Investment Climate Podcast: Mark van Zee of Saku Biosciences on Raising Friends-and-Family in a Frozen Market

In this podcast episode, Mark van Zee, Co-Founder & CEO of Saku Biosciences, shares insights on raising friends-and-family funding in a frozen market. Facing challenges due to institutional capital drying up, Mark and his co-founder turned to friends-and-family checks of $5K–$100K to kickstart their fundraising efforts. They also secured capital from a non-obvious private institution after a year of relationship-building, ultimately saving the company from financial struggles.

Mark emphasizes the importance of betting on the jockey, not the horse, in early-stage investing. He highlights the need to understand investor preferences and tailor pitches to meet their criteria, sharing a successful story of reverse-engineering what Big Idea Ventures was looking for and delivering a pitch that gave them goosebumps within five minutes. Saku Biosciences aims to address biomanufacturing challenges by providing a platform that enables producers to select strain variants optimized for real-world manufacturing conditions, ultimately improving unit economics and driving towards cost parity in fermentation.