How To Secure $10 Million in Venture Capital Funding with Allison Byers

Allison Byers (0:00)

Investing is also voting. And we as individuals don't vote with our dollars, whether it's through your consumerism or your investing. For the things that we want to see, they will not happen. You can't just be bystanders.

Jim Fielding (0:17)

I have a problem with people playing the victim, and I think if you're a bystander, then you're going to play the victim, because then you're going to say, why did that happen? The system wasn't built for me. How did that person ever get elected?

Hi, I'm Jim Fielding. Welcome to Ask For An Answer.

Hello, kind, curious, talented human beings. It is time for another episode of Ask For An Answer with Jim Fielding. You guys know I look throughout the community and look throughout the world to find interesting people to bring you, and this is a good episode. Buckle in for this one, whether you're watching or listening. I'm so thrilled to welcome Allison Byers. Allison, I'll tell you in a minute how I found her, but she is the author of an incredible book called Fundraising for the Rest of Us, and I have to read the subtitle because it's so good. How to build your pitch, navigate bias, and raise capital on your terms. Allison, thank you so much for being here. I'm thrilled that you're here.

Allison Byers (1:19)

Thank you so much for having me, Jim. I'm excited for this chat.

Jim Fielding (1:23)

Oh my God, it's going to be so good. So I want to give a call, a shout out right at the beginning to Mr. Ben Patano of Damn Gravity Publishing, who introduced me and Allison. I worked with Ben on my first book. Allison worked on her book, worked on her book with Ben.

So big call out to Ben and Damn Gravity for connecting us. And I told Allison, she was almost like the myth, the story, because I heard about her for years before she wrote this book, because he would always talk about this woman. And I think she has a book in her and, you know, it's such an interesting topic. And I love this topic because I've done VC investing, I've done PE, I've done angel investing, I've been in the world, I've never raised money on my own. But I love the fact, Allison, that you wrote about, you know, some stuff that people don't necessarily want to talk about. And that is raising money, raising venture money, raising invested money, as a member of, quote, an other community. I mean, I love that. So why don't you share your biography and we'll get into why you wrote the book and the lessons and all that kind of stuff.

Allison Byers (2:39)

Sure. I'll give the abridged origin story behind all the things they do now, including the book. But really, so after about a decade of management consulting, I went into startup land. I entered entrepreneurship by joining scientific co-founders as the business one on the team, to spin a medical device out of MIT and a hospital system here in Boston, where I live. Yeah, didn't know. I was about to do the hardest thing ever that you could do. No idea.

Obviously, I didn't know any of the things I know now. We did end up raising almost $10 million. We brought an FDA registered product to market. We were in active clinical trials, revenue generating, grew the team, all the things. Then I really struggled to raise our series B round of funding, so the later round that's appropriate for that stage of company. We ended up selling it early in something called an asset sale. Happy to go down any path you want, but for the audience to know, not preferable.

Pretty traumatic period of my life, not using that word in a trivial sense.

After that sale, that transaction, the team that acquired us just so happened to be led by all men. We just so happened to be led by all women, and they just so happened to raise $55 million with our assets. That for me was both a very low point, but also the point of transition where I turned to research the field of investing and of capital allocation and pitching and fundraising and what does it all look like, primarily to understand how I could have failed so spectacularly, but very quickly understood what system I was playing in, in a way I did not before. And I had a sense of relief knowing I didn't actually fail. I just had no idea what this system was like. And that's what powers. That's why. That's why I founded a company, wrote a book, wrote policy of powers. Everything I do is a drive to work toward more equitable access to innovation capital.