It is trying to shift towards two other ways of earning — deals in which it takes a share of a drug's eventual success instead of a fee, and, later, generating its own drug candidates to license to large pharmaceutical companies. Sales were €2,005,999.88 in 2024 and €1,530,414.47 in 2025.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The company was founded in 2018 in Marburg as a spin-off from Professor Gerhard Klebe's research group at the university there, and moved its main operations to the DESY research campus in Hamburg in 2022. The platform's analysis states it has a 19-person team. This raise is intended to fund a first version of a customer-facing software product, a structured sales effort, more of the company's own data for training AI models, automation of more than 25 laboratory workflows, and a first demonstration of an automated path from a gene to a drug lead. The company states the money will mainly expand the machine-learning and DNA-library team at a Dresden site. The platform's analysis states that a larger funding round is planned for late 2027.</span></span></p> <div style="border-bottom:solid #8fa9c4 1.5pt; padding:0in 0in 3.0pt 0in"> <h1><span style="font-size:14.5pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">📈 The returns picture</span></span></h1> </div> <table cellspacing="0" class="Table" style="border-collapse:collapse; border:none; width:6.5in"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:173px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">The target</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:451px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">10.5 times your money over 4.5 years, advertised on the campaign as a 946% total return and 69% a year. This is the company's and the platform's own figure rather than a standard assumption applied by us — the platform's analysis states it was calculated by its own venture capital specialists and describes it as "a target return, not an expected or guaranteed return". For context, the usual expectation for a seed-stage investment is about 10 times over five to seven years, so the multiple is normal for the stage, but the 4.5-year timetable is shorter than the seven to ten years typically quoted for deep-technology and biotech businesses.</span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:173px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">How the company plans to get there</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:451px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Grow sales from €1.53m in 2025 to €51.3m in 2030 — a 33-fold increase, or about 102% growth every year for five years running — by shifting most income away from laboratory project work and towards partnership deals, which the plan expects to make up 62% of sales by 2030. The platform's analysis sets out three exit routes: a sale to a technology-driven drug discovery company, a sale to a large contract research organisation, or a sale to a pharmaceutical company. It offers a five-entry list of transactions as evidence that this field supports high prices, and names a sixth deal elsewhere in the document. Every named transaction is real, and each is worth reading carefully:</span></span></p> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Recursion / Exscientia (2024) — </strong>an all-share merger of two AI drug-discovery companies valued at about $688m. Value genuinely changed hands at that level.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Gilead / Tubulis (2026) — </strong>$3.15bn paid up front, up to $5bn in total. Tubulis is a German company with a cancer drug already in human trials, which is a different kind of business from a laboratory discovery platform.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>XtalPi / DoveTree (2025) — </strong>headline of up to $5.99bn. XtalPi actually received $51m up front; the rest depends on future milestones and royalties that may never be paid.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Lilly / Insilico (2026) — </strong>headline of $2.75bn. Insilico actually received $115m up front, with the rest tied to milestones and royalties.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>"Schrödinger partnerships" — </strong>the fifth entry on the list names no company on the other side, no date and no amount. There is nothing here a reader can check.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>AbbVie / Neomorph (2025), cited elsewhere in the document — </strong>headline of $1.64bn. This is an agreement giving AbbVie the option to license, not a completed purchase; the up-front payment was not disclosed.</span></span></li> </ul> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">One further reference point we found ourselves: Otsuka bought Astex, the best-known company built on the same fragment-based discovery approach, for about $886m in cash in 2013 — although by then Astex also had a medicine on the market and two drugs in clinical trials.</span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:173px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">What has to be true</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:451px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The whole company would have to be sold for roughly €95m to €141m for the advertised return to be paid, on the terms as written and before any future fundraising reduces your share. The range is wide because the ownership percentage the platform's analysis prints — 12.73% for Companisto investors — does not reconcile to a €8.0m price and 26,856 existing shares: on that arithmetic the figure comes out at 10.53% before fees, or 8.60% after them. Measured against the company's own 2030 sales plan of €51.3m, €95m–€141m is a price of about 1.9 to 2.7 times sales. Before any of that, the nearer test is 2026: reaching the €2.1m plan requires about €212,000 of sales a month across the remaining eight months, against about €102,000 a month achieved from January to April.</span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:173px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">If reached — potential returns</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:451px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Illustratively about 4× to 9× before fees. Method: we applied the sales multiples of the two closest public reference points we could find — Evotec's stock market value of roughly $0.9–1.1bn against sales above €850m, and Charles River's February 2026 sale of its European discovery business, structural biology included, to IQVIA for about $145m on $144m of sales, both around 1.0 to 1.3 times sales — to the company's own 2030 sales plan of €51.3m, and spread the result across the range of possible ownership stakes (8.60% to 12.73%).</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Comparing the company's own target against the same evidence: the €95m–€141m sale price it requires is within the range of exits recorded in this sector measured in cash — it is smaller than both the Recursion/Exscientia and the Otsuka/Astex deals — but it needs a price relative to sales roughly double the level we could find for comparable businesses.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The entry price works against every one of these outcomes: at 5.2 times its 2025 sales the company is priced above the benchmarks we could find, and a high entry price compresses every return outcome.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">These figures do not include dilution from future fundraising rounds, which would reduce actual returns — see the dilution section.</span></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p> </p> <table cellspacing="0" class="Table" style="border-collapse:collapse; border:none; width:6.5in"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="background-color:#fbf1dc; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">Who set the 946% figure, and what they earn. </span></strong><span style="color:black">The target return was calculated by the crowdfunding platform's own venture capital specialists, not by an independent party. The platform states this openly in the same document, along with the fact that Companisto GmbH "has a financial interest in the success of the financing opportunity" and "receives a pro-rata brokerage commission for its role in brokering the investments". It also states that its analysis is non-binding, is not a recommendation, and that its forecasts are "subjective assessments and not scientifically substantiated assumptions, predictions, or established facts". None of that makes the figure wrong — it is disclosed, and disclosure is the right thing to do — but it is worth knowing who produced the number before relying on it.</span></span></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <div style="border-bottom:solid #8fa9c4 1.5pt; padding:0in 0in 3.0pt 0in"> <h1><span style="font-size:14.5pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">📊 Score breakdown</span></span></h1> </div> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><em>Score = each category's score weighted by its importance; weights sum to 100%.</em></span></span></p> <table cellspacing="0" class="Table" style="border-collapse:collapse; border:none; width:6.5in"> <thead> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:127px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">Category</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">Score</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">Weight</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:377px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">Verdict & key reason</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:127px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Team & advisers</strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#faeeda; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">72</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">21%</span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:377px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Good</strong> — the founder's academic lineage, the university spin-off and the base at the DESY research centre all check out against public sources, and the finance director brings 25 years of venture capital experience. Against that, a co-founder has left, and the existing shareholders transferred roughly 80% of their shares to the founders and staff in exchange for an agreement whose terms are not in the pack we reviewed.</span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:127px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Product & market fit</strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#faece7; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">55</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">17%</span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:377px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Average</strong> — real, named customers in three continents and a specific technical problem the company solves. But demand moved the wrong way in 2025: sales fell 23.7% overall and 57.5% in Germany, which sits awkwardly next to the company's statement that customers stay because of the quality of the results.</span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:127px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Traction & financial record</strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#fcebeb; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">32</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">17%</span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:377px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Weak</strong> — the direction of travel in the accounts is negative. 2024 delivered €2.01m of sales and a €444k profit; 2025 delivered €1.53m and an €870k loss; the first four months of 2026 are running at 58% of the annual plan rate. Shareholders' funds were nil at the year end with a €272,263.89 shortfall carried on the asset side.</span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:127px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Market</strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#faece7; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">58</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">13%</span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:377px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Average</strong> — the underlying market is large and growing on every source cited, including an independent estimate we checked. But the two nearest public reference points point the other way right now: Charles River is selling its European discovery business, structural biology included, and Evotec's stock market value has fallen about 55% over twelve months.</span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:127px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Business model</strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#faece7; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">50</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">9%</span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:377px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Average</strong> — high margins on materials (81.7% in 2025) and campaign pricing above €100,000 give the model real substance. But total costs ran at 145% of sales in 2025 and 147% in early 2026, and the plan depends on partnership income reaching 62% of sales by 2030, a revenue type with no track record yet in the accounts.</span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:127px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Competition</strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#fcebeb; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">48</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">8%</span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:377px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Weak</strong> — the company names a precise advantage: it solves crystal cracking, where standard protocols fail. But it competes against WuXi AppTec, Evotec, Charles River, X-Chem and HitGen on services and against Isomorphic Labs, XtalPi, Schrödinger and Insilico on software, and the platform's own analysis concedes that service businesses attract much lower valuations than software or drug-owning ones.</span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:127px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Technology & intellectual property</strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#faece7; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">68</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:60px"> <p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">15%</span></span></p> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:377px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Average</strong> — a patent application for the crystal-soaking method is confirmed in a public patent-news record, the DNA-library purchase shows up in the balance sheet at €379,083, and the NexMR licence and the DESY joint project are both publicly documented. But two of the three named technologies are not fully owned: €163,000 of the DNA-library price is still payable to 2028 alongside a 5% share of revenue from it, and the magnetic-resonance method is licensed from someone else.</span></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong>Score shown in the snapshot: 50 out of 100. </strong>The deal terms set out at the top of this memo place the ceiling: the company could perform well and an investor could still not reach the advertised return.</span></span></p> <div style="border-bottom:solid #8fa9c4 1.5pt; padding:0in 0in 3.0pt 0in"> <h1><span style="font-size:14.5pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">❓ Questions to ask before investing</span></span></h1> </div> <table cellspacing="0" class="Table" style="border-collapse:collapse; border:none; width:6.5in"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">These are facts the company holds and can supply on request. They were not in the materials we reviewed — they may well exist in interviews, webinars or the company's data room. The score above is based on what was available; these questions are how you close the gap</span></span></span></p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">The accounts show no remaining shareholders' funds at 31 December 2025 and a shortfall of €272,263.89. Under German law this requires a written forecast showing the business can continue. Does one exist, who prepared it, what period does it cover, and will you share the signed accounts with their notes?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">What was your cash balance at 30 June 2026, and what does your month-by-month cash forecast look like through to the end of 2027 if this round closes at €850,000 rather than €1,500,000?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">2024 sales were €2,005,999.88 with a €444,266.30 profit; 2025 sales were €1,530,414.47 with an €870,445.57 loss. Why does 2024 not appear in the presentation or the platform analysis, and what caused the fall — particularly the 57.5% drop in German sales?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">Sales for January to April 2026 were €408,871.44 against a full-year plan of €2,107,847. What is signed or in late-stage negotiation that supports the roughly doubled monthly rate needed over the remaining eight months, and what is your signed order book in euros today?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">Please reconcile the 12.73% stake shown for Companisto investors with a €8.0m pre-money price and 26,856 existing shares — the arithmetic gives 10.53% before fees and 8.60% after them. Is €8.0m a price before or after this round?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">The existing shareholders transferred about 80% of their shares to the founders and team "in exchange for a rights agreement". Please provide that agreement: what rights were granted, to whom, and at what value was the transfer recorded?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">Your presentation shows profitability arriving in 2028 at €0.6m (4.5% of sales); the platform's plan shows €1,822,614 (15.1%). Which is current, and what changed?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">SmartSoak is described as the core of the platform and cited by three international publication numbers. In which countries has it entered the national stage, which claims have actually been granted, and when do the granted rights expire?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">What are the full terms of the NexMR licence behind SmartSpin — length, exclusivity, field, royalty rate, termination, and what happens to it if CrystalsFirst is sold?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">A 75% majority can force all shareholders to sell at a floor equal to the money paid into the company. Since only about 80% of what a certificate holder subscribes reaches the company, a sale at that floor appears to return about 0.80× of what was paid. Is that reading correct, and if so why is it not shown alongside the 946% target on the campaign page?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">The comparable deals put forward as evidence of high returns delivered $51m (XtalPi), $115m (Insilico) and an undisclosed sum (Neomorph) in actual up-front money against headlines of $5.99bn, $2.75bn and $1.64bn, and one entry names no company or amount at all. Which completed transactions, at the cash actually paid, support the €8.0m price and the 946% target?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">What is the euro amount of the issuing and transaction costs under clause 3.1.2 of the certificate terms, on top of the 10% administration fee and the 10% placement fee?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">What share of 2025 sales came from your largest customer, and from the top three? How many of the ten active clients had revenue in both 2024 and 2025?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">A larger funding round is planned for late 2027. At what price and size is it modelled, and what would it do to the stake of an investor in this round?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:624px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:black">What covenants, security and change-of-control terms attach to the KfW and Volksbank loans totalling €2,223,908.74, and does either lender have a say over this financing or a future sale?</span></span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <div style="border-bottom:solid #8fa9c4 1.5pt; padding:0in 0in 3.0pt 0in"> <h1><span style="font-size:14.5pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">📜 What you own</span></span></h1> </div> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">You do not buy shares in CrystalsFirst. You buy a certificate — a contract issued by a company set up by the platform purely to hold a stake on behalf of crowdfunding investors (a "special purpose vehicle", here called Companisto Trust Service LXVIII UG). Each certificate has a face value of €50, and the minimum investment is €250. The vehicle owns the shares; you own a claim against the vehicle whose value tracks those shares.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">That claim carries no membership rights in either company. The certificate terms state plainly that the certificates "do not confer any membership rights in the company, in particular no rights of participation, involvement, or voting at the shareholders' meeting or any other influence on management" (clause 2.3.1). Instead you vote online, one vote per certificate, on a defined list of matters, and the vehicle then casts all its votes as a single block at the company's shareholder meetings. Your claim also ranks behind every other creditor of the vehicle, and cannot be enforced at all if paying it would push the vehicle into difficulty. Full mechanics are in the reference section below.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><em>Everything below is reference detail for readers who want to go deeper.</em></span></span></p> <div style="border-bottom:solid #8fa9c4 1.5pt; padding:0in 0in 3.0pt 0in"> <h1><span style="font-size:14.5pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">🔍 Detailed review</span></span></h1> </div> <div style="border-bottom:solid #c6c6c6 1.0pt; padding:0in 0in 2.0pt 0in"> <h2><span style="font-size:11.5pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Team & advisers</span></span></h2> </div> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The founder and chief executive, Dr Serghei Glinca, holds a doctorate in computer-aided drug design from Professor Gerhard Klebe's group at the University of Marburg and an MBA, and public sources confirm he founded the company there in 2018 and has led it since. The wider team of 19 reported by the platform includes a finance director with 25 years in venture capital and a head of crystallography described as the company's first employee. The advisory board includes Professor Klebe himself; the other three members are named in the presentation but we did not verify them individually in this pass, which is not a criticism of them.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Two facts about ownership are worth understanding. A co-founder, Dr Stefan Merkl, has left the business and now holds 4.79%. Separately, the platform's analysis states that the existing shareholders are keeping roughly 20% of their previous shares and transferring the rest to the founders and staff in exchange for a "rights agreement" — that agreement is not in the pack we reviewed, so what those shareholders received in return cannot be assessed. The analysis also states that the lead institutional backer, BMH (Hessen Kapital), remains confident but cannot invest again because the company moved out of the state of Hesse and because of rules about company age.</span></span></p> <table cellspacing="0" class="Table" style="border-collapse:collapse; border:none; width:6.5in"> <thead> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:312px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">✅ Strengths</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:312px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">⚠️ Concerns</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:312px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Founder's academic lineage, the university spin-off and the 2018 founding date all confirmed by independent public sources.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Chief executive publicly identified as leading the company continuously since founding — no leadership churn at the top.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Finance director with 25 years of early-stage venture capital experience, including IBB Ventures and corporate venture roles.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Professor Gerhard Klebe, whose laboratory produced the technology, sits on the advisory board.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The management team is investing its own money in this round through convertible loans, stated at more than €50,000.</span></span></li> </ul> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:312px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">A co-founder has left the business; he remains a shareholder at 4.79%.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Existing shareholders transferred about 80% of their shares to the founders and staff; the agreement they received in return is not in the pack we reviewed.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The lead institutional investor is not following on. The stated reasons are structural — the move out of Hesse and fund rules about company age — rather than a view on the business.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The team is small relative to a plan that requires personnel costs to rise from €1.18m to €14.4m by 2030.</span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p><span style="font-size:11.5pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Product & market fit</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The company solves a specific and recognisable problem: protein crystals crack when candidate molecules are soaked into them, and when that happens the experiment fails. The platform's analysis puts it directly — the company "solves the specific physical problem of 'crystal cracking,' where standard CRO protocols fail". Customers are named and published: Merck KGaA, AiCuris, KSQ Therapeutics, Flindr Therapeutics and Think Bioscience appear on the company's own site, which an independent company-profile service records as published testimonials. The chief executive has separately stated in an interview that clients come from the USA, South Korea, Japan and Europe.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The counter-evidence is in the accounts. Sales fell from €2,005,999.88 in 2024 to €1,530,414.47 in 2025, a fall of 23.7%, and German domestic sales fell 57.5%. The company reports high customer retention because of the quality of its results, and the platform's analysis describes a lock-in effect once its methods become a customer's internal standard. Neither statement is reconciled anywhere in the pack against the fall in sales.</span></span></p> <table cellspacing="0" class="Table" style="border-collapse:collapse; border:none; width:6.5in"> <thead> <tr> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:312px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">✅ Strengths</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> <td style="background-color:#f4f2ec; border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:1px solid black; vertical-align:top; width:312px"> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><strong><span style="color:black">⚠️ Concerns</span></strong></span></span></p> </td> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:1px solid black; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:312px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Named, published customers including a major pharmaceutical group, spanning the USA, Europe and Asia.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">A Hamburg city publication recorded more than 40 completed collaborations as of February 2025.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The technical problem addressed is specific and testable, not a general claim of being faster.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The company reports a first risk-sharing deal signed with a US biotech and a master services agreement now entering implementation.</span></span></li> </ul> </td> <td style="border-bottom:1px solid black; border-left:none; border-right:1px solid black; border-top:none; vertical-align:top; width:312px"> <ul> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Sales fell 23.7% in 2025, and German domestic sales fell 57.5% — the accounts point away from strengthening demand.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The retention and lock-in claims are not reconciled against that fall anywhere in the pack we reviewed.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The seven collaborations shown in the presentation are anonymised, so the stage and funding attributed to each partner cannot be checked.</span></span></li> <li><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">No retention, churn or repeat-revenue figures are in the pack we reviewed — these appear in the questions section.</span></span></li> </ul> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p><span style="font-size:11.5pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Traction & financial record</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">This is where the evidence is most difficult, and it comes from the company's own accounts rather than from anything external. In 2024 the company made €2,005,999.88 of sales and a profit of €444,266.30. In 2025 it made €1,530,414.47 of sales and a loss of €870,445.57 — a swing of €1,314,711.87 in a single year. The 2024 profit is corroborated inside the accounts themselves: the accumulated loss brought forward falls by exactly €444,266.30. Neither the presentation nor the platform's analysis states the 2024 figures; the presentation instead cites growth over 2022 to 2024, a window that ends in the strongest year.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:10pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The immediate cause is visible: the company built a laboratory. Fixed assets rose from €398,277 to €2,468,710, funded by €2.25m of new bank borrowing, while depreciation rose from €14,341 to €167,316 and interest charges appeared for the first time. That is a defensible investment decision, but it happened in the same year sales fell. At the year end shareholders' funds were nil, with a shortfall of €272,263.89 shown on the asset side — the German accounting treatment for a company whose liabilities exceed its assets. Trading in the first four months of 2026 was €408,871.44 of sales against a €2,107,847 annual plan, with a loss of €202,298.80. Cash at the last balance sheet date was €145,729.78.</span></span></p>
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Platform offering this project
Companisto DE
Risk Level
Hoch
Risk Return Level
Mittel
Return Level
Hoch
Mindestinvestition
EUR 250
Finanziert
EUR 228,78M
