Adria Abella, founder of hDrop Technologies Inc. of Little Rock, shared a story of near-failure on the BioVentures podcast last month, recounting how a $300,000 investment deal collapsed just one week before closing around 2023.
Abella said the team had an investor lined up, with plans to scale operations as well as release the second generation of the company’s wearable hydration monitor.
“We really needed the money to keep running the company,” Abella said during the podcast episode. But suspicious clauses that were added to the paperwork and a bad meeting with the investors’ lawyers derailed what seemed like a done deal.
“Everything fell apart,” Abella said, noting he was afraid the company would have to shut down in two weeks due to the lack of funds.
The company had to “restructure everything” and created an internal pre-order campaign targeting existing customers, effectively bootstrapping a second launch without any outside capital.
“Everything started to skyrocket from that point,” Abella said on the podcast.
Sign up for Daily E-news
