There’s a version of every biotech deck that only lives in internal folders. It’s the one with traction that hasn’t happened yet, partnerships that aren’t formal, and a pipeline that looks a lot more advanced if you don’t ask too many questions. It’s not quite dishonest. Just aspirational. Strategic. Forward-looking. And every so often, someone sends it.

In this week’s sketch, Lives sprints into the room in a full-blown panic: he sent the wrong deck. The one with fake traction, an imaginary pipeline, and made-up partnerships. The deck that was never supposed to see daylight. Scienz freezes. Lives freeze. And then the phone starts ringing.

Unicorn Investment Group. Opportunity of a lifetime. Maybe two.

The Deck That Works Too Well

If the honest deck gets you polite feedback and a forwarded summary to the scientific review board, the fake one gets you a call. Fast. Because what investors want isn’t caution. It’s momentum.

Nobody leads with “we’re still working out the formulation.” They lead with “platform technology,” “data-rich insights,” and “early signs of strong commercial interest.” You can always figure out the science later. The runway, less so.

What They Don’t Ask On First Call

Investors rarely ask for raw data in that first meeting. They ask how fast you can scale. They want to know what your pipeline looks like on a slide, not under a microscope.

They want vision, category leadership, a go-to-market model.

So biotech founders learn to adapt. You massage timelines. Reframe setbacks. Inflate engagement. You don’t fake anything outright. But you start writing in the future tense. What you will validate. What could be fast-tracked. What might be in-licensed next quarter if negotiations go well. And the funny thing is: it works.

We All Kinda Do It

Nobody lies. Not directly. But everyone knows that “preclinical success” can mean “we have a poster.” That “clinical momentum” might just mean you hired a CRO. That “strategic partnerships” often start with someone clicking like on your LinkedIn post.

The trick is to speak the language of traction without committing to anything that could get you in trouble later. Build the narrative first. Then build the drug. And if the narrative runs ahead of reality? That’s not fraud. That’s biotech.

Until It’s Not Funny Anymore

There’s a version of this story that ends in an IPO. There’s also one that ends in court.

The distance between the two is often a few overdue experiments, an overconfident press release, and one investor who finally asks for the raw data. You don’t want to be the company that raised $40 million on a slide no one ever questioned until they did. You don’t want to be the following cautionary tale that “over-indexed on storytelling.”

You want to build something real. Eventually.

Scienz & Lives.

Now accepting Series A funding for a pipeline of conditional hypotheticals backed by semi-fictional traction.

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