How do you raise $12M for a company VCs can't categorize?

so that's a watch out I think for entrepreneurs you have to know kind of when to say nope I'm not answering any more of your questions like you're either in or you're out welcome to fundraising demystify the podcast where we uncover The Untold Stories of successful Founders who have raised Venture Capital to bring their Visions to life join me Jason Kirby your host as we dive into the hidden truce of the fundraising game we'll explore different strategies tactics lessons learned from these entrepreneurs who have figured out how to win the fundraising game in their own way whether you're a budding entrepreneur just getting started or an established founder looking to scale your business this podcast equips you with the knowledge and inspiration to conquer the fundraising landscape hey Founders this is Jason Kirby again uh your host of fundraising demystified today we're bringing you on episode 2 Caitlyn Krebs the co-founder of nalu Bio Caitlyn is a highly technical co-founder with an extensive technical background that decided to tackle an extremely difficult problem both in biotech and the cannaboid industry where she can't necessarily be classified as a biotech company and she can't classify herself as a cannabis company and dealt with a lot of struggles that led to a successful series a financing of 12 million dollars so I'm excited to be sharing her story of overcoming the VC winter overcoming the challenges as a female founder and having a successful fundraising outcome so let's go ahead and dive in to Caitlyn's story today hi Caitlin it's great to have you on the show today I'm so excited to be able to share your story and listen to your story of your accomplishment of being able to raise a successful round and we'd love for you to share your story to our audience a little bit about your background personally and how you started now the bio and uh kind of what that Journey's been like for you great thank you Jason thanks for having me today so my kind of story and background I come out of the biotech and Life Sciences industry for the last 20 years I've been at a budget I'm a kind of entrepreneur at heart um I was in kind of modeling and simulation so mlnai before those are actually terms about 15 almost 20 years ago we were doing mechanistic models of biology in computers uh creating virtual patients uh but I've been in pre-diabetes um companies I've been in Alzheimer's and Mild Congress impairment so digital eye tracking so a digital Health company also cancer genomics so basically testing your blood to see if you've got low amounts of basically cancer in the blood for a range of cancers and I love the intersection of Science and Technology like that's where I love to be kind of on the frontier so I was in pre-diabetes before people believed it was a disease I was in Alzheimer's before people believed you could actually prevent it you can actually prevent it with diet and exercise which most people don't know um and so about three and a half years ago a friend venture capitalist called me up I was a this cancer genomics and epigenomics Company and she said Caitlyn do you know what CBD is I said yes Phyllis know what CBD is she's like it's everywhere and there's no data behind it and she's like it binds to one of the receptors in our body it's called gpcr receptors that are one of the most druggable targets for pharmaceutical companies so they are targeting these for some large diseases depression anxiety weight loss so we started talking about this and she had another um investor who was at her fund who was helping hemp farmers in Humboldt County when legalization happened to kind of transition from kind of the illegal world to the legal World here in California and we started talking and realized wow there is an opportunity to take what we know from the pharmaceutical and Biotech Industry of making drugs which are calm small molecules so putting chemicals together to make Therapeutics that are consistent reliable why wouldn't we use that in the Cannabis or we say cannabinoid world so that was kind of the Genesis of nalu Bio the three of us came together and said let's take a pharmaceutical approach let's Elevate kind of the industry the quality consistency and purity of cannabinoids but also let's make drugs my co-founder Randall his dad has multiple sclerosis and so he had been using CBD and cannabinoids to manage that and some days it worked and some days it didn't so it was really this Confluence of a therapeutic application multiple sclerosis our kind of Biotech Collective expertise and and there we are so so we are a very different looking company in the Cannabis world yeah I was going to say that's not the typical uh experience that people when I see cannabis deals it's usually you know nothing in this realm of Science and Technology and as you're going to put in the frontier um of this and as we're talking offline of kind of building what is in some ways a biotech company but with you know as you say cannaboid um and cannabis what was it like kind of going to Market and you know raising Capital uh with that you know kind of not being able to kind of say we're a biotech company or you know we're a cannabis company and having to deal with that that intersection yeah so we do actually call ourselves a biotech company you're absolutely right but we are really truly at the intersection of cannabinoids and chemistry so we're biotech but we're also we don't say we're in cannabis just because we don't touch THC or any of the psychoactive ingredients but we do get you know if you have to put us in a bucket you know we're definitely in the Cannabis area just because that's the basis of our our molecules our ingredients um but getting into this three and a half years ago um you know I I knew very little about the Cannabis industry and so it was definitely a steep learning curve for me to really get to know the investors and the players and I realized I looked my background was very different than most of the the Cannabis entrepreneurs you know most of them came out of kind of the growing world and the extraction world and so when they saw kind of a female entrepreneur who had biotech experience you know I think a lot of them have scratched their heads and like why are you doing this I got that question a lot uh you know you bring up an interesting point when you know the kind of statistic going around is only about two percent of women are female Founders get funded um you know you had quite the forces against you I guess kind of walk us through you know your history of fundraising and kind of your most recent round sure so we raised uh obviously we raised a seed a couple years ago uh 2000 um actually 2001. um and that was led by a venture capital fund l-37 Ventures so my co-founder Randall uh usray he uh kind of led the seed which was great um but again you know it was a challenge through that process through the seed process I realized we didn't really fit into cannabis investors but we didn't fit into what I thought traditional biotech would be interested in us because we're developing Therapeutics as well we have two parts of our business one is a direct to kind of B2B ingredient business higher quality Purity and consistency it cannabinoids but the second piece of our business is developing Therapeutics drugs so we didn't as you said we didn't fit into either bucket and so it took me the seed to realize biotech still has an adverse feeling or the stigma of CBD is still there for a lot of Bio traditional the ones that I know traditional biotech investors um in fact some of their limited partner agreements they consider CBD advice even though it's federally legal via the farm bill they're still the stigma attached right one of my I'll show I'll share one of my favorite stories though a um I'll say biotech but kind of food investor love the fund very well respected uh love the partner and he understood what we were doing and he saw the value but he's like my mom smoked too much weed when I was growing up so I just have this adverse event to it so I can't fund you so that's kind of the you know it's this process of unit I mean you can't control a lot you know again in this game of fundraising you can't control a lot of the the feedback or the biases that exist around CBD and cannabis and the plants and you say it so well and you know in your case obviously the correlation to or you know the relationship to you know the vice agreements which a lot of LPS will invest into Venture funds and they'll have certain Vice Clauses like no alcohol No gambling no sex no um you know drugs and um albeit you're not technically tapping into that it still can be mislabeled or misconstrued as a vice and deter it'll basically limit a lot of investors that you have access to for that very reason alone unfortunately but you also bring up another really good point which I think a lot of Founders get frustrated by and I think you said it very amicably um when everything sounds great the VC is saying all these wonderful things about you and then just kind of drops like this very anecdotal or just kind of like one-off statement that causes them to more of a personal feeling or you know judgment against a potential investment um which is frustrating because it's like you know judge me on my Merit not necessarily you know something that you had your mom do you know but um but that's you know and honestly it's in some cases it's better that they at least come out with that and be honest with you up front and give you that hard no as opposed to never telling you the truth and kind of misleading you like oh man that was a great meeting let's keep following up and that you know they know for a fact that they're not going to invest but you still put the effort in and that's something that I see a lot of Founders unfortunately fall down the Trap of of oh I think they like me we had a really good meeting and it's like there's just something in the back of their head that investors had that prevents them from actually writing the check um so you mentioned the seed round and how your co-founder kind of helped brought that to together which is amazing but you also have your series a which recently occurred correct yes so yeah so we recently closed end of January a 12 million dollar series A um led by a fund called intrinsic Capital Partners based out of Pennsylvania and and you know it was a long process for me so you know it was over a year to raise the series a um you know had many conversations and again what I had learned from the seed was Cannabis investors were probably the best Avenue for me just because biotech was really and still is really off the table and so then it came down to finding a cannabis investor who values not only kind of the near-term revenue opportunity of ingredients you know pure consistent reliable basically pharmaceutical grade for Consumer products but also someone who is willing to take the risk and sees the upside on developing Therapeutics and so that Venn diagram is very small so took a lot of exercise to find the right investors how many if you just had a guess like how many investors do you think you spoke to I probably spoke to 50 to 75 and reached out and got got through emails or other introductions probably over a hundred so it was a it was it was a large number and also just given the narrow Focus like you can't just go to a general SBC in most cases to expect any kind of success or Capital raise and so your pool of options was already pretty limited to start with but it sounds like you met with a good chunk of those that might have been you know capable I did I mean I talked to kind of all the Cannabis investors the other um the other Avenue for what I thought would be helpful for lullaby was kind of family offices um and so I actually you know kind of signed up with a group who hadn't introduce me to a bunch of family offices which I think could be good for some Founders but for us the story is so complex that there's so much education needed for uh I'll just call it kind of generalist investors you point out it was just too far to go you know cannabis and all that you know there's a stigma attached you have to be willing to invest in kind of that area and then the drug development piece of it um Family office is just unfortunately were a challenge for us from an education like if they wanted to understand it but they really couldn't yeah and the risky run there is you go about spending a ton of time and resources educating them on an industry and a market that they're like okay now I'm educated I got this free education and I have no interest in investing you know yes I learned that on the Steed round with the angel groups right they can take a ton of your time they really want to get educated and very few of them actually invest so that's a watch out I think for entrepreneurs you have to know kind of when to say nope I'm not answering any more of your questions like you're either in or you're out that is incredibly valuable advice like I had a similar in my first company when we were raising money went to every single Angel group you could think of up and down the West Coast and the exact same story and I often tell Founders to tread lightly with Angel groups in particular it's like one thing to talk to angels one-on-one and maybe have industry experience came from a big company that's similar to yours whatever those are valuable but Angel groups kind of these you know in most cases boys clubs or you know like they're uh people that just come together for the networking and not so much the deals and they get educated they ask a bunch of questions because there's no commitment on their side but the founders you're putting your heart and soul Blood Sweat and Tears and everything you've got and you think you got them on the hook but that's not you know as you kind of experienced your seed it's you know spinning your wheels and unfortunately distracting you from potentially pursuing more legitimate uh sources of capital um so you kind of mentioned the the fundraise took about a year um was that from like how would you define the starting point of your fundraise to and all the way to the actual close was it uh I'll let you explain sure so I would say start to close was really you know we had the pitch deck we create a room you know I've done this several times before so I kind of knew all the elements that we needed to you know financial model um you know customer traction so having all of that kind of in a data room obviously the pitch and the slides kind of continue to be updated or evolve over time as we get better at telling the story but a year from kind of being ready because it takes a while right to compile all that information iterate on the presentation so about a year um you know the other thing that's interesting about fundraising and cannabis is you can talk to investors and they'll say you know I'll ask you know what's your average check size how long does your process take and then they actually don't have capital so that is unique to this industry and what you're fine what I'm finding is um some of these investors they're they're still fundraising while they're funding companies as opposed to like in biotech right you've got a 500 million dollar fund or a billion dollar fund you've got the capital and you deploy it these it's more of a continuous fundraising process they're smaller they're also much smaller funds so asking the question like do you have Capital today and I another anecdote um I had a great great conversation with investor we got it I asked him his check size and I kind of did a reference check to another investor that I do well and he's like he's my buddy he doesn't have any capital it's all just like what a waste you know of you know an hour or two of conversations so again you have to be very diligent about doing your homework on the fund as well just so you don't waste your time well and you're fortunate enough to kind of be able to tap into some you know Mutual contacts to kind of do a quick background check because you have such a deep experience in in your world but I feel like a lot of you know first-time Founders or maybe Founders kind of going into new industry that maybe not have those connections the fact that VCS take these meetings knowing that they can't deploy Capital into you or Worse they're trying to use you as a warehouse dealer a deal to bring in to the fun once they actually close their fund if they close their fund and they drag you along drag you along and they're like oh we'll do a capital call soon but they don't actually have the investors lined up um you know just speaking to founder all founders here like if you start to see those those red flags it's best to just stop wasting your time and tell them to send you a term sheet when they're ready obtaining all the the questions and engagement they have because they're they're trying to stay fresh they're trying to stay in the game they're trying to stay active they're trying to bring deals to their LPS and they're trying to hustle on their own which you know fine by them to do that but they should probably be honest and upfront about it and not lead you on like oh we're for sure gonna invest and that's usually how they act too like oh we're for sure gonna be in if we get the money um the other interesting thing I think oh oh sorry the other interesting thing I wanted to highlight because I was reminded of this recently because we're looking at um kind of a potential deal kind of being on the other side of it is once you get the term sheet that's just the beginning right you think you've done a ton of diligence with the organization um prior to the term sheet but once we get the term sheet there's so much more diligence that comes and I just I want to remind entrepreneurs that you know you as an entrepreneur you've taken a ton of meetings you get a ton of information but once a term sheet is there's a you know many more months of diligence beyond that and just being ready for that because I think you always feel like oh we've already done the diligence I'm going to term sheet now it's just negotiating the contract but it's really not it's many more documents and customer discussions yeah and as you get a later stage as you raise more Capital it only gets more and more intensified in that due diligence process for sure um from the time that you got your term sheet to the time that you guys closed how long did that take for you that uh it was about four months so it's actually pretty it was actually pretty quick and the reason why is um and this is kind of another piece of advice for entrepreneurs when you meet you know VCS it's a long-term kind of relationship right even if they're not gonna fund you for this round like keep in touch with them keep them updated because I actually met this fun probably two years ago uh and and we were too early for the seed for them and then we were just right for the series a and kind of this growth round so you know and they had watched us they'd watched us hit all our Milestones they had watched us kind of progress and so that's the other pieces that even though you may not be right for the fun at that point in time you know keep in touch with the ones you think could potentially fund you and for kind of that next round and that's really how it played out for us that's why that's why that that's why kind of the timing between the term she didn't close was pretty quick and just because they they had been watching this for a couple years no it's fantastic and so okay so that brings up an interesting story because yes 100 like a boundaries always get the you're too early you know kind of story and they get disgruntled or upset about it and then they kind of like lose touch and it's like well you got to play the log game you gotta assume you gotta go back to Market at some point again so if you had at least good rapport do as you say and kind of like you know maintain that relationship investor updates whether it's monthly or quarterly just to kind of you know give them some teaser information so that when you do come out there they're ready but you know kind of given your experience of this you know year-long process of raising Capital uh meeting with all these VCS you know 50 70 VCS um but you had already kind of previously met the right VC that ended up you know closing around um where did they come back into the process did they come you know later to the process or they just you know where where did that VC that you already had the relationship come in during all those we see meetings you were taking it actually came in so when I don't know maybe quarterly basis but it actually came in later into the process I had actually had another fund who took me to kind of final Docs and then pulled out and so that's another kind of watch out I mean I kind of went through it all in this process but that's another watch out is you know you can get to kind of the end and we'd spent significant legal dollars and then for you know for reasons that I can't control they decided you know we're not going to fund you so then I had to kind of re restart the process so that was again it was a challenge and for that it was just persistence and grit like I just kept going I was like I'm gonna close the series a hell or high water and I just kept the grind you know and it paid off but it was not easy you know I no one ever hears those stories of like you you had a deal you were like closing on a deal and you know just something comes up whether for me my you know past company is covid you know we had a term sheet March 10th pulled on March 14th um you know so it's uh it's it's a very unfortunately common thing in the industry you know especially if it's maybe not like a tier one firm or something um but uh that's very much a reality and most Founders don't ever realize that until they get punched in the face with it when you're like oh we're all set we got the money coming in like that's why it's always important to take that advice so don't spend the money until you got it that's great I've had a consult a few Founders on that in the past um and then you know something I want to kind of bring up you know being that you are a female founder you have an incredible track record going into this you had some close connections you had some you know good Network to kind of go into this but you still you know it wasn't like an overnight success by any means like were there any particular challenges that you experienced unique to you or you felt that were unique to you as a female founder I mean I think being a female founder in raising capital is definitely challenging no matter what industry you're in I think for me uh being in cannabis I just looked very very different um my background was different um again I I was new to the Cannabis industry so I built all these relationships over the last three and a half years and I didn't know any of these investors um so I think just you know investors are looking for pattern recognition and I didn't fit their pattern and so that was the hurdle for me as I had to you know convince or at least the ones that understood it that my background leveraging kind of Biotech and farm I'm bringing this to the industry was actually you know a very valuable thing and a differentiator um like for example I care a lot about intellectual property because in biotech like if you don't have good IP you don't really have anything and so we've invested a lot in rip and that is really important to our investors and they understand that and they get that so um I think just me looking different was definitely a hurdle like physically I just mean you know my background and the experience and all that yeah I'm glad you share that and you know the hope is that you set the new pattern you know so that you lead to successful outcomes so VCS can recalibrate their kind of pattern recognition because that is both the blessing and curse of you know deploying capital is there's just so much noise as a VC looking at deals you kind of rely on pattern recognition whether you're acknowledge or not to kind of you know cut through the noise and kind of find things that you know fit your expectations but not always the right thing to do um but you know hopefully you know Founders like yourself will be the ones that kind of set the new patterns and the new trajectory for people to look back on and be like okay like yeah we can have more more diversity more you know different backgrounds that kind of lead to uh successful outcomes that's right I hope we're like cannabis you know 3.0 probably not you know there's kind of the first version of companies or a second that had a big bus and now you know I'm hoping we're kind of cannabinoids 3.0 and bring a whole new set of operators and experience to this industry and so um you know prior to closing this this round while you were out hustling trying to to bring investors to the table you know you're still running this company you know you have to hit Milestones you have to hit growth targets you have a family like what was your strategy to kind of Juggle it all and still lead to a successful raise I mean it's it's definitely not easy right you know you feel like I mean I haven't even had a conversation today with my husband like we can do it all right we can you know we can or for me you know I can build a company I can be a good mom you know I can still take care of myself health and wellness I can show up at my kids you know baseball game but it's really hard and so what I've found is you know it just Ebbs and flows right there are times where you know work is very intense uh there are times when my family needs more time you know from me and so you know I try to believe I can do it all in balance at all um but you know I think it's really also knowing that for me with nalu bio this is a you know I'm in this for 10 years developing drugs takes a long time and we're even just getting them to kind of the pre-clinical phase and Licensing them up so I know that this is a marathon you know not a Sprint and so I continue to just you know stay as balanced as I can through this process because if not you know you know you'll burn out and I and I know that because I've done it before so I'm in this for the Long Haul I want to make sure that I can sustain through the process so you know you're being you're able to pull back from previous experience or you've had burnout and you kind of know a burnout how how you lead to how burnout occurs so you kind of took necessary steps in your life to mitigate that as much as possible taking care of both your family your personal health and so on and as well as still being able to successfully raise capital for your company which is you know a a feat that I think goes not as recognized as it should um it's incredibly different everyone says it's hard but like when you're actually doing it you have to make the decision of like okay I got this investor meeting I got this you know client or you know development of the product that I got to work on and I got you know do something with my family you're just like you know it's a lot to to take it it's a lot to take in yeah um exercise is my key that's my kind of one Outlet like that brings me kind of de-stress mental health like I feel good that's kind of one of my one of my uh secrets you said the key word there and that was outlet and I think that's something that when I talk to Founders about just their mental well-being when they're going through this process is is have an outlet and make sure your team around you respects it uh and that includes your your significant others family and so on that they understand that you know sometimes you just need some space to work on whatever at whatever path or outlet that is for someone there needs to be some kind of definitive you know path for like for me it's picking I was running but then hurt myself so now I'm into cycling so uh so it's a it's a crucial piece to being able to survive and thrive uh as having an outlet um and so as we kind of go through the story you know some things that would always be good for Founders to kind of understand is like you know kind of what was the size of the company um before you raised to see what's the size of the company pre you know previous to the the A and then kind of what's the um size of the company now just gonna show like growth trajectory of you know the team that you have around you sure so we are we leverage um contract research organizations so basically outsourced um chemists we also leverage contract manufacturing organizations so Outsource manufacturing so it's hard to really count the team because we are basically a virtual company we have um folks in Vancouver Canada we have folks in Australia we have you know northern southern California um East Coast so we started out as um you know my co-founders and then we quickly added um a CTO and a bunch of advisors so we started off as a pretty small team we just hired a couple um other key hires in our Therapeutics business in our manufacturing business so depending on how you count it you know we started off as just you know three people co-founders and now um with all our contract research organization and Manufacturing were probably up to you know 20 or so individuals so nice um yeah we we want to be Capital efficient in what we do so that's one of the kind of core strategies of our business well and also you just there could be so many hiccups along the road when it comes to doing clinical trial or getting to the point of clinical trials and you know delays and having to rely on the government or anything you know things don't always stick to a strict timeline that you would hope for so it's smart to be Capital efficient in those regards um so you know as we kind of you know wrap up here something that I think would be advantageous for you to kind of share um you know what are some of the kind of key things that an investor should look for in a company operating in the Cannabis industry like what what would be kind of your advice there suggestions so I would sweariness of the team in cannabis you get a lot of um kind of shady Shady entrepreneurs you know who've come out of a very different world so I I know from talking to a lot of VCS that um kind of The credibility the trustworthiness that's number one um I think the other piece is to kind of differentiation there are a lot of you know a lot of different companies in the space particularly CBD companies you know we're not selling a CBD beverage or a drink we're making the ingredients that go inside so we're very differentiated in kind of our model um you know and I think the other piece is you know being able to leverage team members outside the Cannabis industry right so again kind of bringing in those from other Industries to help kind of elevate the operating expertise um of the companies I think that's also really important to to the VCS in the space that makes sense and then um when it came to negotiating your your term sheet and once you got it like what was that process like you don't necessarily have to share you know the details of the numbers but uh you know if you can kind of share some insights onto what that process was like once you you know kind of got to that point of getting that series a term sheet um I think valuation is always the biggest thing right for entrepreneurs you know what's evaluation how much dilution am I going to take and you know it's really more of an art than a science you know so some VCS have models and calculators for the valuation some VCS you know it's more of a well you know I've seen comps this is what I think you're worth and so for us when I mentioned kind of that first term sheet that or deal that fell through you know I was really aggressive on valuation and wanted a really high evaluation we actually got it um but then on second go around you know I think I was much more humble and modest and kind of asked for evaluation that I thought was you know reasonable and the The Firm actually you know thought it was reasonable too um but you know I I recognize that you know taking dilution is going to get me to the next round and so I think for Founders not very worried about the dilution as much but just being worried about the capital that allows you to operate the company and to get to Milestones so that was really my focus um you know you know you know I think this point in Industry um cannabis investors have a lot of Leverage investors have a lot of Leverage just in general and so being aware of that and knowing kind of the battles that you want to pick and sticking to those um but at the end of the day I think you know if we can execute on kind of our Milestones we'll be in good shape so it was you know there there are a bunch of like ahas that weren't in the term sheet that came out later um and you know I took I took a lot of Cycles to negotiate some of those things um and you know looking back to control Provisions or like liquidation protective yeah protective revisions yeah Less on the liquidation side but more in the protective provision side so you know I just had to make the decision you know if I trust this group um that um you know giving up some of the control is going to be worth it kind of in the long run and that's just what an entrepreneur has to do yeah I think you bring up a very valid and sensitive point that every I think everyone thinks about valuation once they get to the term sheet and then when they actually see the term sheet and they either have liquidation preferences or they have um you know control Provisions that basically they they could effectively vote them out or you know this you know you can basically lose control of your company or whatever those control parameters might be it's like okay maybe maybe don't be so aggressive on you know getting the valuation to where you blew all your negotiation chips and valuation to where you lose you know control over the the other aspects of the the term sheet um so I think that's some some valid Sound Advice especially because you kind of mentioned like you got the term sheet but then after the fact you're like oh there's all these other points we need to uh have a discussion about and you also have to be there's a kind of a fine balance because this is a relationship for the next 10 years like you can't just you know put your foot down and say like it's got to be this way and um you know if you potentially burn that bridge you know then either they pull out of the deal or worst case or they stay with you long term but there's always a hint of like bitterness you know in the relationship that you know could come back to bite either party down the road so it's always important to kind of really make sure you like these people that's exactly right yeah I'm I think that was one of the main to make sure that I really Group which I do um and feel like they're Partners um in the process because it is you know it's kind of like a marriage right like we're going to be with as these investors for a long time so yeah you got to make sure that you want to work with them nice um and so before we kind of get to closing questions one thing I want to ask is were there any yellow flags or red flags that VC's brought up to along the way that you had to adjust for your pitch your you know your fundraise experience or their we did you get some you know feedback from VCS that you had to iterate on and adjust yeah I mean I think one of the the pieces is some investors just didn't understand why you would manufacture cannabinoids Through Chemistry like you can get it from the plant like and the the industry the Cannabis industry loves the plants you know they they kind of it's this Passion of the plant and it's beautiful and and so you know I basically had to find analogies that could under help them understand why this approach is better than the plant and so they couldn't it was a hard thing to grasp and so the vitamin industry is a great analogy most people don't realize they're vitamins are their vitamin c does not come from the citrus fruit it's manufactured in the lab no one knows that no one cares and so that was me having to kind of change the pitch to say hey look like the vitamins that you take they're manufactured they're synthesized they're made Through Chemistry cannabinoids ultimately they'll all be made Through Chemistry you know there'll be some where they want natural and organic and all of that but finding that analogy to help describe kind of the story was really important for us aspirin is another analogy and so I found that uh you know kind of they don't understand quality consistent give them an analogy that they can relate to that I think that's incredibly valuable is you know that analogy not the We Are The Uber for X right right right like to help them wrap their head around why you're doing what you're doing and this is in many different businesses you know obviously B2B SAS is not so much you know that kind of hurdle but I see a lot of businesses that don't check the boxes and they have a hard time articulating the message that either Taps into pattern recognition or if it's counterintuitive to the pattern recognition of the investors to basically provide enough supporting material to overcome it um so I think that's incredibly valuable uh you know thing to share with everyone here so um Caitlyn this interview's been phenomenal I think we've got some really amazing nuggets out of this um I would love for our readers to be able to to follow you and maybe there's you know aspiring in a similar industry might be you know good to connect with you what would be the best way to um follow you or learn more about what you're building follow me on LinkedIn uh Caitlin Krebs care EBS like the Krebs cycle um and nalu bio follow us on LinkedIn uh our website is nalobio.com n-a-l-u-b-i-o.com awesome um but that said I really appreciate the the time today and I hope our listeners are able to take away some some valuable nuggets from from your experience that you were able to share kind of the nitty-gritty details that exist Beyond um you know what's published in TechCrunch and you know then you know the new uh and the news so uh thank you so much Jason thank you very much persistence and grit those are the two words I'm Gonna Leave entrepreneurs with beautiful I love that right