Matt Cheng, Kanvas Biosciences: what a $48M Series A actually takes

Matt Cheng co-founded Kanvas Biosciences on technology that came out of Cornell, and has since raised $78 million in total, including a $48 million Series A co-led by DCVC and Lions Capital with participation from the Gates Foundation. He did it in microbiome therapeutics, a field where several well funded companies have already stalled. In this episode of Critical Success Factors, Stuart Gill of Genora Partners talks to Matt about what that raise actually involved. We cover: Why investors stayed away from microbiome therapeutics, and what it took to get them back to the table Building a fundraising narrative around a platform and a lead asset at the same time What changed between the seed rounds and the Series A Working with investors who bring more than capital Hiring decisions at the point where money lands What he would do differently next time Matt Cheng is Co-Founder and CEO of Kanvas Biosciences, a spatial biology and microbiome therapeutics company based in Princeton, New Jersey. The company's lead candidate, KAN-001, is a live biotherapeutic aimed at improving outcomes for cancer patients who do not respond to immune checkpoint inhibitors. Critical Success Factors is a monthly podcast from Genora Partners, a life sciences executive search firm. One guest, one topic, taken seriously. Founders, executives and operators on what actually decided the outcome. Useful for founders raising a Series A, biotech executives, investors, and anyone working in drug development, clinical operations, regulatory, CMC or commercial strategy. Genora Partners: genorapartners.com Kanvas Biosciences: http://kanvasbio.com