We Go Where the Opportunity Is.
Strategic advisory, global partnerships, and operational leadership for founders, investors, and organizations operating across borders.
Austin · Ottawa · Dubai · Pristina
Strategic advisory, global partnerships, and operational leadership for founders, investors, and organizations operating across borders.
Austin · Ottawa · Dubai · Pristina
Z4 Global Innovations bridges the gap between where innovation is happening and where it needs to go. We work with early-stage companies, venture funds, family offices, and corporations who understand that the world's most important problems — and most compelling investment opportunities — don't respect borders.
We operate across medical devices, medical imaging, life sciences, diagnostics, genomics, and AI in healthcare. These are capital-intensive, regulation-sensitive, high-stakes domains. We've spent 25 years navigating them — across 42 of 54 African nations, greater China, the Middle East, South Asia, and North America.
What We Do
The work rarely fits into one bucket. A company raising capital also needs market research. A partnership deal also requires operational setup. We work across all three — and that's the point.
Product-market fit. Capital access. IP positioning.
For startups raising their first institutional round and corporations scouting technology acquisitions, we provide the market intelligence, product development planning, and capital strategy that turns a promising idea into a fundable, scalable business.
Primary and secondary market research — including ethnographic fieldwork — to validate whether a product solves a real problem for a real buyer at a viable price point. A researcher who has personally observed clinical workflows in 42 African nations, across China and the Gulf, can do what AI literature searches cannot.
We help founders understand the right instrument (SAFE, convertible note, priced round), the right investor type, and the right narrative for their stage. We prepare the materials, sharpen the pitch, and make introductions where warranted.
From filing seminal patents to mapping freedom-to-operate across competitive landscapes, we bring deep experience in protecting what you've built — before you tell the world about it.
For corporations and investors, we evaluate technology assets, management teams, and market positioning in domains where generic due diligence misses the signal. Medical devices and life science tools are not general technology businesses.
The connection that didn't exist before you called us.
Clinical sites, academic institutions, incubators, government bodies, and growth-stage companies — across the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and North America. If your company needs a foothold, a co-development partner, or a path into a new market, we build it.
Selecting the right entry point for a new geography — whether through a local partnership, regulatory strategy, or clinical validation site — is rarely obvious. We've done it in China, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Ghana, Rwanda, Ethiopia, India, and across the EU.
From major research hospitals to community health systems in emerging markets, we identify, negotiate, and establish the clinical relationships that validate products and generate the data that moves investors.
Companies built in Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, or Indonesia face structural barriers to accessing US and Gulf capital — not because their businesses are weak, but because they lack the relationships and infrastructure. We bridge that gap.
Active relationships with innovation bodies, free trade zone authorities, and government-affiliated incubators across the Gulf, East Africa, and North America.
We don't just advise. We run things.
We embed where you need us. As a fractional CSO, interim CEO during capital raise, or board director post-investment, we bring the organizational depth that early-stage companies consistently underestimate — and consistently need.
Fractional CSO, interim CEO, Chief Strategy Officer, or Head of Business Development — we embed at the level your company needs, for the duration that makes sense. We've built and led teams across four continents.
Investors fund teams as much as ideas. If your founding team lacks a specific profile — operator credibility, international networks, regulated industry experience — we fill that gap with substance, not a title.
Founders consistently underestimate what things cost and overestimate how long their runway is. We model it with them, build the financial narrative, and hold the line when optimism starts doing the accounting.
In select cases, where the fit is right and the mission is aligned, we co-found. Z4 Global Innovations takes a founding equity position and Zac operates as a named co-founder. This is not a service offering — it's a partnership, and we are selective about it.
Sectors
Medical Devices · Medical Imaging · Genomics & Cell Biology · Diagnostics · AI in Healthcare · Life Science Tools
We've faked migraines in Chinese hospitals to document IV line placement. We've witnessed rural labor and delivery in Angola, Zambia, and Ethiopia. We've engaged health authorities across West Africa on apprehensions over genetic data sharing — navigating cultural and religious considerations that don't show up in a slide deck. We've triaged a public emergency trauma center in the Solomon Islands. We've built R&D organizations from scratch in Shanghai, Biolabs NC, and San Francisco — and managed them simultaneously during a pandemic.
When you need someone to get on a plane and figure out what's actually happening on the ground, that's the job. We show up.
Where We Work
171 countries visited. Active project experience across four continents. The geography of our work reflects where the most compelling problems — and the most underserved opportunities — exist.
Dubai · Abu Dhabi · Riyadh · broader Gulf
Deep relationships in Dubai Science Park, DIFC, and Abu Dhabi's innovation ecosystem. Experience structuring investments through UAE free trade zones. Strong network in Saudi Arabia as Vision 2030 continues to reshape life science and healthcare investment.
Egypt · Ghana · Rwanda · Ethiopia · Nigeria · Kenya · Uganda
Deep engagement across the continent — from established clinical research corridors in East Africa to growing health-tech ecosystems in West Africa and North Africa. As traditional French institutional influence recedes from the Sahel and coastal West Africa, genuine openings are emerging for companies willing to engage with integrity and long-term intent. We know the landscape because we've walked it.
India · Pakistan · Bangladesh · Singapore
Deep clinical network from fieldwork conducted during Philips engagements across the region. Understanding of regulatory environments and healthcare delivery realities that are invisible from a US boardroom.
Shanghai · Beijing · regional clinical sites
Five years leading Philips Healthcare's China R&D organization. Trained in medical Mandarin. Documented infusion therapy clinical practice across the country independently — before being recruited to build and lead innovation teams in medical imaging, surgical oncology, and food safety. Negotiated large-scale structured clinical data partnerships with senior government and clinical stakeholders.
Austin · Ottawa · San Francisco · Durham · Philadelphia
Austin-based. NIH SBIR experience. Illumina Accelerator alumnus. Duke, Drexel, and BD Medical in the background. Deep in the US life science and medtech capital ecosystem — and honest about when the US is and isn't the right starting point.
Pristina · EU regulatory markets
Regulatory strategy experience across CE marking, GDPR, and European clinical site development. Products validated in European markets before US regulatory clearance was possible — and that data used strategically to accelerate FDA pathways. Active presence in Pristina, Kosovo, where a growing tech ecosystem and favorable operating environment are creating new opportunities for AI and emerging market projects.
"The thread only appears in the rearview."
Every engagement we take on is informed by a career that deliberately refused to stay in one place, one domain, or one definition of what counts as expertise.
Experience Includes
BD Medical · Philips Healthcare · Celldom · Illumina · Force ME Bioventures · Drexel University · NIH SBIR · Advantary Capital
About
Founded in Austin. Operated globally. Built from 25 years of doing the actual work.
Z4 Global Innovations is the operating platform of Zac Forbes — a bioengineer turned operator, investor, and builder of complex systems across healthcare, technology, and emerging markets.
Zac has spent his career at the intersection of invention and execution: building products, scaling organizations, and translating fragmented real-world insight into commercial outcomes.
He began in academia, founding a drug delivery lab at Drexel College of Medicine, training surgeons, mentoring MS and PhD students, publishing, and generating IP before moving into industry.
At BD Medical, he led development of the Insyte Autoguard BC safety catheter — a globally deployed platform shaped by on-the-ground clinical research across multiple continents — and later drove upstream innovation and M&A strategy in infection prevention.
He then helped build and scale Philips Healthcare's China R&D organization, securing ISO 13485 certification and leading development of AI-driven imaging solutions for emergency and trauma care across the US, India, and China.
As Founding President & CEO of Celldom (2016–2020), he built a product vision from early-stage technology, raised capital, assembled distributed teams, and brought a multi-omics platform to market. Celldom now serves drug discovery and precision medicine customers under Co-Founder and CEO Dr. Benjamin Yellen.
He later operated as a founding partner at Force Middle East Bioventures, advising and supporting companies across MENA, Europe, and North America through financings, exits, and early-stage scaling.
Z4 is the synthesis of that experience — a platform built to identify, build, and accelerate high-leverage opportunities where technical depth, global context, and execution discipline intersect.
"I prepared that talk not knowing the nationalities, ages, genders, or religions of who would be in the room. So I assumed it was a UN meeting."
We bring that posture to every engagement. No Western savior complex. No one-size-fits-all playbook. No assumption that the best answer comes from the US first. Z4 Global Innovations exists to find where innovation is actually happening, connect it to what it needs to grow, and do the work that requires someone willing to get on a plane.
Z4 Global Innovations is wholly owned and operated by its founder. Incorporated in Texas. Engaging globally. Project-based engagements, equity partnerships, and retainer arrangements are each structured to fit the nature of the work.
Contact
If you're raising, scouting, expanding, or building — and you think Z4 belongs in the conversation, reach out.
Austin, Texas · Operating Globally
Whether you're a founder trying to raise in a difficult market, a family office looking for scouted deals in emerging ecosystems, or a corporation evaluating a technology acquisition — let's talk.
Get In Touch