Who You Raise From Matters Most

Who You Raise From > How Much You Raise

Drawing from over 15 years in capital markets before stepping into the CEO role, Greg emphasizes a fundamental truth that many founders overlook: who you raise money from really matters.

"It's not just the amount of capital that you raise, but it's also who your investors are and the terms that you raise them on," Greg explains. He's witnessed countless companies struggle when investors can't support subsequent rounds, leaving founders constantly fundraising instead of building their businesses. "My advice is to really try to find the right long-term partners that can help you strategically build your business versus getting too stuck on valuation."

This philosophy extends to team building, where Greg advocates for assembling multidisciplinary expertise rather than trying to master every domain personally. "Healthcare is just way too complicated for one person," he notes. For founder-led companies where the CEO's expertise lies in clinical science rather than finance, Greg recommends bringing on partners who can handle the capital markets while founders focus on their core strengths.

The rationale is practical: "Capital raising is a full-time job," Greg says, making it nearly impossible for clinical founders to excel at both domains simultaneously.

For companies that don't fit the traditional venture capital mold, Greg suggests exploring alternative paths. When Firefly encountered VCs using "cookie-cutter" approaches that didn't account for the company's unique ten-year database development timeline, the team pivoted to non-traditional funding sources.

Non-Traditional Funding: Strategic Growth Through Public Markets and Smart Acquisitions

Firefly's approach to going public through a reverse merger demonstrates how companies can pursue alternative paths when traditional routes don't align with their circumstances. The company completed a $45 million reverse merger with IT group WaveDancer in August 2024, allowing it to access public markets without the uncertainty of traditional IPO timing. Greg notes that with conventional IPOs, companies must complete all documentation and then hope market conditions are favorable during their specific launch window, which can create significant timing risk.

"We went public through the reverse merger because it gave us the cleanest path…and predictability of knowing we'll go public at a certain date," Greg explains.

The public structure has enabled strategic moves like the May 2025 Evoke Neuroscience acquisition, a $6 million deal paid 50% in cash and 50% in Firefly stock that created "the largest known proprietary database of >180,000 standardized EEG/ERP assessment records" and expanded commercial sites ten-fold. The acquisition demonstrates how public companies can use equity as acquisition currency more effectively than private entities.

"The back story is Firefly did an excellent job building the database and the algorithms and really understanding the brain. Evoke did an excellent job of building a network into all these clinicians in the US. So, you had two of the biggest EEG/ERP databases out there,” Greg says of the strategic rationale for merging. The combined entity now holds 27 granted patents and serves over 60 commercial users, positioning Firefly to build what Greg describes as a foundation model for the human brain.

The deal structure also illustrates sophisticated thinking about risk sharing, including "a $500,000 earn-out to be paid in stock upon Evoke's acquired business achieving at least $3 million in annualized revenues within the next three years", aligning both parties' interests around growth execution.

How to Pick Your Priorities When Everything Looks Like an Opportunity

For platform companies like Firefly, having multiple potential applications can be both a blessing and a strategic challenge. With a proprietary database covering over a dozen cognitive disorders — from concussions and depression to dementia and ADHD — the team faces constant decisions about where to focus its resources. 

As Greg put it, “There are 20 different directions we could take, but which one is going to get us the best return on investment in both the short-term and the long-term?”

Greg's approach to this challenge centers on disciplined prioritization. "The exciting part about Firefly, and maybe the weakness as well, is that we have such a big opportunity," he explains. Rather than trying to pursue every possible application simultaneously, the company has chosen to concentrate on neurology, specifically dementia care, as their initial primary focus.

The rationale behind this choice reflects both market dynamics and demographic trends. "We have this big baby boomer generation…one of the key things that they think about is their brain," Greg notes. This demographic shift creates a substantial and growing market for brain health technologies, making dementia a natural starting point for commercial expansion.

However, Greg emphasizes that this focused approach doesn't mean ignoring other opportunities. Instead, the strategy involves letting market signals guide future expansion. "As we keep building out our network of clinicians and keep getting more data, we want the market to pull us and tell us, 'Hey, here's all these exciting ways to grow,'" he explains.

This market-driven approach allows the company to evaluate multiple directions systematically rather than spreading its resources too thin. 

The underlying philosophy is sequential execution rather than parallel development. "We have to focus," Greg emphasizes. "If we execute and do really well on our first initiative, then the market will enable us to keep growing, giving us the privilege to then work on the second, the third, and the fourth."

The Evoke acquisition has added another dimension to these strategic considerations. Beyond the clinical applications, the deal brought a consumer-focused brain training app that allows users to control games through brain signals rather than traditional controllers. The app “is like a gym for your brain,” Greg says, explaining that it can help users learn how to de-stress or to focus. While the team continues strategizing the best approach to monetize this consumer asset, it represents another potential avenue for growth as the broader market for brain health monitoring expands beyond clinical settings.