# I met our lead investor on TikTok!?! | Brazen Bio

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/feed/146417
- Entity ID: wefunder:feed_item:146417
- Published at: 2021-07-02 06:16:40 UTC
- Updated at: 2025-07-15 13:35:41 UTC

## Author
Shawn Carbonell MD PhD

## Subject
Brazen Bio

## Content
Since 2014, I have been engaged in science communication (aka, #scicomm) largely on Instagram with the goal of inspiring the next generation in STEM. Last fall, I was tapped to participate in a TikTok Accelerator Program for creators who focus on educational content (#LearnOnTikTok). It’s been a rewarding experience (shout out to Christen and the whole team at TikTok) and, amazingly, my following grew from 2K to over 188K in 9 months.One of the most rewarding aspects of being a STEM “influencer” are the interactions with the online community. I’ve met hundreds of students, dozens of fellow creators, several celebrities, and have also hired people through social media. In fact, I met my nonprofit cofounder through Instagram of all places. But it wasn’t until earlier this month that I met my first major investor through TikTok: this campaign’s Lead Investor, Joe Rizzo. I’ll let Joe tell the rest of the story: “I have a 13 year old daughter who takes part in social media. One of the platforms she frequents is TikTok. As a responsible father I created my own TikTok account to keep an eye on what she was doing on the app. Given my engineering background, there were many creators producing a lot of science content I found interesting. With the pandemic in full swing, I started to follow creators providing information about the virus and the vaccines. One morning I stumbled across a video with a guy taking his own blood and testing it for antibodies produced by the COVID vaccine. I was intrigued. So, I started to watch more of his content to learn more about his test results. Not fully understanding everything about one of the graphs he created, I reached out through the app to ask some questions. Within a short period of time the creator responded with answers to my questions. That is when I met Dr. W. Shawn Carbonell. Shawn started to chat with me over TikTok and then through email. I found him to be incredibly intelligent and a very interesting person. Before long, we started chatting about his first startup OncoSynergy and an amazing drug he created. Within a few days we got on the phone and talked about Brazen Bio. With his track record, his incredible rolodex (do people still use this term?), and vision for Brazen Bio—I knew I wanted to be an investor.”Isn’t it crazy? But this isn’t just a story about how I met an investor online and hard-circled an investment in one week. It’s a story about how I’ve been deliberately building community for 7 years leading to that moment earlier this month when I had the great pleasure of meeting Joe and his wife, Bindoo. And this is what we will continue to do with Brazen Bio: building community to inspire and support the next generation of STEM innovators and founders. Join us!—Shawn, cofounder & CEO, Brazen Bio Inc.PS: Stay tuned, Joe has an amazing founder story himself and we are excited to feature it in a future update. PPS: Find me on social media as “BrainSurgeryDropout” on Instagram and TikTok.