Ask HN: What's your advice for someone who's raising capital for the first time?

If you are in EU consider the new ICO rules... Up to 8 million within eu countries.

Have MVP if you want to limit dilution.

Draw a small salary... Don't work for free.

Make sure you actually need capital. When I worked on my startup I noticed I was more busy finding investors than building the software. One day I was done with spending so much time on funding, and started to spend my time programming on the actual project, which was a great relief.

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

VCs constantly talk about supporting entrepreneurs through tough times, enabling creativity, building amazing companies, etc. They're not lying -- they really believe it, and it's an important thing for them to believe.

But while they say all this stuff, they're also human. And humans follow their incentives. They do that before they do anything else. So your job is to make it easy for them to act ethically.

That means talk the talk -- you want to build a great product, scale it to an amazing company, hire a great team, etc. That's the only thing you care about. Building a great company that builds amazing products and makes everyone lots of money. But act game theory. Have lots of great alternatives to negotiated agreements with any given VC. Put yourself in a powerful position where you can get favorable terms. Don't give up power/equity on the assumption that "it doesn't matter", or that they'll act magnanimously, or anything like that.

It's way, way easier to have a lovely relationship with people when you're in a position of power. Put yourself into that position.

(There are some investors you can unequivocally trust to act their talk -- notably YC, winfunding, and a few others, but don't rely on that as a general rule)

1. First figure out plan B - what happens if you are not able to raise funding in the next 6 months.

2. Assume a position of power - you will make this company big even without funding because plan B is in place.

3. Talk to investors from this position. You are smarter than them. You know more about this business. You don't need this particular investor to invest because others have already signed up.

4. Treat investors like shit. Dont look too eager to setup meetings. Schedule meetings a week out atleast. When you drop into a meeting do NOT spend more than half an hour to 45 minutes. Do NOT answer all questions for investors - be selective about information you disclose - push answers to next meeting - make yourself scarce.

5. Do bullshit padding around your entire story. If something doesnt sound too good dont disclose that information. Make up stuff to make things look good.

There are people who will find the points above ethically questionable. These people most likely dont know what it takes to raise money.