Fundraising Folklore: Myths, Missteps, and Magical Thinking in Biotech

Biotech, more than most sectors, runs not just on capital—but on belief. And where belief goes, myths follow. Wrapped in jargon, PowerPoint gloss, and the occasional cameo from a Nobel laureate, the fundraising process in biotech has become less a rational exchange and more a high-stakes morality play. Everyone is pretending, just in slightly different dialects.

Let us begin with the most enduring myth: “Good science will always get funded.”

No, it won’t. Good science might get cited. It might even get published. But funding? That’s a different ritual. One involving pitch decks, pre-money valuations, TAM slides, and investor psychology only loosely tethered to the periodic table. Investors don’t fund the best science—they fund the best narrative that can plausibly be monetised. If that narrative happens to involve good science, all the better. But it’s a correlation, not a prerequisite.

Then there’s the fable of “the warm intro.” You’re told, repeatedly, that you must be introduced by someone in the inner circle. What they don’t tell you is that the inner circle consists largely of other founders who are also broke. The intros are warm, yes—because they’re recycled from the last 50 deals that didn’t close.

Ah, and the mystical “bridge round.” This one deserves a book. The bridge round is what you raise when you didn’t raise what you meant to the last time. It’s never enough. It’s always closing in 30 days. And it becomes the financial equivalent of living on toast and hope. Most bridges are actually cul-de-sacs, paved with SAFEs and fuelled by founders too exhausted to start over.

Let’s not forget the “strategic investor”—that mythical beast that brings not just money, but "synergies." In reality, strategic investors are often bureaucratic offshoots of large companies trying to look relevant. Their term sheets are slower. Their diligence is deeper. And their investment committee includes someone whose PhD was in polymer adhesives and who now has Opinions about your oncology platform.

Biotech-specific quirks abound. Like the "killer preclinical data" that looks spectacular until someone asks for the protocol. Or the fact that VCs will happily fund a company based on one mouse study—provided the mouse was photogenic and the slides had sufficient gradient fills.

Then there’s the perpetual Series A. You are always raising. You are never done. You close the round and immediately realise you forgot to budget for manufacturing. Or regulatory. Or HR. Or life. Your cap table becomes a spreadsheet of regrets.

And let us not overlook the pitch deck performance art: 14 slides of visionary storytelling, followed by the investor asking the one question your slides were designed to avoid. You answer. They nod. You follow up. They vanish.

If this sounds bleak, take heart. The game can still be played—and even won. But to play well, founders must abandon the fairy tales:

• Investors don’t want data. They want conviction.
• Grant money isn’t free. It’s just slow.
• Advisors don’t work for equity. They work for outcomes—or they don’t.
• Momentum is everything, but urgency must be manufactured.

Most importantly: fundraising is not a reward for building something impressive. It is a parallel process that must be mastered.

So go forth. Tell your story. Sharpen your pitch. Know your numbers. And for the love of Pasteur, stop calling it a platform unless it has three independent nodes and two revenue streams.

Because in biotech, belief raises money. But clarity—sharp, cold, uncompromising clarity—is what gets you through the second meeting.

Welcome to the folklore. Try not to believe everything you hear.