This time, we’re spotlighting Oriol Iborra, our Co-Founder, CEO and Board Member. He sets the company’s strategic direction, builds the team, and keeps the scientific, clinical, regulatory and commercial sides of the business moving in the same direction. As he sees it, a startup CEO’s job isn’t just making decisions, it’s making sure every decision actually pushes the company closer to its mission.
His biggest contribution, and the first one, has to be getting the science out of the lab and into a company in the first place. NIMBLE came out of strong public research, but research alone doesn’t help patients unless someone takes on the risk of turning it into something real.
Background
At 16, Oriol was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a moment that reshaped his life. Sport had defined much of his identity up to that point, and he was on a path toward playing basketball professionally. The diagnosis redirected him toward biological sciences and eventually cardiovascular medicine, turning a personal health scare into a career-long mission.
Prof. Antoni Bayés Genís has been one of his biggest influences. ‘’His ingenuity, work ethic and ability to find solutions in complex situations have impressed me many times,’’ Oriol says. ‘’He showed me that good science is not only about knowledge; it is about creativity, discipline and the courage to ask questions others may not yet be asking.’’
During his PhD research, in what would become NIMBLE’s preclinical data, Oriol saw the moment things shifted: the first results in animal models. Since the team was working with physics and engineering rather than a biological pathway that could take decades to translate, a real device suddenly felt within reach, something doable. As he puts it, they weren’t chasing a new molecule, they were finding a new way to measure something the body already had.
Founding NIMBLE
The idea behind NIMBLE started almost by chance, in a conversation between co-founders Prof. Javier Tejada, physicist, and Dr. Oriol Rodríguez, interventional cardiologist, about a stent Javier had just received. Their question was simple: once a stent is in, how does anyone actually know it’s still doing its job?
That question sent the research group down an experimental path, testing whether a stent’s condition could be read from outside the body at all, long before there was any real technology behind it. Back then, the biggest risk was simply not knowing if the idea would work, there was no roadmap or existing category to learn from. That risk hasn’t disappeared, it’s just changed shape.The question now is less about the technology itself and more about how a brand-new diagnostic category earns its place inside healthcare systems, which takes solid clinical evidence and a clear regulatory path.
For Oriol, the hardest part of going from PhD project to company was never really the science. NIMBLE grew out of three Catalan research institutions, and turning that work into a spin-off meant getting institutions, inventors and expectations all pointing the same way, a process that leaned more on trust and governance than on lab results.
A Member of Our Team
What keeps Oriol energized at NIMBLE is the pace and the feeling that the team is building something that simply doesn’t exist yet. He describes the team as something that’s constantly reshaping itself, built on people who pair real scientific and technical depth with the adaptability a startup demands. A large part of his own job as CEO is making sure that reshaping happens well, stage after stage.
Vision & Motivation
Oriol wants NIMBLE to help shift healthcare from reacting to problems to catching them early, monitoring risk before it turns into a real event. His long-term goal is for NIMBLE to become the go-to technology for tracking implanted devices, at a time when stents, valves and sensors are becoming common but still have no reliable way to be followed non-invasively over time.
For the future, he thinks of NIMBLE as a platform, not a single product. He expects the company to expand internationally and into new applications after that. One of the toughest calls he’s had to make as CEO has been saying no, or not yet, to promising ideas in order to keep resources focused on what matters most right now.
Fun Facts
Away from the office, and something not many people know, is that Oriol is trained as a water sommelier!
He splits his free time between basketball and chess, the second one a nod to his grandfather, a chess Grandmaster.
If he had to pick one word for his journey, it would be Transformation. From the physicality of sport to the mindset of science, and from academia into building a company.
Advice from a biotech star-up CEO
If he had to give any advice to researchers thinking about starting a company, it would be this: if your work can genuinely help someone, it’s worth a shot, but be ready to stress-test it honestly instead of just staying attached to it.
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