I'm a noob founder raising Angel/VC for my startup, what are the common pitfalls and other things that I need to be aware of?
Ask HN: What's your advice for someone who's raising capital for the first time?
1–10 of 81 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's your advice for someone who's raising capital for the first time?
#2Apply to YC.
Re: Ask HN: What's your advice for someone who's raising capital for the first time?
#3Some basic things I've learned along the way:
1. be authentic. 2. don't sell. 3. explain your vision of the future in simple terms
Re: Ask HN: What's your advice for someone who's raising capital for the first time?
#4Prepare for the process to be draining, frustrating, and to take a lot longer than you expect. As the owner/operator of your start-up, it's like adding another job to your list of responsibilities. Also prepare yourself for a hundred no responses to get to a yes. Eating rejection is more often than not a hefty part of the process. Try to not get upset at the rejections, waste minimum amounts of time on that aspect; spending unnecessary amounts time dwelling there is dangerous to your start-up, it'll eat your valuable time and mental health (which is already being heavily taxed by the start-up itself).
Re: Ask HN: What's your advice for someone who's raising capital for the first time?
#5Ask yourself if you actually need the capital.
Between the ubiquity of pay-per-minute cloud computing for every imaginable service, tools to enable extremely productive remote employees, and thousands of software companies ready to handle the complexity of payments, email, ecommerce, hosting, etc, starting a tech company is easier and cheaper than ever.
Re: Ask HN: What's your advice for someone who's raising capital for the first time?
#6Read everything in the fundraising section here: https://www.startupschool.org/library
Re: Ask HN: What's your advice for someone who's raising capital for the first time?
#7Prepare for the process to be draining, frustrating, and to take a lot longer than you expect. As the owner/operator of your start-up, it's like adding another job to your list of responsibilities. Also prepare yourself for a hundred no responses to get to a yes. Eating rejection is more often than not a hefty part of the process. Try to not get upset at the rejections, waste minimum amounts of time on that aspect; s…
So it’s like going to job interviews! :)
Re: Ask HN: What's your advice for someone who's raising capital for the first time?
#8Be wary of raising too much too fast/having too many investors to deal with early on.
Re: Ask HN: What's your advice for someone who's raising capital for the first time?
#9You're better off spending the time improving your product.
Re: Ask HN: What's your advice for someone who's raising capital for the first time?
#10Don't