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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

#241

Post by silexia »

dadrian wrote: post #220
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 convi…

This author leads with her gender. Could a man have raised as much (or any) money as the author did without a customer or any experience or a demo version of the product?

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

#242

Post by jjeaff »

silexia wrote: post #241
dadrian wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 convi…

This author leads with her gender. Could a man have raised as much (or any) money as the author did without a customer or any experience or a demo version of the product?

Yes, they do all the time. And it's likely still easier for men to do so than for women.

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

#243

Post by gailees »

silexia wrote: post #241
dadrian wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 convi…

This author leads with her gender. Could a man have raised as much (or any) money as the author did without a customer or any experience or a demo version of the product?

Honestly, it’s crazy. We back incredible women who end up spending at least four times fundraising than similarly qualified men, consistently get offered lower valuations, and end up raising less capital. It’s fucked up — the three solo female founders we backed are some of the best performers in our fund I so that makes me wonder how many incredible women aren’t getting funded at all who would also crush if they had the resources.

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

#244

Post by micimize »

pseudolus wrote: post #83

I've read elsewhere that their approach involves using rapamycin - a drug used by transplant patients. Apparently, it has been reviewed positively as a potential anti-aging agent for humans [0]. The unique approach here is to treat animals, rather than humans, and thus avoid the extensive and expensive trials that human testing would require. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6814615/ https://link.spri…

"We are NOT developing rapamycin or metformin for dog aging. None of our drugs in development are a classic longevity drug that you will have heard of. Most have never been previously described as aging drugs." – https://twitter.com/celinehalioua/status/1398335368567480325

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

#245

Post by tomcam »

Traster wrote: post #213

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.

They would expect you to pay yourself a competitive but not luxurious wage, so, closer to $125K or so than $10K in the Bay Area. If it were $10K they'd be afraid you were too distracted trying to scrounge a living; it would a horrible use of their funds.

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

#246

Post by Google234 »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #128
Google234 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding 5 years to human life would be worth a trillion dollars. There are 1 billion people that would pay at least 1k for thst.

I'm curious about why the parent was downvoted.

Maybe for dismissing a trillion dollar product and extending human life.

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

#247

Post by boublepop »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #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?

> If you can do that to a dog, it seems trivial to extend to humans.

Nothing about taking treatments that work in one species and transferring them to another is trivial. You really can’t even assume that it would remain effective. Every single failed clinical trial of a drug was back up by previous animal studies showing efficacy, but it’s just not guaranteed to translate.

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

#248

Post by dang »

belorn wrote: post #240
dang wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because if an article is particularly good, it's not fair for disgruntled users to be able to sink it by posting shitty comments. That would be a big loophole. If the article were garden-variety flamebait then it would be a different story (no pun intended) – but this was such a clear case of the opposite. The best thing is to give us a heads-up at hn@ycombinator.com. That could be either "hey, there's a really…

Thanks for answering. Not being able to use the flag feature when a article is being used as fuel for culture war is an answer to the question I had. Emailing sounds like a useful feature through I doubt I will be using it myself. What I find as being an really good article getting unfairly flagged might be very different from others. A standard version that I often see is when articles get sunk by shitty comments ar…

Yes, that's a problem. It requires human intervention to fix it, and that inevitably includes interpretation and judgment calls and no doubt bias too. We try to be as unprejudiced as we can and stick to HN's first principles, but people have such vastly different perspectives that satisfying everyone is out of the question. Still, it's not entirely subjective, and one's ability to stick to first principles gets better with practice.

I don't recognize this bit though: "Not being able to use the flag feature when a article is being used as fuel for culture war". That doesn't sound like what I said and certainly isn't what I meant. Edit: oh, I see what you mean - "being used as fuel for culture war" is your rephrasing of what I described as "shitty comments". Don't take this absolutely, though. The median case is that both the article and the comments are garden-variety culture war; those are legit to flag. I'm just saying that you shouldn't flag indiscriminately. We want some discernment when an article clears, let's say, the 95th percentile of thoughtfulness.

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

#249

Post by mikeodds »

haram_masala wrote: post #106
mikeodds wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t win a lottery without a ticket

To paraphrase Feynman, the odds of winning the lottery are essentially the same whether or not you buy a ticket.

I would argue it depends on which lottery and how many tickets you buy :)

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-winner...

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

#250

Post by [deleted] »

zild3d wrote: post #222
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.

> try creating a one person company and raise capital She did. The team she hired was possible after raising the capital as a solo founder..

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