Back in 2018 (the "stone age of machine learning", as I call it), I got my first job at a medical software startup. We built a machine learning - backed software to detect breast cancer in mammograms, and I learned a ton of stuff. I was also part of the team that got it certified as a (then) MDD class IIb device. Good times.
While doing so, I got exposed to the very broken industry of medical device compliance - I still remember attending a very shady sales call with a very shady salesperson who was trying to sell us an enterprise level eQMS software - which we would have to host locally, after setting up our own server and following a 60+ page-long instruction manual. So you pay thousands of Euros for the "privilege" of having to self-host the software after manually fiddling with your own server setup for days. Crazy!
Back then, we were joking that this whole regulatory software industry was completely broken and rife for disruption. It would be really cool to build a better software for medical device compliance.
And a few companies did just that - Greenlight Guru and Qualio.
However, they didn't really look like they were offering something a startup might choose - their websites and marketing looked very enterprise-y (and they still do so today).
So I remained curious - building an "eQMS software for startups" seemed like a too-good-to-be true idea. Why was no one doing it? Had I discovered a secret business idea which no one else was aware of?
No, apparently not, because then I heard of Enzyme. You see, Enzyme was indeed the company I thought I should have founded. It was doing all the right things - at least I thought so back then - by building an eQMS software for startups and trying to disrupt a market full of dinosaurs. Also, it was backed by YCombinator which sounded like a huge success, at least to my 2018-self, who was not skeptical of VC investments yet.
Was I jealous? Maybe. A bit. At the very least, I was thinking "that should have been me!", while I remained at my startup job from 2018-2020, pondering whether I would ever be capable to found (and run) a company.
Well, I did found OpenRegulatory back in 2020. We started out as a consulting company because I had become a big proponent of the very radical "don't take investor money and be profitable" model (which startups seemed to have forgotten about between 2000 and 2020).
At the back of my mind, I was wondering whether it was already too late to become a SaaS company offering eQMS software, because the eQMS software market already felt a bit crowded. Also, being profitable from day one with no investors, building such a software would be slow, as it'd be only me spending nights and weekend on this new product.
While progress was slow, the upside was that OpenRegulatory is still 100% owned by me.
Which might have made all the difference, fast-forwarding to today.
I just recently learned that Enzyme had been acquired by Greenlight Guru in mid-2025. The price has not been disclosed, so it was probably low, and the main message seems to be that the founder wanted to move on and was looking for a "home for their customers". In other words, he likely got tired; and while that's speculation, it's reasonable to assume that their investors (YCombinator and others) were also looking for higher growth, or a return on their investment by selling the company.
We don't have any of these incentives. We're happy if we can pay our salaries and build cool stuff.
But Enzyme, and its co-founder Jared Seehofer, chose to sell the company.
Let me pause here and note that I'm not judging - founders get tired of working at their company, and they see selling the company as the only way to accomplish that.
What happened to Enzyme next? From a few sales calls with customers interested in Formwork, our eQMS software, we've now learned that the Enzyme eQMS product is being shut down, the customers are being force-migrated to Greenlight Guru, and they are being presented with significant price hikes.
This had a chilling effect on me.. why? You see, I was thinking "that could have been me", because, over the past few years, almost every major eQMS software provider has reached out to buy us.
I always declined. And I always will!
Still, the mere idea that this, in theory, could have happened to us.. I mean, an acquisition starts out by looking very innocent: "We could unlock synergies", "we could cover more of the market", "our customers would benefit from our combined product's features", etc., etc.. But no, nothing about such an acquisition is innocent, as it's quite possible that the acquiring company violently shuts down the acquired company, force-migrates their customers and shoves price hikes down their throats. Everything which the company built, all the happy customers, all the goodwill acquired over time - gone.
No. OpenRegulatory is not up for sale.
(By the way, are you affected by one of those forced migrations or price hikes? We offer free migrations to our eQMS - just reach out!)
Here's the eQMS software graveyard:
While doing so, I got exposed to the very broken industry of medical device compliance - I still remember attending a very shady sales call with a very shady salesperson who was trying to sell us an enterprise level eQMS software - which we would have to host locally, after setting up our own server and following a 60+ page-long instruction manual. So you pay thousands of Euros for the "privilege" of having to self-host the software after manually fiddling with your own server setup for days. Crazy!
Back then, we were joking that this whole regulatory software industry was completely broken and rife for disruption. It would be really cool to build a better software for medical device compliance.
And a few companies did just that - Greenlight Guru and Qualio.
However, they didn't really look like they were offering something a startup might choose - their websites and marketing looked very enterprise-y (and they still do so today).
So I remained curious - building an "eQMS software for startups" seemed like a too-good-to-be true idea. Why was no one doing it? Had I discovered a secret business idea which no one else was aware of?
No, apparently not, because then I heard of Enzyme. You see, Enzyme was indeed the company I thought I should have founded. It was doing all the right things - at least I thought so back then - by building an eQMS software for startups and trying to disrupt a market full of dinosaurs. Also, it was backed by YCombinator which sounded like a huge success, at least to my 2018-self, who was not skeptical of VC investments yet.
Was I jealous? Maybe. A bit. At the very least, I was thinking "that should have been me!", while I remained at my startup job from 2018-2020, pondering whether I would ever be capable to found (and run) a company.
Well, I did found OpenRegulatory back in 2020. We started out as a consulting company because I had become a big proponent of the very radical "don't take investor money and be profitable" model (which startups seemed to have forgotten about between 2000 and 2020).
At the back of my mind, I was wondering whether it was already too late to become a SaaS company offering eQMS software, because the eQMS software market already felt a bit crowded. Also, being profitable from day one with no investors, building such a software would be slow, as it'd be only me spending nights and weekend on this new product.
While progress was slow, the upside was that OpenRegulatory is still 100% owned by me.
Which might have made all the difference, fast-forwarding to today.
I just recently learned that Enzyme had been acquired by Greenlight Guru in mid-2025. The price has not been disclosed, so it was probably low, and the main message seems to be that the founder wanted to move on and was looking for a "home for their customers". In other words, he likely got tired; and while that's speculation, it's reasonable to assume that their investors (YCombinator and others) were also looking for higher growth, or a return on their investment by selling the company.
We don't have any of these incentives. We're happy if we can pay our salaries and build cool stuff.
But Enzyme, and its co-founder Jared Seehofer, chose to sell the company.
Let me pause here and note that I'm not judging - founders get tired of working at their company, and they see selling the company as the only way to accomplish that.
What happened to Enzyme next? From a few sales calls with customers interested in Formwork, our eQMS software, we've now learned that the Enzyme eQMS product is being shut down, the customers are being force-migrated to Greenlight Guru, and they are being presented with significant price hikes.
This had a chilling effect on me.. why? You see, I was thinking "that could have been me", because, over the past few years, almost every major eQMS software provider has reached out to buy us.
I always declined. And I always will!
Still, the mere idea that this, in theory, could have happened to us.. I mean, an acquisition starts out by looking very innocent: "We could unlock synergies", "we could cover more of the market", "our customers would benefit from our combined product's features", etc., etc.. But no, nothing about such an acquisition is innocent, as it's quite possible that the acquiring company violently shuts down the acquired company, force-migrates their customers and shoves price hikes down their throats. Everything which the company built, all the happy customers, all the goodwill acquired over time - gone.
No. OpenRegulatory is not up for sale.
(By the way, are you affected by one of those forced migrations or price hikes? We offer free migrations to our eQMS - just reach out!)
Here's the eQMS software graveyard:
- Matrix Requirements - sold to private equity in 07/2022 (we wrote about it here)
- Ultralight Labs - acquired by Greenlight Guru in 06/2025
- Enzyme - acquired by Greenlight Guru in 07/2025
