How Curve Biosciences accelerated its Series A close with Carta Deal Closings

Curve Biosciences, a San Francisco-based startup transforming chronic disease monitoring through its Whole-Body Intelligence™ platform, raised its Series A in a tough fundraising climate—with the help of a Carta workflow tool that eases the process for founders.

CEO Ritish Patnaik was mentally prepared for challenges, but Carta Deal Closings relieved the pressure by centralizing and streamlining information for Curve, its law firm, and investors. 

Deal Closings automates administrative tasks required to close a priced funding round. With a unified interface to manage investor communications, signatures, and wire tracking, it provides clarity during closings so founders can focus on company objectives. 

Sidestepping startup stress with Carta

 Carta helped Patnaik establish Curve with minimal stress. While his peers had cautionary tales about fundraising and cap tables, Patnaik felt equipped with Carta’s easy-to-use tools from the beginnings of his founder journey. 

“I heard about Carta when I was doing my PhD in Bioengineering at Stanford. I pursued a lot of entrepreneurial activities, and something that kept popping up was, ‘Make sure you manage your cap table properly.’ And I was like, ‘OK, I don’t have that background yet, so what can I use?’ and Carta came up as the industry leader,” said Patnaik.

“Once I started Curve, it was a no-brainer. I signed up for Carta a day or two after incorporating and started with the free Carta Launch until I reached a million dollars in funding. It made so much sense to me to use Carta’s other tools, too, especially Total Compensation to understand industry standards for cash and equity compensation.”

Patnaik steeled himself again when it came time to raise Curve’s Series A, but Deal Closings eliminated the typical headaches of finalizing funding rounds.

“I'd been warned, ‘After you sign the term sheet, give yourself more mental bandwidth because you're going to get even more stressed.’ But then I saw Carta Deal Closings and I was like, ‘Wait, what's this?’ This is exactly what was causing anxiety for my other founder friends. I realized Carta has this tool. Why not take advantage of it and reduce my stress as a result?”

Closing funding rounds without a purpose-built tool can be laborious. Companies risk missing documents, inconsistent data, and time-consuming communication. With Deal Closings, Patnaik didn’t have to worry about things like signature collection or cap table updates. Instead, he could focus on Curve’s mission and the potential of Whole-Body Intelligence.

Closing quickly in a tight funding environment

Curve takes a clear, organized approach by identifying the origin of all DNA in the blood. The company discovers disease-specific biology with its Whole Body Atlas™ — a collection of manually-curated tissue samples characterized by organ and disease state. Curve’s Whole-Body Blood Tests™ deliver optimal accuracy and outcomes by isolating this biology for Whole-Body Intelligence models trained on the Whole-Body Atlas. 

“We started raising our Series A after stellar results from our first test. It was joyous, because the test really validated our Whole-Body Intelligence technology,” said Patnaik. “It was a tough funding environment, but we were able to land the big fish of Series A, led by some great biotech investors.

“Even though it wasn’t an easy journey to fundraise because cash wasn’t as plentiful, we’ve been very blessed to close our rounds quickly—and we anticipate we’ll continue to do that by hitting our milestones and working in Carta.”

Nurturing relationships with investors

Curve’s innovative value proposition caught investors’ attention, while Carta’s efficiency helped offset the challenges of the funding landscape. Transparency into key deal facets let Patnaik, Curve’s investors, and its law firm work together without any hassles.

“Deal Closings streamlines the process and makes it clear on one dashboard where we're at with financing. I can see all the deal documents, who needs to sign off, everything. It makes it more transparent. Anxiety dropped significantly for me and my co-founder,” said Patnaik.

“It’s especially great when you're making the transition from SAFEs to a priced round. A lot of times, founders have personal or deeper professional relationships with SAFE holders, so at Curve, we took a divide-and-conquer approach. Our law firm worked with investors that came in for the Series A, and I handled investor relations with SAFE holders, because I already had the relationships. 

“It's just a lot easier for everyone to manage those relationships if you have this centralized understanding of the deal. It's been very smooth for me because of Carta.”