How Hera Biotech raised a $2M seed round

Hey all!
I interviewed Somer Baburek, the founder of Hera Biotech, about their $2M seed round and here's what I learned.

How do you start raising $1M and end up closing $2M, being a woman-led startup in an unpopular niche and without a network of angels and VCs? Somer Baburek from Hera Biotech not only did exactly that but also was kind enough to share her secrets with me.

How Hera Biotech raised a $2M seed round?

Round details

Company name: Hera Biotech
Round size: $2,000,000
Stage: Seed
Date: September 2022

1️⃣ 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.

2️⃣ 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.

3️⃣ 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.

4️⃣ 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.

5️⃣ Fundraising requires tons of leads

300 investors contacted → 110 calls → 40 invested. Only 13% of contacted investors actually invested.

📍Advice from Somer:

"Everybody has an opinion and we got “feedback” and “advice” from so many people who were not investing. My advice is take what feels right and leave the rest. If someone isn’t investing, their feedback on your deck isn’t as valuable as someone who is."

For more insights, check out the full interview: https://shizune.co/blog/how-hera-biotech-raised-a-2m-seed-round

Thanks for reading!

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