Top Takeaways
- Meet with 20-30 founders that have raised VC who have raised venture capital and are one to two stages ahead of you and ask for advice on your pitch. (Bonus: If founders like what you are doing, they will invest in you and/or introduce you to their VC GPs that invested in them.)
- Communicate your story. Investors need to know why you are solving the problem.
- Lead your pitch with Team, Product, & Traction.
- Fundraising done wrong takes your eye off the business. Running a structured process can allow you to quickly raise and get back to focusing on growing your startup.
- Use investor updates as a way to re-engage investors. (Your WHY + Revenue Growth = FOMO)
"If you are really enthusiastic about the why and the logic is sound, it is impossible to argue with ambition." - Andrew Farah
Guests:
**Andrew Farah | @andrewfarah**
- CEO & Co-Founder, Density
- Raised over $100M and is operating in growth-stage mode.
- Density sells a Hardware-as-a-Service product that monitors building space for commercial real estate.
**Dejan Pralica | @dp16**
- CEO & Co-Founder, SoleSavy
- Closed an oversubscribed $2M seed round (Largest Check Size: $500,000, from 33 Investors over 10 months)
- SoleSavy is a paid community for Sneaker-heads that blends the best parts of ecommerce and community.
https://youtu.be/heaup9Rb1II
- Andrew believes more world-changing businesses could have been built if founders knew how to fundraise better.
- Information Asymmetry: VCs invest constantly. Founders only fundraise every 18 months.
- Great VCs are like experienced pilots. When a crisis happens, they can look at the chaos of your company dashboard and tell you what to ignore.
- You're not competing against incumbents for money; you are competing against everybody else who's fundraising at a similar stage.
- You need to iterate on your deck and story with every meeting you do.
- It's difficult to run a business and fundraise at the same time, keep your fundraising window short so you can focus on fundraising exclusively during that time.
- Running a tight process dramatically improves the likelihood you can close a round and create a competition to increase your valuation.