How Hera Biotech raised a $2M seed round

Hey all! I interviewed Somer Baburek, the founder of Hera Biotech, about her $2M seed round and here's what I learned. 1/ Grow your network of investors with pitch competitions Somer had 0 connections with VCs when she started fundraising. After 4-6 months of pitching at startup events and competitions, she knew enough investors in her niche to close $2M instead of the planned $1M. 2/ Prepare for a long run It took Somer a little over a year to go from the idea of raising capital to $2M in her bank account. 3/ Do a rolling close to survive As the whole fundraising process took Somer 12+ months, rolling close was the only way she was able to stay afloat. 4/ Fundraising is extremely time-consuming Somer contacted ~300 investors and had ~110 intro calls. 1 contact = ~1h spent on cold emails or warm intros. 1 meeting = ~30m preparation + ~30m meeting itself. That's almost two months of fulltime outreach and pitching. 5/ Fundraising requires tons of leads 300 investors contacted → 110 calls → 40 invested. Only 13% of contacted investors actually invested. Thanks for reading! For more insights, check out the full interview here: https://shizune.co/blog/how-hera-biotech-raised-a-2m-seed-round/