Fundraising
Core mindset
Steve Martin: be so good they can’t ignore you. Improving the business beats improving the pitch. Raising is often the easiest hard thing vs recruiting, enterprise sales or viral growth — treat a closed round as fuel, not success.
Bootstrap as long as you can. Businesses that could work without capital attract capital.
Onion theory of risk (Andreessen)
Day-one startups carry every risk (team, product, tech, launch, market, sales, viral…). Each round peels layers by milestones. Pitch the peel history: seed removed X; A removed Y; B will remove Z. Calibrate cash to risk removed — not “raise as much as possible / fancy offices.”
What investors look for
Outliers only (~15 companies/year drive most VC returns). Invest in extreme strength, tolerate serious flaws. First minute: leader? obsessed by product? personal problem → solution? communicator?
One compelling sentence for what the product does. Decisive. Great team after product.
Pitch craft (Seibel)
30 seconds: what you do (mom test) → market size → traction / speed.
2 minutes: unique insight → business model (one clear model) → team → the ask (instrument, amount, min check — know the jargon here).
Warm intros; schedule meetings in one sprint week; one founder owns fundraising so the company keeps shipping.
After meeting: follow up; anything but a check is a no; create deal heat; diligence the investor (marriage for 10–20 years).
Cap table hygiene
Common seed ownership sold: ~10–15%; Series A often ~20–30%. Too much early dilution demotivates. Prefer near-equal founder splits with vesting. Get commitments in writing.
Bad investors
No domain help, no rolodex, money-only motives. Trust and respect in the first meeting beat a slightly larger check.
Discussion
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