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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

#191

Post by jokethrowaway »

graderjs wrote: post #173
doggodaddo78 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I'm from the US grew up in the Valley but lived in the UK for a startup for a short while. It's both a byproduct of career hierarchal corporate obedience and social success façade (see also: modern campus culture of Ivy Leagues and Pac12s). It's absolutely awful for mental health or getting things done. More practically, it's a problem when people try so hard to be liked that they throw away respect by being too…

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 (even if they're poorer) than in the US.

My experiences with USA companies haven't been positive (very immature working culture of burning your employees) but I was always impressed at how the founders (some from the US, some immigrating from outside) managed to rake in a casual few millions at demo day just by saying they want to solve problems for a certain audience.

My company got 10k€ for 10% after fighting for months (some more money came later thanks to an angel I sourced), which were not even enough money to incorporate a company in the country I was.

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

#192

Post by biztos »

xiphias2 wrote: post #157
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?

Yes, but at least honest. I prefer honest over a person hiding something / not telling the truth (she was hiding much more about the science part, that it’s rapamicyn that she’s testing).

> I […] did not discover the science behind the company.

It doesn’t seem like she was hiding anything, in fact that’s a pretty bold admission in an article about raising VC.

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

#193

Post by another-dave »

aronswartz wrote: post #164

"How I did it " you mean "How we* did it". Too much self praise in this it's hard to read. It's a team effort, try creating a one person company and raise capital and then probably write this.

She says — I raised the seed for an idea and deck. I did not have a co-founder, a team, and did not discover the science behind the company. I do have significant domain expertise, a specific and strong longevity network, and exceptional founder-market fit. — why do you think she had a team of people involved in the pitch? Unless there's some mention of it that I skimmed over?

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

#194

Post by twic »

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…

There's a celebrated graph about it:

https://imgur.com/gallery/8Afg58W

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

#195

Post by andi999 »

monocasa wrote: post #148
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 seems to be mainly a west coast thing. "Good vibes" always bordering on fake vibes. East coast seems to be more willing to tell you that your idea sucks, you suck, and your grandma sucks too. Unfortunately they're also way less likely to give your company a decently sized investment and valuation, so there's that.

Is this before or after they hear your idea.

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

#196

Post by twic »

wombatmobile wrote: post #129

> Loyal is developing drugs to extend dog lifespan and healthspan. I’d put us in the incipient consumer bio category. Buddhism is developing acceptance of lifespan and appreciation of life in the present moment. It's in the peace of mind category.

Okay but how are you going to teach Buddhism to dogs? If you can figure that out, there's probably VC money waiting for you.

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

#198

Post by b20000 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #43
b20000 wrote: post #16

Congrats, 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?

because the competition has VCs or deep pockets and to compete effectively and get visibilty in the market you need more money than what you can generate by bootstrapping. and no, you cannot convince people to just work for equity.

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

#199

Post by adwn »

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…

> 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.

Uh, what? Wrong, at least for Germany, which is littered with internationally successful small and medium-sized companies. Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand .

Edit: Unless you were refering to the kind of "entrepreneur" that burns millions of USD in VC money over the span of a couple years, fails to create anything that anyone is willing to actually pay money for, but produces a lot of insightful blog posts in that time. Yes, we don't have a lot of those here yet, but we're working on it.

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

#200

Post by graderjs »

fnord123 wrote: post #176
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.

When metrics are you using?

I guess a whole bunch of my opinions and experience based on reading about the different tech scenes. I'm not factoring in things like "employee happiness as a separate vector" (in my opinion, in this argument, that's "second place consolation prize" for Europeans justifying why their tech scene is better). I'm assuming that however terrible the US scene is claimed to be, it's can't be bad in the sense that any badness has not destroyed its productivity. It's still no. 1.

To me the point of a tech scene is to be large. As in dollar value. Generate capital in terms of valuations, market cap, revenue and funding for new ventures.

Attempt to summarize the experiences, readings that contribute to my view:

Number of startups in US. Size of tech companies. US tech scene companies ranking in world's largest organizations. Personal experience with those companies.

Size of China market. Number of Chinese tech billionaires. Number of massive Chinese tech companies, and their ranking in world's biggest companies/tech companies.

I don't think any hard analysis of the data is going to disprove my claim that world tech scene's are ranked: US, China (close second)

But if it did that would certainly be very interesting and high value information to me! :p :) xx

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