Your Next Move - How to Make Smart Financial Moves in Any Climate

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

From burn-rate management to fundraising timing, Ceremonia founder Babba Rivera and Atropos Health co-founder Brigham Hyde unpack today’s high-stakes financial decisions and what separates the resilient from the risky.

With the VentureX business card from Capital One, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. Plus, the VentureX business card has no preset spending limit, so your purchasing power can adapt to meet your business needs. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Hi, I'm Mike Hoffman, editor-in-chief of Inc. And welcome to your next move, produced by Inc. In Capital One business. Now, as we all know, money is tight right now, unless maybe you're an AI.

Markets are volatile. Every financial decision matters more than ever right now. So today, we're joined by two leaders who know exactly how to raise capital amid economic uncertainty. Baba Rivera is the founder of Ceremonia. And Brigham Hyde is the CEO and co-founder of Atropos Health. Brigham, Baba, welcome. Thank you so much for having us. Thanks for those.

So first, let's tell our viewers a little bit about your companies. Baba, let's start with you. What is Ceremony and what does it do? Ceremonia is a clean hair wellness brand that is inspired by the rituals that I grew up with as the daughter of a Chilean hairdresser. And we're really focused on treating hair concerns at the root, powered by natural ingredients.

And you've raised so far 11.5 million, right? Including a 10 million Series A? Yes, that's correct. Great. And Brigham, tell us about your company. Yeah, we are all about, automating high-quality real-world evidence, both for care and for research. When you go into see your clinician, how are they making a decision on what to treat you with? They rely

classically on things like guidelines and trials, but there's just not enough of them. Only about 14% of everyday decisions have high-quality evidence behind them. And using AI techniques and a whole bunch of engineering, we've found a way to automate the generation of that, helping to fill that evidence gap. And so when you say healthcare AI is your end user, the doctor, Is it a researcher or is it a patient? Yeah, we have thousands of clinicians using our product right now. We also work with life science companies to advance research. And really, it's about finding a way to get that high quality evidence in their hands

so they can make decisions, either on what trial to run or drug to develop or what treatment to give you in the office. And you've raised a total of $64 million. Do I have that right? That's correct. When you sort of were initially out there pitching your company, what was the most difficult part of the pitching process or what was an obstacle you? you had to overcome. Babel, let's start with you.

So many. I mean, just by definition, you're going to receive more nose than yes. Like, that's just like how it works, right? So it really is a numbers game, pun intended, in the sense that you have to speak to a lot of people, and for most of them, it's not going to be a fit. And that can be quite discouraging. It really takes a toll on you. And I think the biggest obstacle for me was that I was also building a family. I had just found out I was pregnant and I was excited and nervous about it. And I had an investor straight out tell me that I shouldn't have kids in at least five years if I was serious about this company. So that was definitely a real obstacle. And I think maybe one that's maybe more exclusive to women. And I think today

it is so important for me to share that because I think there are a lot of women who feel extremely discouraged by this stereotypical idea of what it means to raise capital, what it means to run a business, and I feel like, for me, I'm in a personal mission to change that. Yeah, and you both actually have four kids who are the same ages. Right. Brigham, did anybody ever ask you about that? No. Although... So maybe we have some evidence here today.

What I would say about that, you never know what you're capable of. I've found this period for my wife and I would be great tests, but you also level up your game. I tend to think that challenging yourself is actually the way. way to drive some of the best results. You've got to take care of yourself too and your family, but I actually view it as a positive amongst my leadership team. We have a total of 15 kids under eight. Wow. And it's actually weirdly kind of the DNA of our company. So I would tell that VC to actually look at it the other way around when you have people in that stage of life can drive great focus and great performance. Now, so you sort of spun the company a bit out of Stanford, right? And you're obviously

in healthcare AI. So what was your fundraising journey like knowing that this was like, you know, you were part of a very fundraising-friendly community and in a hot space at a key moment. I think when we started, it was the heydays of 2021, big valuations, a lot of money flowing around, a lot of liquidity in the system. I think we were really thoughtful at that point about two things. One, there are probably too many VCs out there. So we want to pick really great partners who were both experienced and long-term view, who really align to what we do. Being a little choosy with who you take some of those early checks from is a critical thing. I think some first-time entrepreneurs miss.

I think the other thing is that, you know, we got offered a lot more money. And I said no to a lot of money and cap those rounds because you have to keep track of what the money's for and what you're going to be able to produce and value economic, financial, you know, key sort of milestones in that time period because raising money is fun, announcing around, but you immediately start the clock to what's the next step. But ultimately, being thoughtful about the spend and how you build, it's better discipline, I think, in this cycle for all of us, not to say that there's not a time to go big.

And when you really catch that product market fit, you know, fueling that with venture growth can be the right move. But we try to be thoughtful about partners and what's the money for, know when you really want to go big. Don't pull the trigger too soon. Bob, what did you spend your early investment on? Yeah, for us, it was a lot about, innovation product R&D, we launched with just one skew and we immediately started getting requests

from our customers for a full routine. Customers fell in love with our first product, which was a scalp oil, and then they wanted to know what shampoo should I use, what conditioner. So for us, we felt like we had a little bit of an accelerated path towards really building out the full ceremonial routine. So R&D was a big part of it. Also paid marketing. This was during the time that the algorithm was really working for you. So, and we were a detailed. C-brands, so those were, you know, great investments early on. After our Series A, most of our investments went to Sephora. Launching with a mega-retailer like Sephora is extremely costly, and it can really, they can really transform your business, but it's not without

investments. So that was a big focus for us. So when you've raised money and you're moving, you know, into, you know, bigger customers than you've had before, who's advising you? Who is a CFO? Did you build your team right away? Are there board members? Obviously, your investors or advisors. Can you talk about who's sort of helping you think through the next step? For me, honestly, the most helpful advisors have been the early angels, and most of them are founders themselves.

I really cannot thank the former founders turned angel investors enough for their help. They also, I think, have a humbleness. to them. If you've built something before, you just know that it's really hard. No one became a successful business without going through a lot of hardships. So former founders turned angel investors have been the greatest advisors to me. They're also the ones who, whenever I've closed around, they will text me and be like, now take a week vacation. I'm like, what? No, like I just risked money. And they're like, no, because you're going to be off to the races. This is the time to take some time off. Like, they just know the journey. Whereas I feel like

sometimes professional VCs, they only know what it looks like in a spreadsheet after the fact versus the operational components that lead up to those numbers. Brigham, what about you? Yeah, I completely agree with that. Something we do, which is maybe a little irregular, outside of the cadence of board meetings, which as we've grown and added more investors, get bigger. We still do twice yearly. I would call it an R&D day.

Public companies do this where maybe invite you on site. They talk more about what they're building than the purifying. financial results. I copied that model, but we do it even as a small company. And we'll invite that whole set of annual investors on down and bizers. We actually could spend time talking a little bit more about what's going on day-to-day, the products and things like that. That's so smart. I might steal that. And you should steal that. It works really well. And every time I do it, somebody in that call says, you've got to talk to X, introduces a customer, introduces a partner. So it's a good way to activate that network. And they're all a mix of investors and founders. I would have

add that, you know, founder peers are a great group. You know, they're going through the same thing. They can see something maybe you haven't seen or have had an experience you haven't had yet. So the group chats are real and necessary. But even doing that formal setting where we're not talking about financials here. Let's talk about everything else and get input from your community. And you're as strong as your team and your community that is built around you. Many founders will say when they're out raising money that that sort of takes over. their time, right? And they have much less time to spend on operating the business. How do you balance those two needs, the need to get cash for the future, raise capital for the future, and then the

need to run the business today. Boba, let's start with you. Yeah, I mean, I'm a sole founder and I don't have a fully fleshed executive team. So for me, it is extremely paralyzing. And as a result, extremely costly for the business, because if I'm paralyzed, you know, speaking to everyone else but the team, there is a huge disconnect. So for me, I've made sure to honestly only go out in fundraise when I feel like I have a good opportunity to fundraise. It's really difficult when you're fundraising in an uphill battle. So that's why I love to talk about cash flow too. Are there other ways where you can basically have a healthy cash flow to keep your business alive to get to the next milestone where you will be better off fundraising? So I like to fundraise when we're

coming off a high or where we have a big opportunity. When we signed Sephora, that's when we fundraise our Series A versus fundraising when you're running out of capital. Brigham, what about you? That's a great question. It's a hard one because it is important to maintain those relationships. Even if people haven't invested yet over time and give them check-ins, what I try and do with my leadership team is we try to plan the year out the best you can and understand that there's different times that the operating business will need different

things out of me. Sometimes it's, God, we're going commercial push here. We're going to have a bunch of conferences. is being the CEO there. I have to make time for that and separate that from investment time. Same thing with product. And R&D, I just got back from an offsite. We ran in Ohio where we gathered and talked only product, which is not something I get to do every day, particularly interfacing with the investment community. But you've got to carve out those blocks, be intentional about it, know where you are in the year and in the process of your rounds, and then plan that way.

That's the best I've come up with. You still, at some point, have to figure out to manage inbound, existing and keep everybody on pace. And I think that's part of the juggling that goes on being a founder. Yeah. Now, Baba, you mentioned sort of thinking about cash flow. What is one specific decision that you've made with your business to help extend runway? We

use Shopify capital and settle, which has been extremely helpful. And honestly, I can't understand why we weren't using that before. It just extends our runway without having to go out to investors and without paralyzing me. It

a very simple way to operate the business and gives us more buffer. I think that's a really good point. I think something that early founders don't think about soon enough with their CFO hat on or just sort of all the ways you can sort of build infrastructure around your invoicing, your cash position, your debt. There's a lot of great options out there. Your banking partners are always there to do that as well. But thinking about that sooner is usually a good idea.

So that you have control over it, you know where everything's going. So I'd recommend that one. When you think about cash flow in a B-to-B business, what we're really tacking to is what types of contract structures and pricing are we able to develop and launch? That's the maturity process when you're dealing with Big Pharma, for instance. So understanding, you know, how you build a healthy contract versus one that is going to make your business unhealthy and being firm on those terms because you commit to long-term deals sometimes and it's a bad deal, that can really hurt your business.

Do you have one piece of advice for someone out there who's wondering, how can I make my contracts a little bit more favorable? Ultimately, it comes back to value discussion, right? And understand the value of the person you're selling to. Are you saving the money some there? Are you generating new revenue for them? Are you changing their own positioning? How do they think about value? Once you understand that, you can really build deals around that structure.

You know, I start my pitches with my large customers, I saying, like, what are your objectives this year? financially, what are your objectives product-wise? What are you trying to get to? And then I try and align structures to that. You've got to talk to them as business people running their business and understand how it can make a dual win. And that helps you shape those designs. Talk about your relationship with investors, whether it's an angel investor or a VC. How do you develop that relationship? How do you nurture it? And what are some of the conversations, even some of the tough conversations that you have with them? Yeah, I feel like it was a little bit of a learning curve for me. I think for the longest time I was treating our board or like investors as this like,

you know, I have to make sure everything is so buttoned up and like the materials have to be perfect before I send them and I need to say the right thing and all of this. And then when you think about it, that's not how you build any relationship, right? Like imagine if you were, you know, operating like that to your wife. Like that, that's not how you build real relationships. So I think for me, when I was able to really just, you know, take down the guard and just share more often versus, you know, seldom and perfect, really change the game because now my board is so ingrained into my business. They get little snippets of updates all the time. We have a group chat. I have my group chat with the founder community. I have the group chat with

the board. And there is something about just like little snippets of very digestible communication. It also makes you feel like you are a team because ultimately they are part of the team. They have invested their capital. They've invested their time. Like they are on my team. So I feel much more empowered today to bring challenges in an unfiltered way and then use the time we have as a board to actually problem solve. You know, in terms of how to handle difficult conversations, I like sort of the Lincoln cabinet approach. You know, you want people with different opinions, different views. Team of rivals.

Hey, team of rivals. Let them argue a little bit. But you as the CEO sort of set it up, let them go and then help everybody process through what the decisions might be. But ultimately, it's about building trust. and relationships, and that matters over time. You know, and so making sure you're spending time doing that is important. So obviously when you raise money, your investors have expectations about at some point

having a liquidity event, whatever that looks like. How do you talk through those expectations with your investors? Brigham, let's start with you. To me, it goes back to that point of being choosy, which really starts with the mission of what we're trying to accomplish. And outside of financial return, how will we know we've accomplished that? that doesn't mean that running it as an independent business or a private business forever means that's the way to achieve that. We try to put it through that lens every time. Now, you know, funds have cycles. Investors have focus areas, of course, but by a choosing a group that, again, a little bit longer view as opposed to a tighter fund cycle, lets us have those discussions pretty openly. Ultimately, for me, you know, this is about building something that really changes a part of health care and change all of health care is hard.

But can we try and achieve that? If there are business structures that work better to accomplish that goal, I'll be the first one to bring that up. But in the meantime, having that alignment through mission, why we're doing this, beyond, you know, generating a return is the key starting point for me. I know, Baba, you also were looking for investors who shared your mission or understood your mission. So how do you talk about expectations with your investors?

Yeah, I think being value aligned is really important. And something that I found is that having investors that we're not, we're not really, we really believe in you as a founder is key. Because ultimately, when you're an early stage company, like, you can show whatever you want in your pitch deck, but if they don't believe in you being the force that's going to drive that mission, it's really difficult to build a fruitful relationship. So for me, it's been important to protect my control of the company, and that's been something that I've always made sure to negotiate in every round that we have raised. How do you do that? Talk about that. Having a double vote in the board and making sure

my ownership doesn't go below certain levels and things like that. And Brigham, how do you think about control? Yeah, I mean, got to watch that cap table math every time. But I think ultimately it's also having a conversation about how you want to govern a company. You know, we've brought in a series of investors, including strategics. I want them to be involved. I don't want it to be simply my decision making. And, you know, I want the collaboration at this stage of the business.

Earlier on, we were a completely founder-led through the board. But at the right time, you know, there's value add for those groups, you know, ultimately, you know, voting preferences, board control, you know, we use an independent board member to break ties between the preferred holders and the common holders, which I think is a good structure. And, but, you know, ultimately, if you get to the point where that's a problem, you've made a mistake somewhere earlier, you know, and getting that alignment piece right is more important than the rules that govern whatever voting, you know, but, you know, as founders, you do have to think about. it, you want to maintain control as long as you want that piece to be part of your day-to-day, and then, you know, plan for governance afterwards. Now, as you think about maybe the next round of funding you might raise someday, Series C, Series B, I imagine, is there something you'll be looking for that is different from what you've done so far in terms of the type of investor or how you would use the money or just how you would

approach the relationship? For me, when we raise our Series B, we'll go into a lot of what you're talking about, more this like commercialization, like mass growth. And whereas I feel like to this date, it's been more important to have a lot of trust in the founder from the investors, et cetera. So when we raise our CIRSP, I believe we'll go with an investor that has a lot of experience in our field and who has sort of like done this journey before. For us, Series C is an interesting breakpoint because you start to make a choice.

Are we going towards IPO? Is there really something to double down on? you know, I've also spent a decent of my life operating private equity in this market inorganic is sometimes an interesting way to go. You know, so as we talk to the community about that, there's different investors that like to do different things. So I think depending on what their perspective is, I'm also watching the market because I think we have to look at is the cycle we're in, you know, where are we in it? What's happening in capital markets? When's the right time to, you know, head for more liquidity or double down in a certain area? I think my hope being in the

AI space, we're really excited about the potential of agentic orchestration at the provider center right now, which, if you follow what's been announced by Microsoft and AWS and others, big tech is finally sort of building a bridge for these AI application companies, potentially to go to market without requiring the EHR, which has forever been a little bit of a blockade in health tech. So we're watching that. Is this the right moment for that? You know, Are there inorganic opportunities that we just must have because it can accelerate us? And does that achieve our mission, which for us is generating personalized evidence for everybody? So what's the best path and, you know, sees a fun time to think through those problems?

Timing is everything, right? That's right. As you think about what's going on in your business, whether it relates to capital or any other part of the business, what's your next move? We'll start with you, Baba. Our next move, I would say, is to really accelerate the business. from a profitable standpoint. So we started off as a startup. Obviously, we're not profitable.

Now we're heading towards profitability. And then we want to accelerate growth from a profitable lens. And Brigham? Lots of exciting announcements coming from us shortly, both on the sort of science side of AI, some exciting things we're going to be showing about generating physician trust

in this generative AI environment. That's been a little bit lacking. key partners, customers, a bunch coming. Whether that leads to a big funding announcement, I'll let you all stay tuned for that. But it's time for growth. And, you know, I also think we're heading towards the chance to change health care pretty significantly.

The pieces are aligning. We love to be a big part of it. Great. Baba Rivera, Brigham Hyde, thanks so much. And we'll continue this conversation in a minute. Here's a tip for growing your business. Get the Venture X business card from Capital One and start earning unlimited double miles on every purchase. That's right.

With unlimited double miles, the more your business spends, the more miles you earn. Plus, the VentureX business card has no preset spending limit, so your purchasing power can adapt to meet your business needs. The VentureX business card also includes access to over 1,000 airport lounges. Just imagine where the VentureX business card from Capital One can take your business. Capital One. What's in your wallet? Terms and conditions apply. Find out more at Capital One.com slash VentureX business. Here are some of our most popular reader questions. How can I find a network with the right investors who can support my business? Bobba, let's start with you.

My best advice is to start with a founder network. I truly vetted all of my investors through founders. I think the founder community in your specific industry is usually extremely generous with advice because founders just have each other's back. I think that's a great suggestion. I also think of your regionality, where you are, there will be a community there that you can find lots of great sort of events to go to,

start to figure out the lay of the land. I would also put that through your industry. So thinking about where the VCs are that follow your industry, talk to those. 10 hundred customers early on, who they like in the space, who they invested with before. I think those are all great places to start. Okay.

Our next audience question is about crafting the perfect pitch, right? And so what is a piece of advice you would have for a founder who's out there hoping to make a pitch to investors on how to do it right? Brigham, let's start with you. Real big, clear, concise goal and mission that you're trying to achieve. And then lay out from that big idea how you will achieve it, what you need to build, have that build to what you're asking for in capital. If that big idea becomes easily explainable and de-risk almost and how you might execute it, those are very fundable ideas.

Obviously, outlining what problem you're solving and how you're solving it, but I also think one piece that a lot of founders forget about is why they are uniquely positioned to solve that exact problem. So I would spend some time in talking about your own unfair advantage in that problem solving. Oh, that's great. So our third audience question is this. Once you've managed to raise initial capital, your seed round, was the best way to propel your business into the next phase? I think proving the principle on product market fit, even early on and getting that first one or two key customers. And I would focus on really thinking about the profile of those first couple customers. And I'd focus in. You don't need to have a huge sales effort and hit every name out

there. Pick three to five that would be really meaningful and prove your value. Could also speak for you in the market. So having an anchor customer who will then go to bat for you at the next customer, that's a crucial first step. And Boba, what about you? Yeah, I think understanding why those early customers are shopping you and why they're choosing you and why they stick to your product or company or whatever service you're in is really crucial. I think in the early days, it's more about understanding the super customers versus going for volume. Our last audience question is about cash flow. So to what extent should a company use cash flow to grow their business versus raising outside capital?

It really depends on the goal. I think in today's financial climate, I think growing your business with cash flow is smart if you can't raise the round that you know you can maybe in a few years. So, yeah, I think cash flow is always a good supplement to external VC because it doesn't dilute you as a founder. Yeah, I would agree.

I mean, we again launched with an anchor customer. It really gave us 12 to 18 months kind of figure out where our fit was while experimenting with a real customer. So cash flow is always great. And the point I think when you go to raise money is you really want to be, have conviction, be confident. You know where you fit. And this money is so that we scale to that. So cash flow can be a great way to experiment in those early days. I'll bring them high to Atropos Health and Barbara Rivera of ceremony. And thanks so much for being on your next move. Thank you. Thank you. We hope today's conversation encourages you to strategize and adapt as your business grows.

Tune in next time for more industry leaders, breakthrough businesses, and the strategies you need to make your next move. I'm Mike Hoffman at Earnschief of Inc. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.