I was interested to find out what the “moonshot” was... it was making dogs live longer. I like dogs, but...
How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co
41–50 of 251 posts
Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you point out that a founder can "strategize and structure his thoughts very well" if it was a man writing?
Only if a man did that. Things like systematically schedule 150 VC interviews in 4 weeks and analyse their reactions to specific words/phrases. Very geeky, very appropriate for HN. Only a true nerd would do that. But I really don’t see why sex would have anything to do with it.
> But I really don’t see why sex would have anything to do with it.
“Crunchbase data show that not only did total funding to female-led startups fall this year, but the proportion of dollars to female-only founders also declined, to 2.3 percent, compared to 2.8 percent in 2019.”
Source: https://news.crunchbase.com/news/global-vc-funding-to-female...
Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co
#43Congrats, also for being honest and mentioning you previously worked in VC and had ivy-league connections. Myself and my co-founder never had time to go network or sell to investors, building a product just took 200% of our time. Having a moonshot idea and big market didn't matter. We just didn't have the connections or the time to build them. Looking back that is all that mattered. They didn't care we had customers…
> Looking back that is all that mattered. They didn't care we had customers and revenue and a good deck or market.
...did you care? If you had customers and revenue, why did you need VC?
Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co
#44Despite the sex-baiting in the title, really good article with tons of actionable, non-obvious advice! I like that the founder/writer is so technically oriented, she clearly strategizes & structures her thoughts very well and I think that probably helped her with such an amazing deal (well, it looks amazing, given her starting point - though I don’t know how much of her company she gave up for that...)
The title isn't sex-baiting. The fact that the founder is female is extremely relevant to raising money. I wish that weren't the case. The problem ranges from light sexism (skepticism over whether she can "lead" and "be tough") to blatant misogyny (trying to exchange money for sex and blackballing her from deals if she refuses or talks about it). Those are things that men mostly do not have to deal with when raising…
> blatant misogyny (trying to exchange money for sex and blackballing her from deals if she refuses or talks about it). Those are things that men mostly do not have to deal with when raising money.
True that that's something men mostly don't have to deal with when raising money, but it's also something that makes it easier, not harder, for women to raise money compared to men.
It's also a weird thing to describe as "misogyny"; it sounds more like a problem with liking women than disliking them.
Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Man" , in traditional usage, refers to any human being. "One man's x" is also a common phrase used to mean any single person struggling or striving towards a particular goal. This is completely different to what is happening in this post, where the gender is being called out as an attribute of particular interest.
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I'm not looking to argue for or against either side here, but:
"How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female founder" =/= simply referring to a woman as a woman.
"How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, male founder" would certainly prompt questions about why male is relevant, particularly more so than attributes like low-income, immigrant, dropout, etc.
Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co
#46Congrats, also for being honest and mentioning you previously worked in VC and had ivy-league connections. Myself and my co-founder never had time to go network or sell to investors, building a product just took 200% of our time. Having a moonshot idea and big market didn't matter. We just didn't have the connections or the time to build them. Looking back that is all that mattered. They didn't care we had customers…
> Looking back that is all that mattered. They didn't care we had customers and revenue and a good deck or market. ...did you care? If you had customers and revenue, why did you need VC?
VCs are necessary to accelerate progress. Especially in tech companies where R&D is so expensive up front and yet scales well when it's done. And a side effect of VCs is that it's more expensive to operate in the same industry as one.
Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co
#47I had two thoughts on this:
1. Is it even possible to bootstrap a biotech fund if you’re not rich (min 10mil net worth)? The author doesn’t really say why they even need funding but I imagine biotech has a lot of up front costs.
2. Given how you can “game” your pitches - from the VCs perspective isn’t this bad? Wouldn’t that mean potentially bad companies could “con” you into funding them? I wonder what the downside is of being strictly objective is (if possible).
This was an enlightening article. Good find.
Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co
#48I was interested to find out what the “moonshot” was... it was making dogs live longer. I like dogs, but...
My understanding is that dog-related food/medicine/nutritional supplements have a lot lower bar than human-grade equivalents, when it comes to regulatory clearance. On one hand, that makes me very skeptical that this would actually be more than a snake oil in its first 5 years of existence. On the other hand, I imagine that this could be an interesting "proving ground" for potential human-grade longevity solutions. I think that's the real moonshot.
Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co
#49I was interested to find out what the “moonshot” was... it was making dogs live longer. I like dogs, but...
If they can help dogs to live longer, which animal could be next?
https://www.celinehh.com/aging-field
> The reasons we do not have an approved aging drug today are not due to the science - the biological blockers to a first-generation aging drug have been clear for at least ten years. The primary reasons there are no approved aging drugs today are much more tricky - they are regulatory, societal, structural, and cultural.
> For the last years, I’ve been a researcher in academic aging labs, worked in aging-focused venture capital and early-stage aging drug development startups, and am now the founder of the aging biotech Loyal. The common theme of my work has been trying to find the highest leverage way to support and accelerate the first aging drug approval.
Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co
#50>Loyal is developing drugs to extend dog lifespan and healthspan.
Wow this is a huge undertaking. I wish you luck and I don't mean that sarcastically! If you can do that to a dog, it seems trivial to extend to humans. Have any drugs or supplements extended dog lifespan in the literature? Rapamycin I guess?