Developing your fundraising strategy: LinkGevity's Serena Kern-Libera on the importance of mixed investor pools
“What you really want is somebody who's going to be an advocate, a mentor, help you open up new opportunities, but most importantly, really understands and appreciates the vision of what it is that you're trying to achieve.”
Serena Kern-Libera’s journey to founding LinkGevity began far from the lab bench. With a career in corporate law at Slaughter and May and policymaking at the Bank of England, she never expected to enter entrepreneurship. The work of her sister Dr Carina Kern, an accomplished geneticist working across evolution, pharmacology, neuroscience, and ageing, and the experience of personal loss inspired her mission.
“We lost close family members to age-related diseases, and this fuelled a deep belief in the power of translational science,” she says. “My sister is a brilliant scientist and watching her scientific journey unfold made one thing clear: if I was ever going to back someone, it would be her.”
The two co-founded LinkGevity in 2023, creating a trailblazing biotech at the intersection of AI and longevity.
Based at the Babraham Research Campus, affiliated with the University of Cambridge, LinkGevity’s first therapeutic candidate, an “anti-necrotic” compound targeting a core biological process tied to ageing, is being prepared for Phase 2 clinical trial initiation - subject to regulatory approval - by the end of 2025.
To support this journey, LinkGevity have crafted a fundraising strategy that favours a carefully curated mix of investor profiles, securing smart capital from angel investors and family offices aligned with their mission. “We’ve been deliberately selective about when and from whom we raise capital. It’s not just about raising money – it’s about raising it at the right time, from the right people, and only when the value you’ve built truly justifies it.”
To enrich their first funding round, the team secured non-dilutive funding from the likes of Innovate UK, Horizon Europe, and equity investment from the Francis Crick Institute, and became one of the 10 companies selected for KQ Labs Cohort 7. LinkGevity’s anti-necrotic was also selected as one of 12 innovations globally for the NASA Space-H program due to its potential to alleviate accelerated ageing in astronauts.
This capital-efficient growth strategy allowed them to develop their novel therapeutic strategy, build rigorous scientific datasets, and conduct pre-clinical testing, strengthening their scientific and strategic position ahead of engaging institutional investors.
An important early understanding for the LinkGevity team was the necessity of building mixed investment pools as they became investor ready. “To be investor ready is being ready to be able to have conversations not necessarily about needing funding right now but with a number of different types of archetypes that make up the pool of investors.”
The company’s emphasis on mixed investment pools was drawn from a major lesson Serena learned while building their team: diverse thinking supports a more resilient business.
LinkGevity’s early full-time hires including two serial entrepreneurs, a former GSK director of scientific operations, and a CERN-trained advanced computing systems expert. “We wanted world-class science, but also that entrepreneurial ‘lived experience’ people who’ve actually built something before,” Serena notes.
This mantra is reflected in their choice of investors, where Serena has found “the breadth of the network is just as important as the calibre” for helping the team stress-test their approach from multiple commercial and scientific angles.
Accessing diverse, high-calibre support networks was one of the reasons LinkGevity applied to join KQ Labs. Introductions to investors and the wider ecosystem are made throughout the programme as mentor introductions, including to supportive VCs, angels, industry leaders and experienced entrepreneurs, who offer their advice on refining pitch decks, narratives, and fundraising strategy.
“KQ helped us have meaningful conversations not just with typical biotech VCs, but with strategic players in adjacent fields,” Serena remembers.
This helps with building your understanding of who will make a useful investor to include on your cap table. As Serena advises, “what you really want is somebody who's going to be an advocate, a mentor, help you open up new opportunities, but most importantly, really understands and appreciates the vision of what it is that you're trying to achieve.”
Serena adds, “the investors we have selected are real champions of what we’re doing, and we have selected them carefully.”
Serena advises teams who are considering the next steps on their fundraising journey: if you choose to join an accelerator, select those where “just getting in is an endorsement”.
The vetting and due diligence process for the KQ Labs process was, as Serena describes, intense but invaluable. This stamp of credibility has helped LinkGevity build meaningful partnerships for its next phase, playing a critical role in LinkGevity’s fundraising journey by providing validation.
“What KQ offered us wasn’t investor readiness in the traditional sense,” says Serena. “We already had strong data, a confident pitch, and successful entrepreneurs on board. What KQ gave us was validation from the highest-calibre scientific and commercial experts.”
Her advice to founders entering the KQ Labs Accelerator is to treat the experience as a milestone in itself: “The application alone requires rigour. And once you're through, treat it not just as an accelerator but as a litmus test. The process teaches you what excellence looks like and where your own blind spots are.”
As applications open for KQ Labs Cohort 8, we’re exploring the diverse journeys of our alumni who have navigated the complex world of fundraising for growth in the data-driven health sector.
Read about Rory Ryan’s journey with his company PentaBind and his advice about becoming investor- and investment-ready.
If you’re a founder in this sector looking for support with developing your fundraising strategy, apply for our next cohort by Thursday 28 August, 2025.
