kgddd;j
I like ponies alot because they are just soooo cool.3 Discussion Voice Activity 1.03 Discussion Voice Activity 11/26/13 9:12 PM 58 176 All
2 1.05 Discussion Voice Activity 1.05 Discussion Voice Activity 12/010 AM 52 191 All
3 1.06 Discussion Voice Activity 1.06 Discussion oice Activity 12/01/2 PM 46 141 All
4 1.08 Discussion Voice Activity 1.08 Discussion Voice Activity 11/2 47 122 All
5 2.04 Discussion Voice Activity 2.04 DActivity 11/21/13 9:34 PM 114 All
6 2.06 Discussion Voice Activity 2.06 Discussion Voice Activity 1 1 159 All
7 3.04 Discussion Voice Activity 3.04 Discussion Voice Activity 12/02:02 PM 4 eptember 2013
Most startups that raise money do it more than once. A typical trajectory might be (1) to get started with a few tens of thousands from something like Y Combinator or individual angels, then (2) raise a few hundred thousand to a few million to build the company, and then (3) once the company is clearly succeeding, raise one or more later rounds to accelerate growth.
Reality can be messier. Some companies raise money twice in phase 2. Others skip phase 1 and go straight to phase 2. And at Y Combinator we get an increasing number of companies that have already raised amounts in the hundreds of thousands. But the three phase path is at least the one about which individual startups' paths oscillate.
This essay focuses on phase 2 fundraising. That's the type the startups we fund are doing on Demo Day, and this essay is the advice we give them.
Forces
Fundraising is hard in both senses: hard like lifting a heavy weight, and hard like solving a puzzle. It's hard like lifting a weight because it's intrinsically hard to convince people to part with large sums of money. That problem is irreducible; it should be hard. But much of the other kind of difficulty can be eliminated. Fundraising only seems a puzzle because it's an alien world to most founders, and I hope to fix that by supplying a map through it.
2 1.05 Discussion Voice Activity 1.05 Discussion Voice Activity 12/010 AM 52 191 All
3 1.06 Discussion Voice Activity 1.06 Discussion oice Activity 12/01/2 PM 46 141 All
4 1.08 Discussion Voice Activity 1.08 Discussion Voice Activity 11/2 47 122 All
5 2.04 Discussion Voice Activity 2.04 DActivity 11/21/13 9:34 PM 114 All
6 2.06 Discussion Voice Activity 2.06 Discussion Voice Activity 1 1 159 All
7 3.04 Discussion Voice Activity 3.04 Discussion Voice Activity 12/02:02 PM 4 eptember 2013
Most startups that raise money do it more than once. A typical trajectory might be (1) to get started with a few tens of thousands from something like Y Combinator or individual angels, then (2) raise a few hundred thousand to a few million to build the company, and then (3) once the company is clearly succeeding, raise one or more later rounds to accelerate growth.
Reality can be messier. Some companies raise money twice in phase 2. Others skip phase 1 and go straight to phase 2. And at Y Combinator we get an increasing number of companies that have already raised amounts in the hundreds of thousands. But the three phase path is at least the one about which individual startups' paths oscillate.
This essay focuses on phase 2 fundraising. That's the type the startups we fund are doing on Demo Day, and this essay is the advice we give them.
Forces
Fundraising is hard in both senses: hard like lifting a heavy weight, and hard like solving a puzzle. It's hard like lifting a weight because it's intrinsically hard to convince people to part with large sums of money. That problem is irreducible; it should be hard. But much of the other kind of difficulty can be eliminated. Fundraising only seems a puzzle because it's an alien world to most founders, and I hope to fix that by supplying a map through it.