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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

#211

Post by Traster »

grammarnazzzi wrote: post #88

> I heavily prioritized male investors. Every time a female investor converted, I asked them to help me find male investors. Does the above statement seem bigoted?

I really don't think you're making a good argument. When a female founder says she's looking for female investors we all know the underlying reasons for that - women in the start-up space face challenges that men don't face and having allies and mentors to navigate those challenges is valuable. If a male founder wants to prioritize male investors that's fine too - but I would be interested to know why they feel that's necessary.

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

#212

Post by Radim »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #191
graderjs wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its effects can't be that disastrous though. The US tech scene is still the best in the world. China is pretty close though.

I think that's caused by the capital available to the US which made people adapt and learn how to use that capital to grow massively (see growth hacking). You also have generations of successful entrepreneurs staying in the US and teaching the next generation. Entrepreneurship in EU is mostly a joke, good entrepreneurs are hard to find. And still, despite of this, people working in Europe seems to be much happier (ev…

Look at the flip side of that coin too:

The gap between bombastic marketing (esp. in the VC/startup world, but also self-promo) and reality must be mentally devastating. US has a serious, nationwide medication problem.

Honesty has its upsides, the (financial) success of an "awesome amazing disruptive changing-the-world-again-this-week" mindset notwithstanding.

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

#213

Post by Traster »

One thing I'm intrigued about is if you're raising $xm, what part of that budget goes to salary for the founder? Is it reasonable to pay yourself $10k out of that? $100k? I'm really interested to know what the expectations are from VC funds on how that's negotiating. Clearly you've got to live, but I wonder what is reasonable.

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

#214

Post by throwaway77112 »

0x737368 wrote: post #183
99_00 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women and Minorities Are Penalized for Promoting Diversity https://hbr.org/2016/03/women-and-minorities-are-penalized-f...

Yeah, please don't post these piece of crap blogposts with such strong wording that "women and minorities *ARE* penalised". For a forum that requests scientific rigour for sometimes even the most trivial claims, HN really does let these affirmative posts get away without any scrutiny. No doubt ONLY because of fear of being labeled a racist/sexist/x-ist. The blog post takes some very controversial claims and tries to…

Google, Uber, Coinbase, Basecamp, HN's own pg - they were all in news because of racism and/or sexism.

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

#215

Post by mdorazio »

samatman wrote: post #138
mdorazio wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

I still disagree. I spent a lot of time in nursing homes when I was a teenager and am quite confident that adding five years of elderly life would not only not be noticed by many people who are just whiling away their later years, a lot of them wouldn’t even want it. You’re assuming that a magic pill adding five years of longevity would either distribute those years equally or primarily extend youthful years, but it’s not at all clear that that’s the case.

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

#216

Post by hu3 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #168
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…

Yep, if you want to hear a brutally honest answer, ask some Russians. If they seem to be grudgingly impressed, you are golden.

That's my experience with Germans. They are as subtle as a chainsaw. I love it. They give me low latency instant feedback of the situation which allows me to act upon.

It's an eye opening experience.

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

#217

Post by SyzygistSix »

keithwhor wrote: post #31

> “Yeah none of the partners here have a dog and [X head partner] actually really hates dogs” Please, please, please name this firm. For the good of all founders.

This was the one part that made me laugh out loud. The awkwardness... And then to go out and pitch again.

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

#218

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

hprotagonist wrote: post #93
BurningFrog wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely expensive and complex to try to do this for humans, due to huge regulatory and ethical costs. So solving the problem for dogs first might be a clever way round much of that!

not really, if your goal is to have a therapeutic research base you can reorient to humans. we’ve cured MS and sepsis in rats like 20 times now. Doesn’t mean much for us.

Dogs are much closer to humans as a model organism.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4068608/

"The most notable benefit of using the dog for genetic studies is that dogs get many of the same diseases as humans, with a similar frequency, and the same genetic factors are often involved."

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

#219

Post by hprotagonist »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #218
hprotagonist wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not really, if your goal is to have a therapeutic research base you can reorient to humans. we’ve cured MS and sepsis in rats like 20 times now. Doesn’t mean much for us.

Dogs are much closer to humans as a model organism. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4068608/ "The most notable benefit of using the dog for genetic studies is that dogs get many of the same diseases as humans, with a similar frequency, and the same genetic factors are often involved."

it entirely depends, of course, on what you're modeling.

My home field uses chinchillas a lot. Cardiologists use pigs. etc.

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

#220

Post by dadrian »

endisneigh wrote: post #47

I 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…

Certainly, it's possible to sell certain VCs on borderline-fraudulent visions of the future, the so-called Investor Storytime pitch. I'm think of Juicero, YikYak, WeWork, etc.

However, that doesn't mean that to be a fraud-resistant VC you shouldn't be looking for a story, or that as a founder you're pulling a fast one by having a narrative in your pitch.

To understand something, you need to make connections. To convince someone to invest, you need to get the investors to understand what your business is and why it's going to grow and make money. Connecting a series of facts and ideas from a starting point to an end IS the definition of a narrative.

That's just how humans interact, disseminate information, and learn. Even technical work (and pure math!) does this.

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