I first was in touch with Rodrigo in February 2019 when a passing conversation at a networking event turned into an introduction to the Programme Manager for the RebelBio pre-seed accelerator, London. I was asked to present and after having passed a first stage interview with Dr John Carrigan who was the scientific director for the accelerator programme, Rodrigo then arranged a call two days later. This was much more a drilling down into myself as a founder and why I had decided to not take a well-paid position on graduation from university but bootstrap a life science start-up. His direct-no-bullsh*t approach to life was refreshing to hear but gave an inexperienced founder some lessons on the importance for understanding every aspect of the business. Rabbit holes could be found but perhaps the questioning was more to do with my attitude and ability to learn. This was my first interaction with an investor. I had, however, managed to pass this interview and then onto Bill Liao where we had a conditional offer in conversation but had to amend areas of the business before the cohort start date. During this time, Rodrigo had offered to intro businesses that had gone through the accelerator. Both the good ones and ones were he openly acknowledged that the founders would probably say hard truths about the programme and about himself. This was rather refreshing but also a surprise to see that an investor was willing to open his chest of investments that didn't quite work out and introduce a discussion where I felt the founder would tell me the truth. Believe me. They did not hold back. The was a consensus that if I was not desperate for the money at the time or not wanting the moon-shot exit, then this would be a bad option. Conversations then dwindled and we did not amend the areas of the business and as such the terms sheet etc. were not issued and we did not join the RebelBio programme. I thought that would be the end of discussions but over the course of the 2019 year only one partner from the SOSV team came back for updates and that was Rodrigo. Over a 6-month period we had two/three 30 minute update meetings, where even though he had no stake in the business, offered introductions to other investors and founders of businesses that maybe of interest to help mentor me. During these discussions I would also ask his subjective opinion on some decisions I had to make and whether that would hinder an investor coming in later on. Having that was invaluable for me and comforting to have an independent view. In the meantime, the start-up had continued to progress through grant funding and when looking for the next areas of funding I decided to take another look at RebelBio website out of curiosity and noticed that RebelBio was missing from the SOSV website. Curious, I sent an email and got a reply the same day explaining that he was now heading up a new programme in NY called IndieBio (RebelBio merged into this), still for the SOSV fund. As we caught up, he was eager to see a slide deck and asked me to present to RebelBio that included Julie Wolf (Communications Director @IndieBio), Sam Lee and Stephen Chambers (Partner @IndieBio). Again, similar to the last presentation, Rodrigo facilitated introductions to both new businesses and old ones I touched base with the year before. It was interesting to see whether the same founders who had spoke well of him carried the same opinion and where they saw him as a benefit or hindrance. They described his “will to win” and “direct” approach to any discussions as something they benefited from and an element I had attributed to him previously. These discussions progress further to where I had the decision from him personally that he would take a bet on me and issued the procedure to sign the term sheets. The term sheets where an Accelerator Contract for Equity (ACE) and a Stock Purchase Agreement. An intro to the legal team also was helpful to answer questions I had on the terms enclosed in the documents, I also had other legal teams review this on my end. After all this and with the pandemic just beginning to kick up, I felt I needed to wait till to bring an investor in, so I declined. Rodrigo, I felt, respected the decision and, again, expecting conversations to drop soon after, we still catch up every so often now to this date 8 months on. I honestly feel, to the extent where I have written more here than in my English GCSE exam, that although he has no equity invested in my start-up, he most definitely is personally invested and is someone I could comfortably reach out to for a trusted opinion in the future.

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