Celine Halioua
Celine Halioua

We are looking for Loyal's first Independent Director.

About Loyal

Loyal is a Series A startup developing drugs to extend dog lifespan. We were founded in Oct 2019 and have raised $38M to date from Khosla, First Round Capital, Collaborative Fund, Longevity Fund, BoxGroup, and more.

Our mission is to:

  • bring to market the first drug explicitly approved for lifespan & healthspan extension - in dogs,

  • build a consumer-first brand that people love around pharmaceutical products,

  • take what we learn in dogs to leap frog into human aging drugs, and

  • build the ‘Moderna of Aging’ ‘SpaceX of Aging’ - the company that catalyzes and dominates the public’s excitement around aging therapeutics.

Most of our current challenges are operational: scaling from 45 (now) to ~70 (mid next year), hiring executives, scaling our culture, scaling product development, decision making, etc.

About me (Celine, Founder & CEO)

I am a first time, solo founder based in SF. My strengths are that I am a compelling communicator, have a super-fast growth rate, am extremely mission motivated with unlimited ambition, am generally low-ego, and see Loyal as my life's work. My weaknesses include that I bias too much to any action over careful action, I struggle with focusing the organization and try to do everything, and have never done this before/seen this done before so fall down on common mistakes.

Our current board composition is:

Celine Halioua (Loyal) - Common Director
Laura Deming (Longevity Fund) - Common Director
Alex Morgan (Khosla Ventures) - Preferred Director
Greg Rosen (BoxGroup) - Board Observer
Josh Kopelman (First Round Capital) - Board Observer
Taylor Greene (Collaborative Fund) - Board Observer

What I'm looking for in an Independent

    • A Founder/CEO/COO who has scaled a company to at least 100 people

    • Has raised growth-stage financing, with some preference to having previously brought a company public

    • Experience fundraising for a non-standard company, ideally in a new market or for something with significant technical risk

    • Has built a new market and/or a complex technological product

    • You do not need to have a biotech or science background

Why you might like working on Loyal

    • We have an impressive mission: to bring the first lifespan-extending drug to market

    • Our end goal is a revenue-creating sustainable, venture scale organization that develops and commercializes aging drugs (AKA - not a build-to-buy play)

    • We have a number of tailwinds: dog love, growing consensus on the aging thesis, growing pharma interest in aging/healthspan therapeutics

    • We execute extremely quickly and have achieved many things in our two years of operating that traditionally take much longer

    • We have a consumer go-to-market strategy and have the opportunity to bring non-pharmaceutical products to market

    • We have a strong computational core and are investing in this further

Why you may not like working on Loyal or with me

    • We are building pharmaceutical products that take a while to get to market

    • We are not a metrics-based company, since we have no users/revenue/etc

    • The core of Loyal is highly technical and there will be a learning curve if you do not come from a bio background

    • A big part of your focus will be on mentoring me as a first-time founder and CEO

    • I have a classic founder personality (antagonistic, strong vision, dislikes control)

If you are interested in learning more, shoot me an email at celine@loyalfordogs.com