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).
"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?"
It's pretty similar to gaming job interviews. But in my experience, VCs are very good at reading between the lines, to the point that they sometimes understand the pitch better than the person making it. I don't see anything here as gaming it though. Some VCs even recommend you do something similar.
"I wonder what the downside is of being strictly objective is (if possible)."
The best investments often have a lot of strengths and a lot of weaknesses. Being strictly objective usually emphasizes the weaknesses more. A lot of VCs look for strengths, but these are often unique and poorly defined.
To a large extent investing is about pattern-matching. You are basically looking at the same situations day-in, day-out for years. You see what works, try to fit it in a box, etc.
This is kind of a doubled-edged sword situation though. After a certain point, you just start blocking situations out mentally. You try to take shortcuts by just looking for X. You don't react when the world starts changing. If you are in an environment where your sample is very tainted (which happens in VC), it is also very easy to actually get reinforced on situations that aren't optimal (this is why most VC funding goes to people who know each other).
I would characterise myself as someone unusually able to switch my thinking when required and I still have a long list of rules that seem basically arbitrary to an outsider (for example, if the CEO has a knighthood, the company will likely do very poorly)...and no pattern is foolproof (the obvious example is Tesla, I don't tend to invest in companies where the CEO is a habitual bullshitter...most of the time that rule works, in that case it didn't work so well).
But investing is about pattern-matching, it can be extremely arbitrary. If you are looking to raise money, I would consult with someone who understands the market you are trying to raise in (i.e. so you can pitch to that pattern...I don't think it will improve your odds of success but it will mean that the funder understands what the situation is), and remember not to take it personally.
Tesla is exactly what I mean -- they wouldn't pass most checklists. Elon has plenty of weaknesses but he has proven to be able to build good companies again and again.
I wouldn't say it's pattern matching. That works great for stocks and established companies, but with "moonshots", you're looking for things that have not existed before. Everyone looks for the next Zuckerberg, Bezos, Gates, Musk, whatever, but the pattern is there is little pattern.
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.
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.
This is a brilliant article, and gets better towards the bottom. I'm sure there are a lot of articles like this, but she's very honest about the process. It's rare to see people document what they wish they did better, when it's so expensive to make mistakes here.
There's some solid SOPs in here too, and it works whether you're doing an app company or trying to land a job, assuming you have the credentials.
>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?
"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."
I would look at treatment for humans first for solutions to the dog's problems. I don't think it's as developed as medical research in humans or livestock for that matter. Proper breeding and genetic testing might actually be the solution.
> 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.
Increasing a dog's lifespan by 5 years is massively noticeable. I've never seen a 20-year old dog.
Adding 5 to a human's health is beneficial but isn't nearly as noticeable.
This is ignoring the magnitude of differences between dogs and humans. They're mammals, sure...
I can't recall just how many "successful trial on rats" stories have we gotten on HN that have to be tempered by reality in the comments.
Edit- As a dog owner myself, I'm also hoping the OP succeeds of course! Nearly every day I have a "memento mori" thought about my pet, and it's extremely depressing.
I met a woman in the park who said she had a dog like mine that lived to 20, then drowned in a swimming pool. I didn't know whether to offer congratulations or commiserations.
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.
It is also important to note 'where' you are adding the five years. An additional five years of infirmity at the end of life? Pass. An additional five years of relatively healthy mid-60s? Sign me up.
Extending lifespan is less useful than extending the healthy/active part of the lifespan. Like reading the fine print on the side of the packaging or the bottom of the contract, you need to pay attention to the details. This is why lifestyle changes tend to be more important than pills which treat conditions that used to kill our parents or grandparents, the former usually increase the odds you will still be walking around and taking care of yourself in your late 80s while the latter might just mean that you add five years to the amount of time that some nursing home will drain your estate while you are bed-ridden in some warehouse for the elderly.
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.
1. Doing something which is highly desirable & not many people can do.
2. Having great credentials.
3. Being connected in VC industry.
With above three elements its not tough to raise initial capital. Difficulty will arise in next round as that will depend on your ability to demonstrate success given the funding. This path is for people who are highly connected and influential. Not for common blokes.
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.
"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
Rapamycin can have bad side effects, especially on the kidneys and making the patient more susceptible to bacterial infections. Wise to look at dogs, if that is the case.
I actually just read your linked article a couple days ago... It's thesis is that the main side effects are easily detectable and reversible, and therefore greatly preferable to the aging-related problems that rapamycin keeps at bay. (ie, if you get a bacterial problem, lay off the rapamycin and maybe take a quick round of antibiotics. OTOH, If you get Alzheimer's, well...)
The story with kidneys is a bit stranger. Heavy rapamycin use seems to trip up 'normal' levels in insulin-related measurements, but this may have a lot more to do with the body being in a different state than the usual measurements are calibrated for, and doesn't seem to be causing diabetes in practice. (to paraphrase, perhaps badly: in many ways, rapamycin acts like artificial calorie restriction, which does strange things to insulin handling anyways.)
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 companies.
If you want to post something nuanced and relevant about your own experience, that's great. But whatever your experience has been, inflating it into grandiose claims on classic flamewar territory is not going to end well—and is also much less interesting. We don't want gender war here. It's tawdry, repetitive, and boring.
HN doesn't "request scientific rigour". If you imagine something like that, of course you're going to find reams of counterexamples. That's not because other people are being inconsistent, it's because you imagined something untrue.
The "piece of crap blogpost" details their data and methodology and gives a link to the published paper that the "piece of crab blogpost" is about.
Because you aren't attacking data or methodology I have to assume your post reflects more issues you are struggling with than issues raised by the paper. Of course, I'm sure the data and methodology have flaws or need further research. It's not within my skillset to judge it. But these things are almost never perfect or the end all.
>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 be pried out of people later at the bar.
I think this is valuable knowledge for non-US people trying to get into US-style work and funding.
It's a pretty common flow. Many people are "impressed" or "blown away" or "love the team" etc etc.
The responses are all platitudes and I've learned to ignore things that are "positive feedback".
Today, the only thing that says an investor is in when they sign and send the money. Up until money in the bank, it doesn't matter how nice or how tough a potential investor is.
Unless you're the hottest startup, this is probably the most realistic way to treat all meetings and understand that it really is a grind.
That reminds me of that call with Triplebyte where they said I "had about the highest score ever" on their screening test. I knew immediately they were full of it and totally dishonest.
"Actions speak louder..." Don't buy any of it except as an act and going through the motions so they can pat themselves on the back.
Real feedback means adversarial criticism, weaknesses, and examination of the business. However, they can leave their "passenger's seat driving" suggestions at the door too, unless they're really useful.
If anyone is ever going down the VC route, they're going to be married to them. Who wants to be married to a liar who can't speak truth or honestly?
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.
Everything is crap. By default. Almost everything is "not bad", "fine", or at best "pretty good". You will almost never hear a French person describe anything as "awesome", "great", "fantastic" or "brilliant" (unless they’ve spent too much time in the US or work in startup la la land).
But crap also is "not bad", "fine", or sometimes even "pretty good".
So, how does one tell the difference?
Easy! It’s all in the contemptuous tone, annoyed dismissive look, sneering smirk and distracted disdainful wave of the hand!
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”.
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 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.
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.
Reminds my previous job as a PM, where I had to deal with many nationalities. Germans were always: Yes/No, this is good/this is crap instead of 'well, you know,it depends,and it could be improved, considering everything it's not too bad'.
Very accurate. Trying to explain to people this is cultural and not my individual personality is a tough sell though.
It's a bit tiring having to praise things you don't believe in to provide honest feedback. In German culture the strong separation between work persona (with a shared mission on behalf of the company / shareholders / customers) and personal life makes it pretty easy to be straightforward at work. People don't define themselves by their job unlike in the US (or certainly SF) where one of the first questions may be "what do you do (for work)?".
From my perspective US colleagues overcommit (say yes to too many things) but don't ask enough detailed question to design solutions that can be of high quality. I'm not surprised you'll find Germans frequently saying that something is crap :D Germans tend to be cautious upfront, asking many questions (to understand scope and to mitigate risks). This often seems unnecessary to the visionary leaders, but a tactician will understand the importance for execution. Nothing wrong with saying "No, we can't do that. But if we reduce the scope, or change this or that we could deliver something."
In the end there are many cultural differences that are subtle but profound. Invisible to either side and usually expressed as what appear to be individuality / personality differences. It takes a lot of experience to understand which elements must be attributed to culture.
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.
I don't disagree with you, it's just that I find your comment to downplay the significant baseline cultural difference of which you may or may not be aware (I don't know what culture you grew up with). This is something to which OP had referred but your comment essentially had been dismissive of by attributing this entirely to differing behavior of VCs compared to baseline US culture.
A founder from a different cultural background seeking funding or advice from US VCs must understand the baseline US culture and then how to interpret VC behavior relative to that culture.
EDIT: To provide a specific example: What is considered polite encouragement to a Californian comes across as very strong / enthusiastic encouragement to a German. Polite is relative to culture. Initially people unfamiliar with the culture may take the words of the random Californian or the VC at face value - both appearing equally enthusiastic observed this way.
1) VCs want to keep the door open for later by not outright saying "No.", since there's no incentive for them to do otherwise.
2) VCs follow the herd (need social proof), so they will often wait for that area to blow up, or wait for another VC will be the "lead."
3) VCs today would rather be late investors after the concept is proven and they can move hundreds of millions of dollars around to get even more hundreds of millions.
Also note that VCs like to imply that they have integrity, but that's often not true:
1) They've had meetings to collude against YC (documented in the press.)
2) Silver Lake Partners revokes employee shares if you leave before 4 years ("In it to win it.") (documented in the press.)
I think in this situation, it's more that an investor could be impressed, but think it's too risky. She also brought up that she had a lot of angles on how to solve the problem, which made investors nervous.
As someone who loves drinking in bars, but has had colleagues who don’t drink alcohol, I will add that this puts non-drinkers at a distinct disadvantage.
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 "nice." As such, they're not your friends or anyones friend, they're toxically-positive, inherently dishonest, and cowardly "yes men." It's a dishonest, time-/energy-wasting, and an untrustworthy cultural- and communication-style. People like these are a liability because they won't go anywhere far except to the diplomatic corps parties, UN-sponsored social ventures, and sing Kum ba yah. (Wantreprenuers and dumb money dispensers.) You have to be radically honest with yourself and others before you can attain and grow anything substantial.
Besides, VC investment is only essential if it's a capital-intensive venture or velocity-constrained by lack of capital. Having more capital isn't useful in and of itself without a plan and a strategy to deploy it to something that's already established, like water on a seedling. This is why chasing VC is worthless: sales of viable product cures all, including bringing VC interest.
This! That term that describes perfectly my impression of many people from the U.S.A. It's maybe just a cultural thing, but I have a lot of trouble working together with people who have this sort of attitude.
> People here are incredibly disagreeable, especially in the last 5-10 years.
Never been to the USA in the last 10 years, but I interact regularly with usians, and this is not my experience at all. All of them have been extremely nice people, without a trace of disagreeableness.
What irks me, is that they are constantly giving unwarranted and over the top praise. I find this very disturbing. In France this attitude is invariably interpreted as ironic mockery. And if they spoke French I would be genuinely offended by such attacks.
Very nice very nice as borat would say but the big piece missing in the rant is mindless ambition. Thats what keeps the lights on when shit hits the fan.
Whether people are superficial corporate robots or without real friends or follow all kinds of meaningless ritual etc doesnt matter if they are driven. Why? Because thats who you end up relying on when competing against other people who are mindlessly driven.
How are you going to compete with people who are more driven than you - "the do whatever it takes" brigade? Ranting takes away focus and thought from answering that question honestly to yourself.
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.
> 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.
They probably did mean that, and believe it or not, Americans are actually OK with that.
American entrepreneurial culture includes a strong dose of "It's OK to lose a million dollars a hundred times if the next one makes a billion dollars". Some think that's part of the reason the US is the country that generates the FAANG(M)s. They throw money at the wall and make big wins off of what sticks, if most of it doesn't.
It's arguable whether that's actually beneficial for the world (is there any of the MANGAFs you don't feel uncomfortable about?), but it certainly accomplishes something. If only making the US rich.
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.
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
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.
I think your comment is fine. One could read it and be like “wow! Are they running a lab too?” and once you find out this person role is really connecting the money to this preexisting science, the term “just” is warranted. It’s not negative, it’s a recognition that they aren’t running their own lab as well.
I believe you about your intent, but intent doesn't communicate itself in internet comments, so the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate. In this context the word "just" is very much a trope of shallow dismissals ("why don't you just", "can't you just", "this is just", etc.), so the ambiguity went against you.
Everyone builds on work of someone else. A lot of scientific research fails to translate to commercially viable product; that is not a trivial task.
Plus, in this precarious phase, further discoveries are possible. Few things work exactly the same way in labs and in the real world. Usually, some anomalies are observed that actually widen our understanding of the problem.
I agree. To me, moonshot is the intersection of incredibly high impact and significant technical uncertainty. Drug discoveries all have technical uncertainty. But extending the life of dogs does not scream incredibly high impact.
It would be different if this were pitched as a way to get to human life extension.
Would this have been possible outside of the Bay area? Is it possible to raise this amount of money for just an idea (a good idea from a knowledgeable founder, but no POC or traction) elsewhere in the US or anywhere in Europe? From what I understand the conventional wisdom is that only VCs from the Bay area will take this sort of bet and they will prefer the company to be located there. But much of what I've read on the matter is about 5 years old so I'm wondering if this is still true (or if it ever was).
Also, this was a really great article and congrats to the author!
Based on my experience, it is possible, and the key factor is something she highlighted:
> I worked in venture capital for two years at a fund specializing in the area my Loyal is in (so I had a preexisting VC network, was seen as a bit of an ‘insider’, and the fund invested in Loyal, which was good signaling).
EU based startups led by female CEOs may be interested to know that the EIC Accelerator program aims to fund a portfolio of companies with at least 35% led by women.
At interview stage gender balance is a factor in prioritization with companies with female CEOs being prioritised until 40% of invited companies have female CEOs.
I'd be curious to know how the Theranos fraud might've impacted your chats with investors as they might be less willing to invest without evidence after all that.
This is the type of writing that is thorough and worth your time. Whether you are a founder or not, there are a lot of nuggets that's really for keeps.
I also like the fact that you have been very upfront on what you deemed advantages. Most articles, you can see that the writer is trying to elevate themselves by stretching the challenges as similar to heroic tales.
More power on your startup which is a noble one - extending the ultimate friendship between humans and dogs.
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.
Is it typically possible for a first-time solo founder to raise this much seed capital without having a product in the lab or an MVP? Maybe having an insider’s view of how the VC world works helped her push the right buttons (and find the right connections), but I am not sure this advice will help the typical founder with no VC connections.
This article got a lot of user flags. That's bad—it's obviously a substantive article, squarely on topic for HN and not sensational, ideological, or predictable. Even a quick skim is enough to see that it doesn't break down along any of the obvious faultlines for this general topic. That not only means it shouldn't have been flagged, it makes it HN gold. If you've been wielding the flag club that indiscriminately...please stop! Accounts that do that lose their flagging rights.
It's not legit to flag an article just because you don't like the general category. There must also be something about the specific article itself that's demonstrably bad for HN (for example, maybe the article doesn't contain substantial new information, is gratuitously baity, or is mostly fuel for internet drama). None of that is the case here—quite the opposite. This is just the sort of article we should welcome, so we can have substantive discussions about relevant issues instead of hurling the same old nasty platitudes at each other yet again. (Can a platitude be nasty? or do I need a different word?)
A thousand thank-yous to the user who took the time to email about this while the thread was still fresh; I wasn't focused on the HN front page just then, but I got the heads-up. If you ever want to make a big difference to HN quality, emailing hn@ycombinator.com when you notice solid, substantive content not getting the attention it deserves (whether because of flags or for any other reason) is one of the highest-leverage contributions you can make!
hey dang, I'm the author. Thanks for cleaning everything up - I'm sometimes a bit nervous when my work gets posted on HN for what happened here. I really appreciate you & the HN team being so proactive in fixing it!
Especially for those of us where top software can be very critical, but who are not in the software business and are committed to efforts in other areas of technology.
I can only imagine the challenges you have been facing are on the increase.
I don't understand this comment. Below we see plenty of dead comments posted at an earlier time, which seems to illustrate some existence of fuel for internet drama.
At this time the first 50% of the comment page does not discuss gender so it clearly turned out right, but they were posted after the dead comments. If a fresh article has the majority of comments being people warring about gender then the option given to users is either to ignore the war, flag it, or engage in the discussion. Having seen that multiple times it is often easier and uses less time and energy to simply flag the article regardless of how great the article actually is. The flag would not be a comment about the quality of the article, but rather the climate and culture for which it was posted in.
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 good article getting unfairly flagged" (a user did that last night and it was extremely helpful) or it could be "hey, there's a really good article getting a lot of flamewar comments". Actually it could also simply be "hey, there's a really good article that hasn't gotten any attention yet". (People often send those for their own articles, but that's a little less noble and not what I'm talking about here.)
You can see the common denominator there: "a really good article". There aren't very many of those. Just as the most important thing for startup investors is not to miss the best startups, the most important thing for HN is not to miss the best articles.
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 are when the author is controversial. The negative comments are focusing on the author, and often that dominated the article comments until the article get flagged to death. Fair? No. It is however a pattern that keep repeating itself.
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.
The important question is when the flagging occurred by the users. If the flagging occured when most comments were culture warring, and the moderators find that to be inappropriate, then it would be good to know for future reference. If most users pressed the flag button long after the discussion switched to be more productive then I can understand what dang is talking about, but from his post I can't determine that.
Is there a documented HN policy that high-quality articles can be censored on HN because of low-quality comments? Why not allow time for low-quality comments to be downvoted/flagged and high-quality comments to arrive? If good articles could be rapidly flagged/censored, how could discussions ever "switch to be more productive"?
That information isn't public. I'm a mod here (in case that wasn't clear), so I looked at the private data.
Edit: if you meant what you can tell from public information: (1) sudden drops in rank, as walterbell points out downthread—(edit: but it's important to know that sudden drops in rank can also be because of the flamewar detector, which is unrelated to flags), and/or (2) the [flagged] annotation, which appears when flags outweigh upvotes by a certain threshold.
I assume they were asking how does a non-mod tell if it's flagged so they can report it to you? (aka when it says [flagged] next to it or something, or drops off the front page rather quickly, etc)
[flagged] and [dead] aren't the same, but if enough flags occur relative to upvotes, the thread will eventually also become [dead] - however, not if there's an active discussion already. So 'showdead' might not do much for you in this specific situation.
Truly inspiring story, I was just wondering maybe you could have also tried to raise some money via Crowdfunding sites as well. One thing is sure, you are least bothered by Sexism in case of online crowdfunding I believe.
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 and revenue and a good deck or market.
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.
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.
Yeah, much less a working product. Tech vc is sprinkling money around hoping to grow magic. If you have revenue it probably isn’t speculative magic revenue.
Exactly, if you making money it suggests there is a market , that means there must be competitors....even though every unicorn start up ends up with many competitors...and if there are competitors it's not venture fundable..
when asked if there are competitors, regardless of what we answered, the answer was wrong. that again proves my point that all that matters is that investors know you, and that requires a lot of time, which becomes extremely expensive if you are in silicon valley, and only affordable if you are already rich or have a family that’s rich, and do not have to build a product.
I've got a poll for folks in the thread who are interested in the space - what other services would you use for your dog that aren't out already?
- Genetic testing to understand the best diet (and then a subscription for that food)?
- Insurance so you can pay for surgery + clone your dog when it passes away?
- Something else?
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 ?
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.
All this says to me is that the game is rigged. If you are outside of the tent you have 0 chance of getting a VC interested in a substantial round, no matter how good your execution has been so far. Bootstrap FTW.
Could you please stop posting snarky and/or assholish comments to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly and we're really trying for something else here. There are other places on the internet to do that kind of thing.
> 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.
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.
Can the title be renamed to the correct title, which is currently "How I raised a $11M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech moonshot"
If you try bookmarking the page, it currently says $5.1M, which was inserted by HN bookmarklet during submission, then manually edited to $5M to fit within the 80 character maximum. The sub-heading of the article says:
> In January 2020 I closed a $5.1M seed round, my first financing for my first company. I’ve closed another ~$6M since then. This is how I raised that first round.
Yeah, the h1 article title inside the page changed, but the actual "title" attribute that you see in your browser tab is $5.1M (hence the confusion, I assume).
"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?
Just a side note, it doesn't matter if you are Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Job or Elon fucking Musk. You might have created the future alone in a fucking garage but you definitely should prefer word "we". It's also a great sign of leadership.
Please don't use quoting conventions to make it seem like you're quoting someone when you're not. That was seriously misleading, and a destructive trick to pull.
Although that's not an explicit rule in the site guidelines, I think it's pretty clear that your comment broke more than one of the rules that are: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. It's also a flamewar tropes to switch some words around and act like the person said that when they didn't. Please don't do flamewar tropes on HN. Clichés are tedious and uninteresting to begin with, and the flamewar ones are poison.
Edit: it also looks like your account has been using HN primarily for flamewar. We ban accounts that do that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the guidelines and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
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).
New names are usually given to new, unknown compounds where a company spent years on getting the compound right and tested thousands of them to select the best (using a criteria that the company publishes)
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.
Over decades I’ve Seen lots of sales people target demographics in illegal ways. Mostly insurance and age. Basically impossible to prove unless your put it in writing.
> I heavily prioritized female investors. Every time a (male) investor converted, I asked them to help me find female investors.
This is the text I'm seeing on my chrome /mobile android browser, would be funny if we were being shown different versions, but it seems as if you might have made a mistake there.
I heavily prioritized female investors. Every time a (male) investor converted, I asked them to help me find female investors. However, female investors were harder to find, slower to reply, ghosted me more often, did much more diligence, and were harder to convert.
That’s what I see. I assume GP was trying to make a point.
Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. This is just going to lead to repetitive and increasingly nasty discussion—as indeed it has, like clockwork, in this subthread.
Because unfortunately gender matters when trying to raise money to start a business. Investors factor it in to their investment decisions. Sometimes they do it on purpose (i.e. Are you going to have kids? Will men in ___ industry take you seriously to do deals with or want to join your team? If I give her money, will she sleep with me?) and sometimes they don't do it on purpose (i.e. Misgivings of whether she can "lead", "be tough", manage money, take risks. More doubts than a man with similar or lower credentials).
Last I read something like 97% of venture funding goes to men. 57% of bachelors degrees are earned by women. So it's not like there is a lack of women who can set and accomplish long term goals and manage money.
Do VCs give women less money, or do women convince less VCs to give them money? Does personality play a role in your ability to convince somebody to give you large sums of money? Is there some kind of similarity between men that do not receive funding and women that do not receive funding? Interesting questions that would be worth investigating, instead of just accusing the majority of VCs of (even sub conscious) sexism.
Please don't take HN threads into generic gender flamewar. It's tedious and repetitive and inevitably nasty—not what this site is for. We want thoughtful, curious conversation about different things here.
Please consider this recent story on HN, One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks [1] (methodology: searched HN for "man" and took the first story, sorted by date). Count the number of comments that focus on the subject's gender. I couldn't find any. Contrast that to this story -- well over half are about nothing but gender, and almost all mention it. Why is that?
I look on algolia for a thread which is actually equivalent to the one you posted, and I did find one.
Unfortunately it has only one comment, so it doesn't make the point I intended it to.
I can only submit my opinion, which is that "Why one woman stole 47M academic papers – and made them all free to read" would not focus on Alexandra Elbakyan's gender.
There's an actual difference between the headline you chose (and the headline of the article below) and the headline of the OP.
"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.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Nothing new will come of this, nor anything interesting—just more nastiness. We're trying for curious conversation here.
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.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Nothing new will come of this, nor anything interesting—just more nastiness. We're trying for curious conversation here.
In her case, her gender clearly makes her stand out because men are statistically the overwhelming majority in the field.
Someone who came from a trade school or an underrepresented state might choose to bring these points forward instead, to share their insights with fellow working class founders.
It's fine to point out a relevant bit of the article, but please omit swipes. That first bit of your comment more than outweighs any of the good you're contributing here, and your post would be just fine without it.
Why is that disastrous, given that you have to be obsessed and highly risk tolerant to found a new moonshot company? That's why men are more common here. It's not some conspiracy. They are simply more likely to be obsessed, unbalanced and take on risk. Crazy, if you like. See also the most dangerous jobs, and a curious lack of concern about those being dominated by men.
VCs don't care about gender or any other irrelevant attribute one bit when investing and that notion is simply absurd. Just as absurd as thinking that prisons are biased against women as a way to explain why it's mostly men in jail.
I already replied to you elsewhere in this thread, but this is the exactly sort of generic ideological flamewar comment that we ask HN users not to post here. Nothing this predictable can be interesting in HN's sense of that word—and worse, it guarantees a degenerating discussion. No more of this please.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. Maybe you don't think you owe them better, but you definitely owe this community better if you're participating in it.
Despite 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 money.
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.”
I bet you hate Elizabeth Holmes. I wish your sex wasn't relevant, but unfortunately it still is. I genuinely wish you well. We've seriously needed more (hell, any) diversity in our leaders and decision makers for a very long time.
Any of the mainstream brands like Purina. They have excellent science behind their food and it will keep your pet healthy. They have a brand to defend, after all. If they made pets sick, they’d be done for.
Unless you are also doing a dog-related startup, I don't think that´s relevant.
I also dislike almost everything about dogs, but unless an office becomes "pet-friendly" (=dog-friendly because no one is going to bring their cat/parrot/turtle/fish to the office), is unlikely you will ever notice.
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 vastly overestimate the level of competence of VCs and especially the degree of due diligence that they do. They are just as easily wooed by great presentations and the typical sales tricks. Cases in point: WeWork, Theranos, etc.
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.
> Also, I think most people vastly overestimate the level of competence of VCs and especially the degree of due diligence that they do. They are just as easily wooed by great presentations and the typical sales tricks. Cases in point: WeWork, Theranos, etc.
Remember when more than one millionaire funded Juicero? I remember.
It seems that VCs are either following the herd or buying the vision. The latter is a safe risk to take because the timescales of some projects are 10+ years which means the VC can delay the inevitable (firm goes to zero) with a slim chance that the returns will be huge. Personally I have tried and failed to raise VC money, as a result I have some sour grapes when I see firms raise $20mn+ for moon shot ideas that make no sense to me. Having said that I would rather be beholden to my firm's customers, customers who pay for an unsubsidized product that meets a market need, today.
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.