61. Vineeta Tripathi, Vitarka Therapeutics - From scientist to CEO

Dr Vineeta Tripathi is the founder of Vitarka Theraputics, a biotech start-up developing technology to unleash the power of RNA therapeutics, a new class of medications which will help combat untreated late-stage cancers.  

Vineeta founded the company in 2021 after 15 years in drug development in major pharmaceutical companies and is a co-inventor on 13 granted patents and 4 filed patents. Biotech start-ups like Vitarka Therapeutics need funds for research and development from the get go and Discovery Park Ventures invested £150,000 as part of a seed round. More recently, Vineeta raised over 500,000 dollars of investment through the IndieBio New York Program as the only UK firm in the cohort. 

Vineeta’s biggest challenge was providing investors with confidenc as Vitarka is not a university spin out company, which is the more usual route for biotech start-ups. Some investors were surprised when Vineeta’s financials were highly detailed and she experienced bias from a few investors, who asked questions like, “Are you sure you can do that? And, can you balance work/ home life?”. Vineeta believes we should stop identifying and labelling a female founder as the moment a founder is labelled as female, it’s likely to put their pitch presentation at a disadvantage, at a granular, sub-conscious level. She encourages everyone listening to this podcast to take the Implicit Association Test.

In this episode you’ll discover:

• Why you should be your unapologetic self when raising investment 
• Why all founders must learn to storytell
• How critical it is to communicate your credentials effectively