Sorry but is this a f*ing satire article? Ex-google ex-apple guy calls up his VC friends to ask how to raise a $5M (!!!!) seed round? For god's sake. It's something straight out of the Silicon Valley TV series.
Hard to tell with venture capital
Everything I wish I had known about raising a seed round
71–80 of 95 posts
Re: Everything I wish I had known about raising a seed round
#72For anyone reading this advice. The number 1 reason why Matt’s fundraising process went as well as it did is because he has a world-class personal track record. This dwarfs all other reasons by a long way. Quite frankly Matt would have been able to raise with complete air (assuming that his cofounders have similar personal track records). That’s not to take anything away from Matt. He’s clearly an accomplished indivi…
OP here. Thanks for the kind words. I certainly didn't feel like this was an easy raise, but then again it's the only time I've done this and my comparison points were other first-time founders who raised 2x what we did with less than we had done. Yes, these are all pretty senior, well-established folks, not kids straight out of college. The main point of my article was the surprise around the extent of the VC networ…
When you said:
"my first stop was to call up some VC friends of mine"
I wasn't surprised you were funded without a product not knowing your history and current role.
Re: Everything I wish I had known about raising a seed round
#73For anyone reading this advice. The number 1 reason why Matt’s fundraising process went as well as it did is because he has a world-class personal track record. This dwarfs all other reasons by a long way. Quite frankly Matt would have been able to raise with complete air (assuming that his cofounders have similar personal track records). That’s not to take anything away from Matt. He’s clearly an accomplished indivi…
That and "being able to call up a few VC friends of mine" also means he is a lot better connected than 99% of startup founders. This just reinforces the idea that raising VC is more about your background than it is about your ideas or ability to execute.
Re: Everything I wish I had known about raising a seed round
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does non-US mean? European Founders could register a Delaware company. Is that good enough?
Partially. By investing in a delaware corp they know the law that will apply, and the tax code. However if you're far away it's harder to keep up with what's going on with your company and many will not want to deal with that.
How much harder is it for an SFBA investor to keep up with what's going on in a Berlin or London startup vs, say, an Atlanta or Miami startup? As long as you need to board a flight to get there isn't it more or less the same, whether that's a 4 hours flight or an 8 hour flight?
Re: Everything I wish I had known about raising a seed round
#75Asking your VCs if you should do YC is a funny conflict of interest, of course they're gonna say no.
Re: Everything I wish I had known about raising a seed round
#76I wish I knew more about the company, perhaps even a slide deck. It might make some of the ideas easier to connect with!
Anyone have a link to the deck?
Re: Everything I wish I had known about raising a seed round
#77For anyone reading this advice. The number 1 reason why Matt’s fundraising process went as well as it did is because he has a world-class personal track record. This dwarfs all other reasons by a long way. Quite frankly Matt would have been able to raise with complete air (assuming that his cofounders have similar personal track records). That’s not to take anything away from Matt. He’s clearly an accomplished indivi…
That and "being able to call up a few VC friends of mine" also means he is a lot better connected than 99% of startup founders. This just reinforces the idea that raising VC is more about your background than it is about your ideas or ability to execute.
You don't need to worry about this because VCs on Twitter have said many times that they are happy to accept cold emails and DMs.
Of course from recent experience they don't actually respond so there's that.
Re: Everything I wish I had known about raising a seed round
#78For anyone reading this advice. The number 1 reason why Matt’s fundraising process went as well as it did is because he has a world-class personal track record. This dwarfs all other reasons by a long way. Quite frankly Matt would have been able to raise with complete air (assuming that his cofounders have similar personal track records). That’s not to take anything away from Matt. He’s clearly an accomplished indivi…
If there's an actual business, then the VCs will evaluate and choose whether to bet on that. If there's no business, then the VCs will evaluate the founders and choose whether to bet on them. A real (successful) business AND extremely impressive founders don't have to reach out to VCs because they're already beating a path towards them.
Re: Everything I wish I had known about raising a seed round
#79Sorry but is this a f*ing satire article? Ex-google ex-apple guy calls up his VC friends to ask how to raise a $5M (!!!!) seed round? For god's sake. It's something straight out of the Silicon Valley TV series.
it's just standard SEO fare. don't read too much into it.
Re: Everything I wish I had known about raising a seed round
#80For anyone reading this advice. The number 1 reason why Matt’s fundraising process went as well as it did is because he has a world-class personal track record. This dwarfs all other reasons by a long way. Quite frankly Matt would have been able to raise with complete air (assuming that his cofounders have similar personal track records). That’s not to take anything away from Matt. He’s clearly an accomplished indivi…
LOL exactly. A Harvard CS professor who had also worked in industry wouldn't even need to share the deck or idea to raise $5m. John Carmack just raised $20m for his AGI startup and doubt he had to share any plans or decks either, and guarantee you that Carmack was oversubscribed.