My name is Ali Jang and I am the founder and CEO of Human3 – a venture studio focused on lifespan and human performance. 

We develop and launch biotechnology products and brands that significantly improve quality of life, while being simple enough to implement in daily life.

I am a serial entrepreneur with a focus on the health sciences and human optimization spaces. I also founded and sold a sustainable outdoor apparel company. 

We raised a pre-seed round of $250k from a venture studio at a valuation of $2.5M. It took about 3 to 4 months. 

The project we were raising money for was a performance alkaline water business that we had developed with our own capital to create a proof of concept. 

We wanted to raise enough to have 18 months of runway.

We wanted to be able to get the water into production and scale distribution. 

Part of the strategy was to launch additional products under the same brand. We needed R&D dollars to put towards developing and soft launching those products to see if we were onto something.

There is a subset of investors who are interested in investing in a studio as opposed to individual projects; this limits the types of investors you can approach. 

These types of investors like the implicit hedge that comes from investing in a studio with multiple projects.

Within that group, we wanted to work with strategic investors who understood and believed in the health, wellness, and longevity spaces – and had sales channels we could utilize.

Our first investor was my brother who has his own track record in startups and investing. Our second investor was introduced to us by him. 

Our process was somewhat unique in that we raised a sufficient amount to get started from the first 2 investors we spoke to.

I had met our second investor 9 months before we actually raised money.

We had many discussions about partnering on a project. Over that period I demonstrated my expertise in the space and he really liked the progress we had generated for the water company. 

The company already had significant IP and access to other technology that would help differentiate it. 

We developed a unique form of alkaline water that is very differentiated from the other offerings on the market. 

Showing them the science behind that and how it is unlike the other alkaline waters out there got them excited.

Our first raise was in 2022 when the private capital markets were very active — getting capital along with high valuations was not difficult. 

Those markets have tightened considerably and, as a result, it has been much more difficult to keep the business scaling while saving the money we raised.

We had also planned on bringing in a COO before our next raise, but the tight economic conditions have made that less feasible.

A major influencer in the space reached out to us to be a potential investor in our next round. Someone on her team had sent her the website and she liked what we were doing. 

It is not every day that one of your top-tier target partners reaches out to you, as opposed to the other way around.

Do the hard work of validating product-market fit down to the most minute details. 

Make a small number of test products, get them into customers hands, and follow up with them and ask for feedback.

Do not take the capital you have for granted and send out hundreds of prototypes. 

Hunt Smith would be good for anyone in the bio and longevity sector. He doesn't have an online presence but I can connect anyone if they’re interested.

Gamma is a great resource for making slide deck presentations. 

Cherub is an angel network platform that we like.