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How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co

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Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co

#131

Post by throwaway77112 »

ipsum2 wrote: post #105
dang wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a good comment if not for the word "just", which makes it sound like a shallow dismissal. (" Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ) The link to relevant other work is most welcome, of course.

"Just", because the blog post sounds like it was doing fundamental basic research on longevity based on brand new ideas ("I was chatting with some friends about how I thought I had an idea for how to make dogs live longer."), instead of commercializing on existing research. It wasn't my intention to be dismissive.

Very early on in the article she says she 'did not discover the science behind the company'.

Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co

#132

Post by verst »

tptacek wrote: post #84
a_bonobo wrote: post #78

>It’s a VC’s job to keep the door open. Many were ‘blown away’, then passed before the second meeting. This is normal. I'm sometimes working with US-Americans and not being US-American myself, I feel like this is also a US-cultural thing? In important meetings with US stakeholders I struggle to read the room because everything is always 'awesome' and 'amazing', there's rarely upfront criticism. Honest feedback has to…

No, it's famously a VC thing, and it causes problems for ordinary US people as well.

It's not just a VC thing. There is a greater delta if you didn't grow up in this particular US culture.

As a German (15+ years in the US) formerly in SF now in Seattle I see big discrepancies in what I perceive as genuine feedback from coworkers or the general public compared to what I'd expect back in Germany.

Of course VCs go even farther to keep all doors open. That to me is more of the same I observe from most folks.

Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co

#133

Post by joejerryronnie »

mrkurt wrote: post #98
a_bonobo wrote: post #78

>It’s a VC’s job to keep the door open. Many were ‘blown away’, then passed before the second meeting. This is normal. I'm sometimes working with US-Americans and not being US-American myself, I feel like this is also a US-cultural thing? In important meetings with US stakeholders I struggle to read the room because everything is always 'awesome' and 'amazing', there's rarely upfront criticism. Honest feedback has to…

They don't want to be wrong. And their reasons for not investing are usually "haven't seen enough proof" or "don't have conviction about the market". Reasons you can't respond to and are, usually, safe.

The primary reason for VCs not investing is because their other VC friends have not yet invested. It’s like the old saying, “Nobody wants to invest until somebody invests, then everyone wants to invest”.

Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co

#134

Post by tptacek »

verst wrote: post #132
tptacek wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's famously a VC thing, and it causes problems for ordinary US people as well.

It's not just a VC thing. There is a greater delta if you didn't grow up in this particular US culture. As a German (15+ years in the US) formerly in SF now in Seattle I see big discrepancies in what I perceive as genuine feedback from coworkers or the general public compared to what I'd expect back in Germany. Of course VCs go even farther to keep all doors open. That to me is more of the same I observe from most fo…

I don't agree, and think that the distinction between polite encouragement and the enthusiastic affirmations of VCs is important to understand if you're going to engage with startup fundraising. There is something specific and unintuitive going on in these meetings, and people from Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and Tulsa are routinely caught out by it.

Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co

#135

Post by throwaway77112 »

woeirua wrote: post #87

Kudos to her for landing investors for this idea, but her plan was actually to optimize her pitch for potential investors, and given enough pitches she eventually found a few who pulled the trigger. To me, this is not really a sign of a strong idea for a company, but rather a sign of a good saleswoman . I would expect companies with much better, stronger concepts to land funding much faster. Also, I think most people…

If so a 'saleswoman' who "was previously a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford in a relevant field & have a B.Sc. in neuroscience from UT Austin" though.

Also when it comes to VCs, you gotta sell it. Or perish. And if you are gonna sell it, you better have some strategies. This is independent of how good your idea is. Maybe there will be an utopia where VCs consider things only on merit, but that is not the general reality right now.

Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co

#136

Post by throwaway77112 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #81
crackercrews wrote: post #21

Interesting that she had a much easier time raising from men than women. She mentions having a CRM with 150+ investors, so presumably this isn't just random chance based on a small number of interactions. One possible reason is that men may have been actively looking to invest in female founders for diversity reasons. Female investors wouldn't feel the same pressure for gender diversity among their portfolio companie…

In general it's good for men to be aware that women don't actually like each other, on average. Certainly not as much as men like women, on average. I keep "rediscovering" this, so maybe others need to be told/reminded.

Counter anecdata - that's not my experience. Idk about US though.

Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co

#137

Post by ehnto »

a_bonobo wrote: post #78

>It’s a VC’s job to keep the door open. Many were ‘blown away’, then passed before the second meeting. This is normal. I'm sometimes working with US-Americans and not being US-American myself, I feel like this is also a US-cultural thing? In important meetings with US stakeholders I struggle to read the room because everything is always 'awesome' and 'amazing', there's rarely upfront criticism. Honest feedback has to…

It's something I have noticed as well. Also really interesting ways to essentially say "that won't work". Lots of fluffing, backpatting and trying not to tell anyone they are wrong directly.

That was also something in Japan I noticed though, everything is amazing and great and it couldn't possibly be wrong just differing levels of great.

Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co

#138

Post by samatman »

mdorazio wrote: post #125
ccvannorman wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pardon me but 5 years of my life doesn't seem un-noticeable or less noticable at all, and I would certainly notice it much more than for dogs (much as I love them)

I don't think you actually would. A large portion (probably the majority) of American adults could extend their lifespan by 5 years by making simple lifestyle changes. They opt not to.

The second and third sentence of this do not support the first.

It's true that a lot of people (all over the world) make lifestyle choices which probably shorten their lifespan. Although I think you're understating the simplicity of losing significant weight / quitting smoking / drinking less, all of which are things which are notoriously difficult.

It does not follow that those people wouldn't notice an additional five years of lifespan. Of course they would, it's five years!

If someone was selling pills you could take twice a day to add five years of lifespan, the number of people who would take them is broadly limited by the number who could afford to.

Re: How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co

#140

Post by samatman »

pjerem wrote: post #130
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why it's dystopian necessarily. I'd be interested in cloning myself if it was possible/legal/not cost prohibitive. I'm already signed up for a cryonics facility. But I have loved all of my dogs and would seriously think about cloning them if I had the money even to get an imperfect copy when they passed away.

If you loved all of your dogs, maybe you would have miss something if you kept cloning the first one ad vitam. Would you have preferred your second dog to be an imperfect copy of the first ?

"Imperfect" is unnecessarily moralistic here.

A clone is nothing more, and nothing less, than a time-shifted identical twin.

I probably wouldn't clone my dog for that reason: it's not "getting my dog back" it's having his identical twin.

But I grant that identical twins are very similar to one another, so if you like your dog's look and personality, the clone would probably be a lot like his twin. So I don't judge people who would rather do that than find a new dog; why not?

I do think it would be weird to give the clone the same name though. That said, a few pet owners give all of their dogs or cats the same name. Just because I don't understand it doesn't make it bad.

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