from Hacker News

How to Raise Investment

by tomblomfield on 9/13/21, 9:23 AM with 41 comments

• by rememberlenny on 9/13/21, 6:26 PM

  For anyone interested in raising money soon, but not immediately, the best thing you can do is start an weekly update email.

  Start sending thing to all the people you interview for advice, supporters you know in the same space, and peers/coworkers. If you keep a regular email showing your progress, even though you may not have traction, potential investors will see the pace at which you are developing/iterating, and have a reference point to be able to cut a check.

  I started this 3 months before I planned on raising any money, and it allowed for people who were on the email to confidently make recommendations on my behalf to investors they knew, and also made our company top of mind.

  I have continued this for almost a year now, and its led to customer development opportunities, investment inbound, and a steam of good relevant advice.

• by asien on 9/13/21, 7:40 PM

  To be very clear , this articles won’t help you much if you don’t fit the criteria’s the OP does.

  Having discussed with VC a long time ago , it was very HARD to raise money without a very strong traction.

  Very often VC were convinced with my pitch , and my product but would not invest either because they had stuff somewhat similar in their portfolio and often because I didn’t have a “track records” to proof my capability.

  If I can recommend one thing to technical founder : don’t listen to this and build slowly while creating your own community ( users , customers etc...) and VC will come , don’t worry.

  VCs are like dogs when they smell money they have the urge to come at you, you won’t need to call them.

  For non-tech founder it’s the opposite : don’t make anything that is complicated or sophisticated, focus 100% on marketing and prototyping , I had friends raising 10M+€ for products that didn’t exist or couldn’t do a tenth of what was promised , but because they graduated from the most prestigious schools in Paris or London and had invested hundred of thousands in marketing ( 50K€ Website , Dozens of Articles in the Press claiming their idea was worth billions , Attending Conferences to reach out to executives in order to get corporates sponsors etc..)

  VCs will prefer a strong team with a stupid idea that a Fortune 500 will be naive enough to acquire , rather than a good idea with an unproven team that would make money quickly after initial build phase.

• by tnolet on 9/13/21, 7:31 PM

  Having raised a seed and A-series in the last 1,5 years from top tier VC’s in the B2B space: this post is 100% spot on.

  Will recommend.

  We actually used the YC seed and A-series pitchdeck templates the OP mentions.

  Last thing: everything becomes 1000% easier if you have customers. Focus on customers. Raising becomes almost easy after that.

• by fxtentacle on 9/13/21, 6:24 PM

  With the "open in app" banner on top, the "never miss a post" banner in the middle and the cookie banner at the bottom, I can see exactly 4 lines of text on my smartphone screen.

  Lucky for me, I have the Firefox reader mode. But to every regular person, this presentation screams "the actual text is not important".

• by 0des on 9/13/21, 8:18 PM

  On a sidenote, I'd be interested in reading an article exploring the inverse of this! How to -not- raise investment. Most people look at funding like "yeah well I mean that's just the thing you do" but it's not for all cases. Sometimes tossing gasoline on something is just enough to make it fizzle.

  I'm looking forward to the pendulum swinging back around to 2022, bring on the slow-biz startups, the organic growth, gimme 2x and 3x, bootstrapped on shoestrings, companies run by people who created those companies.

  I have this reflex every time I see something cool now where I can't enjoy new SaaS offerings because I'm always trying to imagine the ways in which this new cool thing can backfire and frustrate me once it takes funding or goes public. I don't think it's a problem in me, either, that model just sucks.

• by smackeyacky on 9/13/21, 10:22 PM

  This advice is interesting, but almost entirely useless for anybody outside the US / Silicon Valley bubble. Exactly how are you going to go for coffee with your "VC buddies" if you live 8,000km away? The idea is frankly ridiculous for anybody not in a tiny circle. edit: apparently London is the same. Only further away.

  This article really highlights how stupid frauds like Theranos get funded. The real answer is between the lines:

  To get funded:

  a) Be connected, physically close and already in the clique. b) Don't be outside the clique.

  I mean I get the idea that rich kids giving their rich mates money to start yet another dogshit fintech is just how the game is played, but what a frustrating time it is for the rest of us.

• by tomblomfield on 9/13/21, 6:14 PM

  Author here - happy to answer any questions

• by reducesuffering on 9/13/21, 10:25 PM

  How do you decide between raising money and bootstrapping (like Mailchimp acquired for $12b today did)? I think the typical response is whether you want to be a bigger $1b+ company or die, or just slowly see where it takes you by the revenue of your customers. But how do you estimate the eventual potential/TAM of your startup/business as something that needs funding to grow ASAP? You can't really trust VC's opinions as they're self-interested.

• by westoncb on 9/14/21, 12:10 AM

  Can anyone comment on raising investment for software projects that might earn on the order of several million dollars but with no real potential to become 'unicorns'?

  Where does someone look for smaller business ideas like this (which may have a higher probability of success, lower earning potential than typical startup targets, less initial capital required)?

• by johnnybaptist on 9/13/21, 7:39 PM

  "Probably 30% of the rounds I’ve raised have been “hot” - and very fast. 70% have been hard work, slow and stressful."

  My favorite part. The ideal scenario is running a tight, targeted and short process for a hot deal...but don't be surprised if that doesn't happen.

• by sjwhitworth on 9/13/21, 9:28 AM

  I asked Tom for some of this advice earlier this year. Glad to see he wrote it up into a blog post — it's really useful!

• by bradvl on 9/13/21, 5:24 PM

  Thanks for sharing this Tom. Just shared it with my cofounder.

• by dqpb on 9/13/21, 7:04 PM

  Be careful going to this website. It doesn’t let you go back out.

• by baybal2 on 9/14/21, 2:14 AM

  I want to ask, do people here understand a difference in between raising an investment, and soliciting voluntary participation in a pump, and dump scheme, which can sometimes, as a side effect, turn out a viable business?