The CRO is the most expensive vendor decision a MedTech founder makes pre-Series B. These five questions, asked before the MSA is signed, separate the CROs built for first-in-human work from the CROs that simply offer it as a service line.
Five Questions Every MedTech Founder Must Ask a CRO Before Signing the MSA Five Questions Every MedTech Founder Must Ask a CRO Before Signing the MSA Published by bioaccess® ® | May 2026 The Most Expensive Vendor Decision You Will Make Before Your Series B The master services agreement you sign with a CRO at the first-in-human stage is not just a vendor contract. It is a commitment to a timeline, a data architecture, a regulatory strategy, and — in ways most founders do not fully price until they are inside the engagement — a bet on whether that organization has ever actually done this before. Most MedTech founders spend more time negotiating SaaS subscription pricing than interrogating the operational fitness of the CRO they are about to trust with their first human study. CROs are practiced at presenting capability decks that are both technically accurate and structurally misleading: yes, they have run first-in-human studies. The questions are how many, how recently, where, and…