Ooshma Garg, founder of Gobble (YC W14) – Startup School video and AMA

Big secret: There are no real stages. We didn't just have a seed, Series A, Series B, etc. And, that's the story for most companies. There are oftentimes intermittent rounds, that you can call bridge rounds or just financings. We had three times where people put in more money, sometimes a little, sometimes a huge amount, that aren't technically called anything. These intermittent financing are especially common in the early days.

I just searched my email for "sit this one out", "going to pass", "won't get there", "not the right fit", and "not going to get to the finish line", and I think we're at 200+.

Maintain good relationships with all investors, especially those that reject you.

Treat every funding like your last. Be thrifty and try to make revenue, and ultimately profit, as soon as possible. It will at worst extend your runway and at very best help you avoid the need to fundraise anymore at all. The goal is not to raise money, the goal is to build a standalone bad ass business.

That said, when fundraising, keep going and remember: it only takes one yes.

The way to filter feedback is based on your target demographic. Identify exactly who are the super users of your product (hopefully they're a small part of a very large segment of our population) and then listen to only them for the feedback.

Other tips: (1) Make sure to get their feedback in multiple ways, we still do surveys every week, phone calls, and home visits. On a survey, someone might say they shop at Whole Foods. At home, you'll see all the Costco stuff in their pantry ;) (2) Set benchmarks for when feedback becomes meaningful. When over 5% of our community says something, we start prioritizing it. When less than 10% of our community uses a new feature or offering on our website, we consider letting it go.

To get to product/market fit, meeting the customers is everything. They will help you both better describe who is your exact target market (the professional mom who says she shops at Whole Foods but still likes deals from Costco) and help you refine your product for that market.

In the bigger fundraising meetings, you have to control a room of 15+ people. I only think about my psychology, the rest is just details. I meditate for longer than usual the morning before these meetings.

The Pre-Pitch Playlist is an extremely guilty mix of pump up pop and hip hop music... think Work from Home (Fifth Harmony) and All The Way up (Fat Joe). The Diligence Playlist is a set of concertos and symphonies featuring Ludovico Einaudi, Rachmaninoff, Edouard Lalo.

And Chris - Thank you for engineering brilliance, your sense of humor, and for grinding it out with me at Gobble for so long and sitting right next to me through all our ups and downs.

What was your growth rate for the first 3 months of launching Gobble and how did you acquire your first batch of users?

Also, "I just searched my email for "sit this one out", "going to pass", "won't get there", "not the right fit", and "not going to get to the finish line", and I think we're at 200+."

Is that "200+" denials for VC/angel funding??