Fund Raising
At an early stage, almost all inbound investment proposals are noise or may be even scams. Be careful, don't waste your time.
Remember that fund-raising is a high-touch interaction. Most investors would NOT reply to your generic mail-merge. Research, target, get warm intros or write awesome cold emails.
- Be honest about the process. Many a people advised FOMO, but it should never be manufactured. If you are a hot deal and there is indeed FOMO for investors, you don’t have to do anything extra.
- Be truthful about numbers. Don’t obfuscate.
- Anything wrong with the team, be upfront and let the investors know. In the early stage of the company, Investors are investing, mostly, in the team.
- Share your pitch deck generously. Make it good that you should be proud if it gets leaked. Make your deck leak-ready.
- You should be the best expert about your product.
- If you have a few good customers. Make the story about that. Make the work for the Investors easy.
- Practice, Practice, Practice.
Early Fund-Raising Tools
- AngelList RUV Efficiently raise capital from investors with a single cap table entry. With Roll Up Vehicles™, founders get a single link that allows investors to commit and send funds online—and AngelList takes care of the rest.
- What valuation should I raise at? is an interactive calculator for your valuation and amount to raise.
References
- Raise millions for your startup is a book by Hustle Fund will teach you everything you need to know to fundraise from the pre-seed stage all the way to your Series A.
- 21 Resources for Funding Your Startup
- 30+ Resources for Funding Your Startup from finding investors to colds emails to upgrading your pitch deck and more.
- A Tactical Guide to Seed Fundraising Learn the playbook and pragmatic tactics for early-stage fundraising from Mike Wilner, a startup founder, advisor, and author of Oversubscribed, a book on seed fundraising.
- Fundraising Wiki by Michael Schneider of $eedraisr.
- How To Fundraise Like a Pro (archive) from 20VC is nice article on How to Size and Price a Round, How to Create FOMO and Urgency in a Fundraise, How to Structure Angel Allocations, The 7 Deadly Sins of Fundraising Decks, The 3 Signs a Potential Investor is Bad News, etc.
- How to raise a seed round? by Elizabeth Yin
- Investment Memos from Bessemer Venture Partners.
- OpenDeck 1,200+ startup slides.
- Securing Investor Introductions — a Guide from Founder Institute, to help startup founders start a conversation with their first startup investor.
- Startup Hacks Alex Iskold is a technology entrepreneur, Founder and Managing Partner at 2048 Ventures, and an angel investor in many early stage companies.
- The Art of Fundraising is a well laid our Trello Board with a categorized process.
- The Fundraising Playbook is by Ben Yoskovitz, Founding Partner at Highline Beta & author of Focused Chaos, a free newsletter on startups, product management and more.
- The Non-Obvious Guide to Fundraising
- The Pitch Narrative from Space Cadet.
- The Startup Fundraising Playbook DocSend Startup Index provides data-driven insights into what the latest fundraising trends are and how to succeed.
- Hubspot's review of the 25 Best Sales Decks