This post is one of a series exploring how biotech startup communications need to evolve as your company grows from pre-seed through to Series A and beyond.
It builds on our earlier article, Building a biotech startup? Don’t forget to evolve your story alongside your science, which looks at why and how your communications and marketing need to mature as your science and company develop. We’ve also provided specific advice for pre-seed and seed stage biotech startups.
In her last blog, our founder and Chief Creative Officer Kat Arney laid out a strategic comms approach for companies gearing up to raise Series A. Here she explains what should happen once you’ve landed the cash (yay!) and need to transition from startup to scaleup.
Raising a Series A is a genuine step change. You now have significant capital behind you, higher expectations from investors, and a much wider group of people paying attention.
How you show up now sets expectations for what kind of company you’re going to be as you grow.
Clear, credible and consistent communications will help you attract the right kind of partnerships for R&D-focused biotechs or lay the go-to-market foundations for product and service companies.
They also support successful hiring, build trust within the wider life science community, and set the stage for the next raise.
Series A is when we usually hear founders say they need to appear “buttoned-up” and “like a proper player”. I describe it as “looking like you have your sh!t together.”
Whatever language you choose to use, now’s the time to invest properly in putting your company out into the world as you grow.
Making a PR splash to publicise your Series A raise
Announcing a Series A raise is a unique PR opportunity, so don’t waste it by just knocking together a formulaic press release and sticking it on your website.
A specialist life science communications agency will help you craft an impactful press release and get it out into the world so the right people pay attention. They can also advise on tactics such as whether to offer an exclusive, and pitch for additional coverage such as interviews or thought leadership opportunities.
A quick tip: professional headshots of your leadership team are essential, not just to put on your upgraded website (more on that later) but also to send out alongside the press release. It’s the first thing an outlet asks for if they’re planning on running your story, so be prepared with pics you can be proud of.
Timing matters too. I strongly recommend getting agency support lined up at least a month in advance of the date you’d like to announce your raise.
This ensures that there’s enough time to create a compelling press release and get it signed off by all the relevant stakeholders, and to plan the best media outreach strategy.
Our record is 9 days from a CEO’s first email hitting our inbox to sending out the press release, but that wasn’t good for anyone’s blood pressure.
If you’re getting close to nailing termsheets to the table, get in touch to start a conversation sooner rather than later. We can even get a no-strings NDA and Master Services Agreement lined up so we can hit the ground running once you’re ready to go.
What “buttoned-up” really means after a Series A raise
Looking like a scale-up isn’t about having branded hoodies or a flashy animation on your website – although if you’ve got the money for those, knock yourself out.
It’s about credibility and coherence.
By this stage, your brand needs to reflect who you really are and where you’re going in a professional and consistent way – not just visually, but conceptually too.
If you’re still living with a website written by the CEO and built by their nephew, with a brand that would look more at home in the early noughties than 2026, it’s time to say goodbye.
Everything from your website, decks and marketing materials through to your LinkedIn posts and press releases should all reinforce the same visual and verbal narrative. And every member of your team should be able to tell the same story about who you are and how you’re trying to change the world.
This is the moment for properly investing time and money in upgrading your brand and website, and working with experienced expert partners to get it right.
That means starting with the basics: your vision, mission, and positioning, then manifesting it into a memorable visual brand and attention-grabbing messaging aimed at your target audiences.
We work seamlessly with brilliant specialist brand and design partners like TRAFIK and Cohesion Labs to create bold, eye-catching branding, messaging and websites that help innovative life science companies stand out from the crowd.
All too often I speak with companies who need our help after spending large sums of money on a fancy website from a generalist design agency that looks great but doesn’t do justice to their science or their story. Don’t make that mistake.
- See how we helped Scripta Therapeutics with an eye-catching brand, messaging, website, and PR campaign to announce their raise.
The need for strategic, consistent communications post-Series A
Once you’ve nailed down your brand and messaging, it’s time to start rolling it out. That requires a strategic communications and marketing plan designed to target the audiences that matter.
Therapeutics and platform companies need to become more visible to potential pharma partners actively looking for solutions to specific gaps.
Innovative product and service companies have to start thinking seriously about crossing the chasm from early adopters to more mainstream customers.
This needs an appropriate mix of conventional PR, thought leadership, marketing, in-person events, social media and more, all tailored to the audience and objectives.
In both cases, credibility and differentiation are crucial. You need to be able to explain not just what you’re doing, but also speak to the pain points you’re addressing and why you’re best placed to deliver the solution.
Regular, meaningful signals of progress – data, publications, partnerships, key strategic hires, thought leadership – help to support your narrative and reinforce confidence that you’re on the right track.
Inconsistent messaging, casual statements or mixed signals start to look risky, particularly as regulatory sensitivity increases and forward-looking statements carry more weight.
Discipline matters, whether that’s the CEO sticking to agreed language and talking points in an interview or making sure that your BD lead isn’t going rogue with deck design.
It’s also worth pointing out that while some people are more confident and fluent than others, nobody is born a natural public speaker.
Investing in presentation and/or media training for your key public-facing folk will more than pay off in terms of positively representing your company and brand. (We can help with that too.)
Maintaining alignment across your team as you scale post-Series A
Communications challenges often surface as companies scale.
One big issue is around culture. When you’re hiring fast, it helps if applicants already have a sense of who you are and what you stand for.
Clearly communicating your vision and values – assuming you’ve taken the time to properly capture them in the first place – sets the stage for the kind of company you’re building and the people you need.
Importantly, these values should be real, meaningful, and something you live by every day across the business. Done right, company values are a compass for individual and collective decision-making. Done wrong, they’re a waste of words.
Choose four at the most, and make them easy to remember. Here are ours, and I’m always happy to talk about how we apply them across every aspect of First Create The Media.
More broadly, if you haven’t clearly articulated your positioning, values and company story, misalignment creeps in fast.
Finally, you can’t communicate your way out of a bad strategy. When comms feels difficult or confused, this could be because the underlying company strategy isn’t clear or there’s disagreement about priorities or positioning.
We’ve worked with companies where the senior leadership team wasn’t fully aligned on how to describe their core programme, because it turned out they had differing ideas about what they were actually building.
Fix that, and both internal and external communication get a lot easier.
Finding communications support that scales with you
Even if you’ve managed to cover everything in house up until now, Series A is the time to level up. There are a few ways to do this, ranging from bringing on freelance or agency help to hiring a comms specialist to join your team.
Finding an affordable ‘unicorn’ who really gets your science and can do everything from high level communications, brand and marketing strategy as well as rolling their sleeves up for the day-to-day delivery is rare.
While hiring someone permanent might be a good plan in the longer term, it can make more sense to bring on a nimble specialist agency for the first phase of growth when there’s a lot of stuff to be done.
How First Create The Media helps biotech companies at Series A and beyond
First Create The Media acts as a plug-in expert life science communications and marketing team, combining deep science knowledge with strategic clarity and flexible delivery support.
We work with life science startups and scaleups in the UK, Europe and the US, helping them refine their narrative, professionalise their communications, and present themselves as confident, credible companies that stand out from the crowd.