What no one tells you about raising your first round — Lessons from helping launch 1,000+ startups.
I recently hosted a deep dive into fundraising. Presenting it here in podcast form (subscribe on on Apple Podcasts and Spotify ) Timestamps with topics and ideas that might be of interest below. I’ve been told the “Expectation vs Reality” segment (starting at approximately 11:34) was especially useful. 0:55 - Why it's called "What no one tells you" 1:26 - Why fundraising advice is generally not good 2:41 - Julian's background and overview of ODF4:10 - You shouldn't be good at fundraising 4:45 - Momentum is the main driver of success 5:29 - Customer momentum is the most important type 6:19 - Other types of momentum are less important than customer momentum 7:06 - Should you even be fundraising? 7:40 - Are you fundable? 8:46 - The funding market DOES NOT MATTER 10:02 - Raise on momentum or the dream 11:18 - If you aren't making progress...what are you waiting around for? 11:34 - Expectations vs Reality segment 11:53 - Expectation: It will take a few weeks to fundraise... Reality: 13:26 - Expectation: I'll nail most of these meetings... Reality: 14:30 - Expectation: Fundraising is a full-time job... Reality: 16:44 - Expectation: "I'm taking enough first meetings" ... Reality: 17:31 - Expectation: That went great — they're going to offer a TS... Reality: 18:42 - Expectation: [Trick] will get investors to move faster... Reality: 19:57 - Rapid Fire segment begins 20:12 - How to determine your startup valuation — it's actually straightforward! 21:00 - Does your valuation match market reality? 22:23 - Start your round raising from angels 22:38 - Top of funnel is essential for a successful fundraise. 23:00 - Get former boss to invest if they work in tech or in your sector 23:54 - Illustration of how angels lead to other investors — Freshpaint example 25:19 - How a $5k investor unlocked half of the round for Freshpaint 25:27 - Reward early backers with tranches 26:45 - RUVs are a way of rolling up small checks to save money and time 27:31 - Weekly Updates — what they are and why they help you build your business and successfully fundraise. 29:20 - AMA: How many investors do you need to speak with for your round? 30:19 - AMA: How do you define a preseed and what traction is necessary? How much runway should I have? 32:22 - Milestones inform how much you want to raise and how much runway you need. 32:41 - Defining a preseed vs seed round 33:43 - AMA: What are some of the key metrics to raise a round? 35:01 - AMA: How do you restart a process after making a bunch of fundraising mistakes? 37:20 - AMA: How do I find angel investors? 37:37 - You should be in SF if you can be if you want to start a company 38:07 - The second best geo to build a company is on the Internet — anyone can be there 38:39 - How Julian met his first investors and customers on X while a music school dropout in Boston 40:29 - Sincere cold outbound on X is surprisingly effective 41:26 - Merge - a club for nondilutive microgrants 41:57 - AMA: Is it risky to give early angels a lower cap? 44:50 - Is it worth giving a lower valuation to someone you really want to work with? 45:58 - AMA: Cold vs warm approaches for investor intros 48:11 - Cold is hard because it's a filtering challenge. 49:10 - If you do cold it must be highly personalized and succinct. 50:17 - AMA: Pros and cons of MFN sideletters 51:12 - Link to MFN document 51:33 - AMA: How do I make the most of ODF (to fundraise and otherwise) 53:20 - AMA: Applying for incubators and accelerators vs raising a more traditional round 55:27 - AMA: Things are not going great but we still have conviction on our idea - what's your advice? 55:39 - If you have conviction on your idea when it's not going well WHY do you have conviction? 56:52 - Customers understand before investors do — and most investors will never understand 57:56 - AMA: What tool do you recommend for RUVs? 58:11 - AMA: How to start super small but demonstrate to investors that the overall TAM could be really large 1:01:35 - ODF23 — the place to go to figure out who you're going to build with, what you might build, and who your initial customers might be. IRL in SF https://joinodf.com P.S. I don’t think you miss much not seeing the slides, but here’s the full session video with slides if want them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Aj1_S7wrhc Follow me on Twitter: https://x.com/julianweisser Subscribe: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BeOnDeck?sub_confirmation=1 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0mfCFqUeW0sLWUefeWgtPK?si=4df2cdc42a004326 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/texts-with-founders/id1725949759 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit textswithfounders.substack.com
