Fundraising 101: I'm currently in NY! *Buys Flight to NY*
How Celine Halioua, a first-time biotech solo founder, raised $150M to extend dog lifespan—by going off-script from the Silicon Valley playbook
🎧 Listen now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
Celine Halioua has one bold goal: to extend the lives of dogs.
Through Loyal, the biotech company she founded, Celine is developing drugs designed to help canines live longer, healthier lives—starting with three distinct products. The first, LOY-001, targets large breed dogs. The second, LOY-002, is a chewable for senior dogs of nearly any size. The third drug remains unnamed—although we can safely assume it won’t be called LOY-003. (Not sure why, but Celine has conviction about that…)
My latest She Leads episode with Celine picks up where our first one left off. Instead of diving into her founder origin story, we focus on what’s happened in the last year at Loyal—the highs, the hurdles, and the very human reality of building a deep tech company.
👉 Want Celine’s full backstory? Listen to our first episode here.
One of the most fascinating parts of this new conversation was around fundraising. Raising Loyal’s Series B was anything but smooth. Market conditions changed, timelines stretched, and standard VC routes didn’t quite cut it. But Celine adapted—and now Loyal has raised over $150 million to date.
Her biggest lesson? With enough determination, you can raise what you need—just don’t expect the process to be conventional. Not everything warrants the cookie-cutter Silicon-Valley-VC type of fundraise.
Hence, the title of this blog.
In our conversation, we discuss:
The decision to build multiple longevity drugs in parallel, and why Loyal didn’t follow the typical biotech path
How Celine approached fundraising in a shifting market, including unconventional tactics and lessons from raising $150M+
The role of financial discipline in early-stage deep tech—especially when timelines stretch and capital is tight
Navigating board relationships as a solo founder, and how transparency builds long-term trust and accountability
Building Loyal’s company culture from the ground up: creating values, leading with context, and fostering resilience
Hiring for high-stakes biotech: how Celine screens for candor and accountability
The challenges of founding in Silicon Valley as an ‘outsider’, and how she recalibrated her mindset around ego and confidence
My key takeaways:
💸 Start fundraising before you need to.
Timing is everything. Markets shift quickly, and capital dries up faster than you expect. Celine was lucky to have an investor who warned her early—and it made all the difference. Be proactive, not reactive.
🌀 ‘Ego Death’.
Ask the dumb questions. Stop worrying what people think. Celine had to shed ego after moving to the Bay Area and being surrounded by people she once found intimidating. You don’t need to be the smartest person in the room—you just need to keep learning.
🧩 Hire for accountability and low ego.
Ask candidates about mistakes they’ve made. Look for extreme candor. Celine screens for these traits because they’re the strongest predictors of whether someone can scale with the company.
🚀 Believe in what you’re building.
This seems obvious. It should be obvious to any founder. But Celine’s story highlights that in order to go through all of the inevitable setbacks, you need to truly believe in it. After taking hundreds of VC meetings, you will lose fuel faster if you don’t believe in what you’re building.*
*After working as an early-stage investor at Floodgate for 2.5 years, it’s also noticeable from the VC side.
🪞 Practice radical transparency with your key stakeholders.
As a solo founder, you need your board to hold you accountable. To best enable this, they have to have the entire context: the good, the bad, the ugly.
Celine’s craft that she’s spending a lifetime honing? Dressage. 🐎
🎧 Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.
💬 Curious what stood out to you—what would your ego death moment be?
Where to find She Leads:
Where to find Carly:
Where to find Celine:
🐶 Follow Loyal:
In this episode, we cover:
(2:39) Loyal’s stakeholders
(6:28) Going multiproduct
(10:02) How the biotech industry gets funding
(18:30) Lessons from raising money
(20:28) Why constraints are useful
(25:34) How raising money affects you mentally
(29:16) Radical transparency
(33:22) The academic-founder paradox
(35:50) A small fish in a big pond
(43:33) Finding low-ego team members
(46:08) What does success look like?
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