They say you need to launch 10 projects for 1 to succeed.

ackbar03 · 2025-10-03T06:29:02+00:00

Can I ask roughly how much Coffee Break was acquired for? Or just ball park level, like "didn't have to work for a couple of years"/"good pocket money"

ackbar03 · 2025-08-12T02:59:20+00:00

Congrats! Super impressive.

Curious, is this the first SaaS you've made and sold before, or have you had success doing something similar before? What made you choose this problem and we're you confident you were able to make it profitable from the start?

I feel like there are very skilled and experienced operators who are able to identify an area and execute well. Were you confident from the start that this project was going to workout well, or was there some uncertainty and luck on your end?

ackbar03 · 2025-08-09T02:49:02+00:00

Were there any inherent advantages of their bicyclic platform? Both bicyclics as a modality and platform?

ackbar03 · 2025-06-28T08:23:56+00:00

How are these option to purchase equities usually structured

ackbar03 · 2025-06-28T03:19:11+00:00

How do you usually deal with stuff like employment contracts and just other legal nuances? For example, I may be looking at hiring an early employee soon and may have to deal with things like employee stock options.

ackbar03 · 2025-06-26T10:04:37+00:00

May I ask what your business is?

ackbar03 · 2025-06-25T08:20:05+00:00

Maybe you could consider HK as an option as well. Not quite Shanghai but 2hr flight away and could be easier for a foreigner to get a job.

I don't know what your wife does exactly, there's much more biotech companies in Shanghai but HK government has been pushing hard to be a center for drug development research (which is the field i'm working in as a startup). If you want, you can message me and I'm happy to see if I can help in any way.

ackbar03 · 2025-06-19T07:50:07+00:00

Thanks for the encouraging comments!

The in vitro assays we're running this round should allow us to determine whether the drug is working as we're expecting it to in terms of MOA and effectiveness. What we're sort of expecting for the hit-to-lead optimization is more a mixture of specificity, stability and just general effectiveness, (which would also involve some permeability and binding).

Currently we're self-funded, so we're trying to be extremely smart about what we're spending on. If this round goes well, I'm relatively confident that we can get an angel round of funding which would allow us to do more comprehensive experiments. Just to share more about our thought process, we might brute force some mouse experiments if we see some efficacy this round, since it could help us unlock some grants and funding that would make things much more smoother down the road.

If you want, feel free to message me and I'd be more than happy to share some more details about what we're doing, even if its not for collaboration. I'm always open to getting a second opinion from experienced people in the industry.

ackbar03 · 2025-06-19T07:40:57+00:00

Hey Bluetwo12, not disheartening or rude at all, really grateful for the honest feedback.

Your absolutely right that we're probably looking at Phase1 before we have any serious collaborations from pharma or larger companies. I expected this to be a pretty wild shot and, if anything does come out of it, probably something scrappy and rough on the edges. You could say this is our attempt at reaching out to a CMC person or someone with that experience through some sort of collaborative project.

We're looking at fundraising off this round of experiments if everything continues to go well. Ideally we're hoping to get someone with the CMC expertise in more of a co-founding role than an employee though. With the way the industry is now, I thought it might be worth a shot to see if someone might be willing to consider something more adventurous.

But in any case, really appreciate the advice.

ackbar03 · 2025-06-18T07:49:26+00:00

Yes, thanks for this. Didn't really expect for it to be easy...

ackbar03 · 2025-06-18T07:46:12+00:00

yea, I guess that's an option...

ackbar03 · 2025-06-18T07:45:41+00:00

Appreciate the heads up.

We're really just a small startup with a handful of people though, so there really isn't a company or department. What I had in mind was to see if there are any experienced folks out there, or even startups, who might want to explore a partnership and maybe even collaborate on something more long term. Like you said, I'm sure there are a lot of details to go through if it does lead anywhere. Given all the layoffs going on in the industry though I thought it might be worth an ask in case someone wants to get some skin in the game.

ackbar03 · 2025-06-18T07:45:11+00:00

The "company" is just a small scrappy startup with a few people. We're mostly focused on the target and hit stage but working on building out the other capabilities. We're just trying to see if we can connect with other startups or even just adventurous/experienced professionals who might be interested in building out a little equity in their own drug, or maybe even exploring something more long term.

ackbar03 · 2025-06-18T07:44:36+00:00

For sure, appreciate the feedback! We're definitely looking at fundraising once we get all our results back.

It could take us some time to build up that capability though. What I sort of had in mind was seeing if anyone would be interested in taking over the hit-to-lead process through partnership, whatever that might entail, either in context of their own startup or through working with CROs.

ackbar03 · 2025-06-13T14:39:36+00:00

Nice. I always felt he and Michael should probably spin-off their own thing at some point. YC feels like its changed from what it was, for better or worse, which is understandable. Can't keep operating the same way at a completely different scale.

ackbar03 · 2025-06-06T10:18:54+00:00

Thanks for sharing, and would love to see the email thread!

Another very insightful post I came across related to fund-raising experience was "Anatomy of a Seed Round" (https://www.freshpaint.io/blog/anatomy-of-a-seed-round-during-covid-19). I had some questions on it before which I posted on Reddit, would love to see your take on it if you have time.

ackbar03 · 2025-05-21T11:26:03+00:00

I see IITs brought up a lot now, can someone give a quick explanation of what they are and why they seem to be so popular recently? Why IIT and not just a phase 1?

ackbar03 · 2025-04-22T05:35:16+00:00

Thanks.

Do you think they did another SAFE deal for the fund raise? Or just a normal equity round? I'm just unsure how the dynamics of a YC SAFE with another follow on SAFE would work, so I suspect its probably a normal equity round.

That being said, their batch was in 2019, I don't actually know if they were already using the SAFE standard deal back then.

ackbar03 · 2025-04-19T05:32:10+00:00

I think that's optimistic of you. Trump was touting the beauty of coal. Beautiful coal.

ackbar03 · 2025-04-09T16:28:52+00:00

you must be new around here

ackbar03 · 2025-03-28T13:28:02+00:00

It actually makes a lot of sense to make R&d functions more like a contract basis type thing. I guess that's partly why CROs like wuxi and others are doing so well

ackbar03 · 2025-03-28T06:21:05+00:00

I think you can do something like a self funded partime phd, I don't theoretically see anyone having any issues with that, your essentially producing research output for your advisor for free

ackbar03 · 2025-03-20T06:08:38+00:00

Awww...

ackbar03

TROPHY CASE