Co-authored by Susan Ganje, CFO at The CFO Centre, and Karl R. LaPan, Director at UF Innovate.
Designing the Funding Strategy
A funding strategy is the foundation layer of every IP-backed startup. It impacts the product, the people, and the plans as capital fuels innovation and commercialization.
Startup funding models vary widely across sectors and business models and are ever-evolving. The performance metrics that excited investors in the past may fall flat today. Furthermore, what one capital provider may discount, another may value. There are also factors outside the founder’s control, such as macroeconomic conditions, targeted industries, market concentration, regulatory changes, and technological disruption, that can affect access to capital and force founders to explore alternative pathways and lengthen their runways.
At its core, capital deployment tends to follow the intentional management and reduction of risk. Each de-risking milestone can unlock the next tranche of funding. These are the lab-to-market ‘funding triggers’ we explore in this series. We map out indicative funding pathways and common triggers to help orient and focus your early planning.
This is not an exhaustive guide to the funding landscape. Instead, this series offers a high-level, curated overview of typical funding pathways for development, regulatory, and commercial milestones by subsector. This guide serves as an introduction to the series; detailed subsector guides will follow as standalone instalments accompanied by a bibliography for further research. Biotech funding ecosystems are complex and constantly evolving – this is intended as a logical starting point.
You can read the full guide by clicking here: UF Innovate