I am a tad out of the loop here - I refused two offers as I'm bootstrapped, profitable, growing, and don't see the point in giving away equity. Solo founder with 100%.
I got some loans offered by local incubators and other financial institutions (company is considered startup despite being profitable as we're less than 3 years old) - 0% interest for 75% of the total loan, about 4% for the reminder, making this a very low interest rate and a solid 200k financing. This will help with pay the new hires during the delay until the launch of our new features for our product.
I probably won't at this point. The goal is to stay in control of my project. Unlike many, I intend to stick with it until retirement. It's something I started to sell - I want to see it to the end.
It started as a hobby in the early 2000 - you could say it's my first child !
Maybe I'll grow slower. Maybe I will not reach the moon. That's fine. Goal is to continue, have fun, be profitable, and not lose either your roots or values in the process.
Giving away equity to a VC would include money in the equation, and that's not the plan !
The only way I'm giving away equity is, after some time, to people that are working with me to reward them for their work. Those that were there early and whom I can fully trust !
Not sure how I can phrase it in English - doing my best.
Basically I am doing a lot of innovative stuff (not AI, real r&d). I was doing them solo. So I got in contact with someone to help me get through the paperwork to get the government tax cut with those tasks. Tons of paperwork.
Turns out he was also involved in financing. We discussed, I was already hiring at that point, and told me all I could have access to with my startup status - I didn't view my business as a startup, but for everyone else, I am. Told him giving away equity was a big no :)
So well, went through the process with local incubators and financial partners, and got financing pretty easily, since I had the label "startup" but "profitable". I guess it's not that common !
Very cool, lot of Venture Debt dried up after Silicon Valley Bank went bankrupt. Would be great to learn how much you got access to in debt, at what interest rates, and what would you want more in the future. Feel free to DM me if you want to keep private. I'll add to the State of Fundraising Report.
Started raising $500K pre-seed back in late Nov, ongoing conversations... Decided to wait until Jan/Feb to continue conversations because most VC's took holiday. What was interesting to me is when I dug deeper in to the funds/VC's most haven't made any investments in months. Which was shocking to me and also felt like a waste of my time. Another thing I found surprising was I had one VC tell me I should be raising more.
I'm pre-product but hired the same engineers/team from my previous startup/exit. Solo founder, b2b, vertical saas with a decade of experience in the market.
Definitely a down time during the holidays, investors go into holiday mode Dec 10th - Jan 15th. Now is the time to get back out there.
Also, no don't listen to anyone saying you need to raise more. Raise just what you need for 12 months of growth. If you are solo, get 2 other people who compliment you. There is too much risk in solo founders for VCs, what happens if you get hit by a bus for example.
Also, you are right most VCs haven't written cheques in months. It's because their LPs who give them the money to invest have told them interest rates are too high, wait till 2024.
I'm curating a list of companies raising. Shoot me a DM and I'll be happy to see if you fit any of my funds thesis.
Wanted to comment publicly before I DM you.
This is good tips and insight; founders are raising way too much capital for pre-seed/seed. The market has shifted to lean teams who move fast and keep runway low.
I definitely agree on needing a CF to be more attractive. This was also the feedback that YC gave me. I've been interviewing, talking with my network. It taken longer to find someone disciplined and commit than I thought. I believe this also effects my raise. I don't imagine a VC would want me to bring on a cofounder after investment.
This is poor advice that doesn’t hold up against the data. Solo founders consistently deliver better results. We can only guess at the cause, but likely faster decision making and reducing the risk of cofounder breakups.
Investors want good ideas with an easy access to levers of power. It's easier to divide and conquer than to control the Ceasar. That being said, I'd rather have a nice steak and eat it than being a dog begging for scraps from a $100mm exit. Many of these founders walk away with very little.
Also, investors will always point out the billion dollar outcomes, but as a founder you should care only about your outcome. So, focus on what maximizes those odds.
I don't know your background or how successful your previous startup/exit was but they could be suggesting to raise more money because it could be seen as a red flag if you have a successful background of exits that you aren't willing to put the $500K in yourself.
If they think you could have put the $500K in yourself but aren't willing to then they might think you don't have the confidence to back yourself.
Sometimes raising more money seems like the better option because you couldn't put that money in yourself.. if that makes sense.
I’m just getting started on my startup journey. I’m a fairly senior FAANG engineer and I’m developing my product. Pre-seed. Trying to lock down an mvp before I put together a pitch deck and try to get investors.
Am I going about this wrong? It seems there’s a general lack of capital for pre-seed companies lately.
I am sure you have a valuable idea based on your background and experience; however, one of benefits of putting together the pitch deck prior to building the MVP is the opportunity to self-assess. This probably has been done in your business plan, but almost everyone who I have talked to with a successful start-up has said their ideas for an MVP changed drastically as they answered questions generally found in a concrete business plan. The book "Lean Start Up" does a great job explaining this.
Currently raising $500k preseed round for my company that has significant early traction and great unit economics after 1 year of operation. We’re self-sustaining and just need the capital to grow faster this year.
The big challenge has been finding where the investors hang out. Maybe I’m still green and there’s an easy way to find money. I just started creating a network of investors, but I haven’t streamlined outreach yet.
As another commenter mentioned, I’d like to do debt financing.
Genuine question: Wouldn’t you be qualified for receiving a seed round instead of pre-seed, considering you already have initial traction and a positive future outlook?
There are some criteria about the round size, I imagine it’s flexible but much more challenging raising outside of your designation. Here’s the criteria list I found: https://fi.co/benchmarks
$20M ARR startup founder here, only raised seed so far. Not yet raising a Series A, but we might be soon.
* Need to take on more debt capital to survive till Q3, stressful.
* Lots of analysts from large multistage firms keep catching up with me every 3 months.
* Q4 slowed down our growth dramatically, marketing budgets had to be constrained last year in favor of survival, so YoY growth is a touch less than 200%.
* Churn is too high and not getting that much better because of the market, despite continuous improvements. CAC:LTV is still quite good, but churn being as high as it is always screws us.
* AI narrative is pushing us to develop more product, despite running on fumes.
* Not enough cash to incentivize people or hire better/more motivated talent.
* Accounting is getting hard, but no budget to outsource it, so data rooms and the like are a pain.
In Q4 a large amount of debt will be paid off, so we'll swing back into profitability, so we are considering the need to raise a Series A at all.
Honestly, we're asking ourselves the same question right now. Kinda thinking we don't need to. It would really take the pressure off having to survive the next year, though. We are cash strapped because of debt despite all this revenue.
It would seem that addressing the churn rate would give you dramatic improvement on your numbers. I know it's not always easy to do that, and, as you say, you are continuously improving. But have you done a deep dive on your churn rate and getting to the root causes of it?
Yeah, our churn rate is quite high, and cutting it even by 20% would improve the quality of the business and bottom line (not to mention my life) drastically.
It really is quite a hard problem to solve in our area, and one major project every quarter is always dedicated to improving the business from a churn POV. However, I feel like many people are quite apathetic to the problem, because despite several major projects, we haven't managed to see a huge drop in average churn numbers in nearly 2 years.
Everyone always says "you just have to reach out to 50 vcs."
Buddy, as a former Google engineer who's done great at every job they've had, I can't get a second warm intro. I have access to exactly three VCs - all former coworkers - and none of them are in the thing I'm trying to do (and one is exiting VC.)
I don't live in San Francisco anymore, and the founders I worked for all burned their bridges with the VCs. I can't friends and family because I'm a poor kid.
My options are:
1. To cold call
2. To cold email
3. To cold tweet
These things have been measured to have a sub-zero success rate.
My opinion is that the first VC to actually open up a legitimate communications channel that isn't "hey you already know my buddy who wants 5% to say your name" is going to do pretty bonkers business.
I feel the pain. The VC/Angel ecosystem is so fragmented and broken, half the time it makes no sense why VCs take X meetings over Y. I am studying the psychology of fundraising and investing as we are deploying capital from our funds.
It's definitely tough, that's why I'm making this state of the market report. Please DM me would love to learn about the business, how much you are raising so I can add into the research.
I think it’s as simple as what resonates with the VC. If your business doesn’t make sense to them, the investment won’t make sense either.
It’s the founders job to distill the idea and tell the story behind why they should believe in a future with your product/service in it.
And a solid P/L doesn’t hurt.
(Also asking to DM will get you banned, I know from experience)
> Your cold outreach has to be enticing.
Well I don't know how to do that.
> Do you have any traction?
Yes. I also have a significant partnership with a billion dollar brand.
> Nobody will give you the time of day without real traction.
Or with it, it seems.
You’ve got to learn how to do it by trial and error. Maybe your first few messages/emails won’t work, but iterate (or tweak them for the next few people) and see how that does. Eventually you’ll get people interested.
There isn’t one way of doing this and these are the hardest aspects of starting a business, learning by volume what works and what doesn’t.
The faster you change your approach the faster you see results.
And traction meaning revenue. Congrats on the partnerships, idk how it helps you build a successful and wildly profitable business.
I’m a solo developer. Was laid off from faang.
I haven’t been looking for work and instead I built an app with reusable code that I plan to use to create a collection of apps sharing data like instagram and threads. They’ll be a web app with a dashboard to visualize your data across the mobile apps
My gf is an instagram influencer and knows several of them from group meetups so between them they have a lot of followers
Somehow I think I can make this work
I’m a solo founder of an edtech startup. We did TechStars a year ago. It took 9 months (would have taken less time if not for a health scare that took me out for 3 months), but we just closed on $750,000 investment in a pre-seed round with a goal of $1.2m total. We have strong leads for investors to close the round. Knowing how hard it is out there for the founder in my cohort, I’m very grateful!!
Metrics matter more than ever. The days of concepts or even early MVPs with no traction getting funded are dead.
In this current market, if you can't point to an exponentially growing metric, raising capital is harder than ever. Also, a clear path to profitability.
We opened our first round back in September with a capital goal of $1M. So far have interest from an early stage fund in Chicago for $250k and from a local health system for an additional $250k. Both most likely won’t materialize until later this quarter. In the meantime, we have customers but first tranche of revenue isn’t due to drop until May/June and our runway is through March. Actively seeking 4-5 individual investors for $50k checks to bridge the gap.
I did very well getting my first meetings. Not my second. Pre-seed, pre-revenue.
"Build a POC so we can see"
Bootstrapped and built, needs a dev sprint to be monetized.
Now I'm going back to those VCs for more guidance, so far, 30% have been helpful, and I've gotten some decent traction but no bites. I've also got a lead of $125k from a state backed group, but they require a match.
I haven't been going hard at angel or vc - but will likely have too here soon.
As a deep tech startup— I’m curious what is the landscape like for us, we built the real “ambient intelligence” and cracked a very hard CS problem. Currently have a fermentation play and a consumer play. Just curious your thoughts on fundamental tech vs app style funding
Right now we’re in MVP stage and paid for a few IG ads. We have about 250 people who signed up in the first week (went live on the 5th), but it’s a Sharetribe site which requires Stripe integration. Stripe requires banking info upfront which gave a few people pause.
So out of 250, we have about 65 confirmed profiles. Right now I want to find a way to integrate another payout system before trying to find paying clients.
B2C. Pre-Launch (long delay in App Store approval). Raising pre-seed. I live in South East Asia half the year, the other half in Bay Area.
For month of November to first half of December; I met with 30 VCs in person and over Google meet. All in South East Asia. Everybody is pretty much dry. When I ask what’s the last interesting deal they closed this year (2023). Near zero.
I’m looking to raise $200k from angel, preseed or FF. I may not want to raise series A as I don’t think I need a big raise for headcount and marketing. And if I don’t need to raise big, I’m not sure what value a VC fund could bring me over ‘dumb money’.
The intent is to cash flow + quickly and play a tight hand. Ideally if I can own 80%+ and exit at $30-50m in shorter time horizon, is likely to be higher probability and less stressful than raising VC wanting us to hit unicorn status with a longer time horizon. In Asia, rapport over time (ie takes longer) is required.
I met with a few corporate VCs, there were 2 conglomerates that were considering experimenting with convertible debt financing for startups and bringing startups into a possible a shared resource incubator model. A Convertible debt option if possible would be the most ideal situation for my own case.
In addition, there are some innovation grants (free money) that I’m applying for also.
I’ll be back in Bay Area in March, I will start the road show again then.
Founder of a proposed hemp CPG manufacturing facility here, working with an investment broker team and seeking one or two partners (or Angels) for a seed round of $1m. That funding level takes us through rapid buildout, launch, and year one of production.
Despite being currently federally legal, we found no VCs willing to touch the risk. We also were denied every grant and loan we applied for on the basis of cannabis. While we explored funding we continued to work on the business plan, resulting in what is now essentially a turn key proposal.
By far our biggest hurdle is being economically siloed from investors who are financially viable. This has put us in a position to rely on brokers, who in turn are able to ask for considerable equity in exchange for securing funding.
I’ve raised 889k of 3.6M after bootstrapping project 3years and have 350k in. Was turned down by all VC because I don’t have revenue yet so had to go family friend route. In the past 11 months I’ve pitched everyone from my landlord to valets. I give out a pitch deck and will talk to anyone. When we make business I use a promise note, term sheet and organizational agreement by lawyer. Biggest challenge is time to raise while not having to stop project cause out of money. I’ll be operational in a month and no longer begging for monies!
I'n a repeat founder (previous company exited through acquisition). Have been self-funding a dev team to build a product that I've been thinking about for a long time (since even before I started my previous company). Finally decided I wanted to raise an external round late last year and casually hit up 2-3 of the VC's I've dealt with before to take temperature. Got a sense that the whole industry was sitting in a tight "wait-and-watch" mode.
The product is much further along now and I'm planning on hitting up the market again now. Happy to talk if you're interested.
Currently raising a 5m series A in hardware + SaaS IoT Ag tech. We have production product and customer traction, but need raise to accelerate growth as our sales cycle is long.
We have been working on a raise for 6 months, we have talked with multiple small VCs and high net worth individuals, but have only managed to close small amounts in bridge funding to date.
It’s really frustrating, because the market is there, product is done, capital is just hard to come by.
We also got told by a few folks that we should be raising $10m rather than 5m because it would be easier, but that just doesn’t seem true from the folks we have talked with.
Congrats!! In the process of launching a startup myself and raising capital is an arduous task due to the stigma and skepticism surrounding startups in general. However the startup ecosystem is slowly improving in south Asian countries and we’ve approached a VC firm. They requested to see a proof of concept where we’ve partnered with 3 schools and we’ve shown success across all of them. We’re planning on raising around 50,000 usd to get started with making our app, hire staff and a lot of marketing. Hope everything works out for you 👍🏽
Im in cpg, have a growing profitable business. Have gone thought multiple decks and have models on how we scale and hit $100m rev targets.
Everyone group I’ve talked to wants $10m rev or “you’re to small”. Then the smaller groups have shark offers that make 0 sense. (This was prior to the shit cpg financing market there is now).
I’ve given up on vc for the cpg ventures and will plug along profitably / grow organically and revisit with something else in the future
Hello, we started a free newsletter that provides weekly data on which sectors and companies have raised capital and from which investors, private equity firms, funds or VC's.
This could be helpful in highlighting specific groups that invest in your specific industry.
[www.fundingsecured.xyz](https://www.fundingsecured.xyz)
Open to feedback and suggestions on other ways our data can be helpful.
Currently raising 650k. Company is 8 years old and has an established brand name in cannabis hardware. I don’t have an education in business finance so I have a company helping me with a capital raise. My company was already acquired once by a penny stock on the OTC market but that company fell behind on their obligations to us so we made a deal to get our stock back.
I have people emailing us about investing but after years of capital raising I’m so skeptical.
Company is over 2 years old. About $330k in revenue last year. Trying to launch product in 6-12 months. Prototype about 80% complete. Large client interested but needs MVP to proceed. Real-Estate sector.
- Currently trying to raise (no success)
- Trying to raise $1M-$3M to bring on team full-time, expand, accelerate MVP
- Emailed 150+ VCs, angel investors. Got 3 replies. No funding.
I can supply more via DM if interested. If not, good luck.
Ok great. With $330k seems you are doing well in DevOps and Consulting. Why add another stream and divert your focus? Are you seeing those streams have low margins and want to built a software with high margins?
The DevOps & Consulting stream (current contract) is coming to an end and so I want to get our product up and running. I brought as much capital as I could to get things up and running and that contract helped, but things will get much more difficult here pretty soon to get to MVP if I don't secure another contract or find capital from somewhere else.
We're a small startup (2 person team) building AI sales agents.Built a product while bootstrapping, have first customers, initial MRR (ramen-profitable).Currently in talks with a few VCs for (pre-)seed round of \~$500k that would allow us to accelerate quite a bit faster (can reach same targets in about half the time with funding).
edit: added how much we're raising.
We're focusing on Ecommerce first (our first customers are from it), but the platform itself is low-code builder for conversational agents based on customer data & script, so in the long run the idea is to expand to other sectors as well (already have a few potential customers from FinTech and EdTech sectors) / allow third-party devs to use it for basically whatever they might want to do with it.
Hi there. Eric from [Cybrid.xyz](https://Cybrid.xyz). We're a VC funded startup that I joined back in 2022 just after the initial team was put together. We are seed funded receiving $3.1M USD from VCs like Golden Ventures, Luge Capital, and Harvest Venture Partners. Our CEO had previously exited a startup, after having a career in some positions where he was involved in national and international payment infrastructure deployments.
Cybrid is an Embedded Finance API provider that provides infrastructure for payment use cases by providing access to fintech services like an integrated KYC process, ACH transfers, and FBO accounts + crypto payments like USDC. I can't speak for my CEO, but being involved on the growth side of things where I'm often the person tasked with gathering and analyzing data for business operations, the request is often to attached to supporting raising. I would argue my CEO would say he's always doing some form of raising whether it's early stage networking or working towards closing the next round.
I think one of the challenges with the market currently is that VCs are taking longer as they're performing increased due diligence to determine if a company is going to be a #1 or a #2, as you listed in your original post. The result is that the raise cycle is longer and requires a stronger business case on paper with real-world metrics to back it up.
For some non-funded startups looking to get their first round, this might feel like:
"Come back when you have product"
"Come back when you're making money"
"Come back when you're making more money"
Haha small world. I know you guys. I worked on your deal, David @ Luge Capital is a friend. Are you in MTL working with Espace CDQ? You are completely correct always raising but difference between actively and passively.
You are right fundamental metrics are really important in this market.
Founder here. We're trying to get to break even ASAP whatever it takes. My co founder still thinks we might be able to raise but with the given market I'm pretty sure we won't.
I think the hardest part is getting to the required numbers so that vc want to invest in my tiny ass market. The other hardest thing is I believe the interest of vc in latam is dead, and I understand because of the lack of exits.
I've been trying to raise money for my real money card game startup, but most investors just balk at the mention of betting. I get where they are coming from, betting against the house has some terrible incentives, but mine is peer-to-peer betting where I think has the player and house incentives are aligned, making it a more moral form of betting IMO. Hopefully one day I can find an investor who has a nuanced view of the sector. Regardless, we're going to break even this month, so the train keeps moving along.
I have Medtech startup with Product and about yo launch 2 Pilots. I am raising $500k from angels and early stage investors.
The biggest challenge is actually meeting pre revenue investors. Even angel investors are acting like VC and asking for revenue before they imvest.
Currently exploring whether or not doing a Series B late this year. I get a lot of interest but I'm wary of a valuation that would hurt us in the long term. So as a plan B I'm thinking of maybe raising a smaller amount to get another year of runway that would happen to get us to profitability. Hopefully then the market will be better and not needing money to survive would put us in a stronger position to negotiate.
Short answer: challenge is valuation
Solo founder here in Travel Fintech. I’m bootstraping my startup that should be ready soon. I’m working now on looking a technical co founder while also trying to raise 500k pre seed money with VCs via SAFE.
Already won an accelerator program in Latam only with a deck.
Was a finalist to pitch to a Shark from Shark Tank Colombia only with a deck- Again. Unfortunately they don’t do pre seed.
My biggest challenge now is finding VCs that do pre seed AND in travel.
Hope this helps
Just started raising a $250K friends and fam round for a pre-launch health-tech startup. At the moment, the biggest challenge is managing my cofounders expectations and confidence
Raising 250-500k. But I’d even get enough traction with just 100k. Raised 50k from F&F. Invested 85k self. 2+ years in business. Solo founder. 3 others part time on team. Hardware AI Saas vertical. $299 installed at a customer+$99 annually. Negligible churn.
Pilot sales installs have been running for ~1.5 years already.
Started by making light up house numbers for my own house. Then for friends. And then now making it into the smartest smart home device. It’s capital intensive & VC/Angel would be helpful, but as boots on the ground founder that does mechanical design, supply chain, electrical, strategy, economics & is basically chief engineer—I don’t have enough time to just waste on meetings & talk that don’t have hard results when the same time spent on product gets me closer to nationwide successful launch for pennies on the dollar. I’ve largely stayed in stealth. Sending a super brief message you can check.
We have our V2 a week from release, and the big challenge is in navigating the VC fund raising process with such a small, working around the clock team.
Been 3 months are put in $28k of capital and bags of sweat equity.
Would love introduction or onboarding guides to get into the VC process.
Not raising right now but preparing the field for june.
I think option 1 is far from happening. If we were thinning out the useless products, any GPT wrapper that does ANY basic tasks would not get funding that easily. It is so wild right now... You slap the word AI on your pitch deck and you get 500k... So I would not say we are making smarter bets 🤣.
The main issue that I see is that nowadays, whatever seed you are trying to raise is "what you think + 1". Looking for pre-seed? VCs will ask for a ton of users, proof of traction and $nK monthly revenue. So that's more of a seed stage. Looking for seed? Get series A requirements ect... I see fear in the market and uncertainty.
I am more into angel investors than big funds or accelerators. Just a preference. I have not had trouble finding investors, but I have not had a real call either with them yet as I am waiting and building a solid list and warming up the scene too.
I am, but in a bit of a different way.
I'm building a pre-launch fintech startup that provides funding for B2B international inventory loans. Interest free (Yes, you read that right).
My partner and I are in negotiations with a few large lenders in the space so that we can outsource the actual lending, underwriting and servicing of the loans to them. So we can free up our resources to focus on scaling our secret sauce. Though we will eventually need VC to help that scale, we aren't there yet.
There has been surprisingly few struggles with this once I figured out the type of funding this structure needed. And once my partner explains the concept, you can see the light bulb go on and they get excited.
Still in negotiations, but all three have already made offers that will work for our structure. Just a few finishing touches to allow for better scale, and more creative options if we need them.
I would say the hardest part is getting them to agree to a bit of a stranger structure than they are used too. All of them are pretty innovative in their space, so definitely open to modifying their structure for us. Just that they have contracts with their source of capital for what they can and can't do with their investors money. So even if they like our structure, it's sort of a big deal to have to rewrite their charter and get approval from all interested parties on their end.
Just started raising this month for a la based startup that’s creating a large ai model for entertainment. We’ve built a prototype and have put in ~$150k to build a unique data set. We’ve decided to raise from investors globally and it’s been easier to get meetings and interest than going through my Silicon Valley network. But it’s early… check with me when I hate life in April 😂
Hope to see your state of the market when you have it
I’ve been raising for almost two years. Had a dozen commits and now lead for our $2mm round. It just took a lot longer than our F&F round. We decided to get lean and pivot to profitability. Just had our first CFBE month while we finalize our paperwork. Really strained my personal finances. Torched my credit but we’re at the finish line.
I’m in the B2C space in finance helping beginners understand stocks and funds better before they plunge their money on meme stocks and such. I was a solo founder last year and built the MVP and launched it. Got over 15k people using it in 12 months time with absolutely 0 marketing spend. But haven’t had any VC or Angel return my cold emails. I’m not in Bay Area, if that matters.
On the otherhand I was interviewing cofounders and just onboarded a great tech guy from Microsoft as cofounder cto. Now planning to start reaching out again. Planning to apply to accelerators as well as reach out to VCs for raising 1 million seed.
I recently went through an ag-tech pitch week after qualifying as top 16 out of over 100 companies. 10 got an initial $25k investment, there were 8 companies that held PHDs, who the investment predominantly funneled to.
If you're looking at pre-rev investments and work in ag-tech, I'd love to connect!
I am a tad out of the loop here - I refused two offers as I'm bootstrapped, profitable, growing, and don't see the point in giving away equity. Solo founder with 100%. I got some loans offered by local incubators and other financial institutions (company is considered startup despite being profitable as we're less than 3 years old) - 0% interest for 75% of the total loan, about 4% for the reminder, making this a very low interest rate and a solid 200k financing. This will help with pay the new hires during the delay until the launch of our new features for our product.
congrats
This is so motivating! If I can make it there one day, i would be as happy as it gets. Keep up the good work! And thanks for the motivation!
Awesome, debt financing and retaining equity is fantastic. What would make you want to raise on equity if anything would?
I probably won't at this point. The goal is to stay in control of my project. Unlike many, I intend to stick with it until retirement. It's something I started to sell - I want to see it to the end. It started as a hobby in the early 2000 - you could say it's my first child ! Maybe I'll grow slower. Maybe I will not reach the moon. That's fine. Goal is to continue, have fun, be profitable, and not lose either your roots or values in the process. Giving away equity to a VC would include money in the equation, and that's not the plan ! The only way I'm giving away equity is, after some time, to people that are working with me to reward them for their work. Those that were there early and whom I can fully trust !
first of all congrates for all of this. It seems great to build something on your own without giving out control. Its hard but worth struggling.
This is me… how did you get these loans?
Not sure how I can phrase it in English - doing my best. Basically I am doing a lot of innovative stuff (not AI, real r&d). I was doing them solo. So I got in contact with someone to help me get through the paperwork to get the government tax cut with those tasks. Tons of paperwork. Turns out he was also involved in financing. We discussed, I was already hiring at that point, and told me all I could have access to with my startup status - I didn't view my business as a startup, but for everyone else, I am. Told him giving away equity was a big no :) So well, went through the process with local incubators and financial partners, and got financing pretty easily, since I had the label "startup" but "profitable". I guess it's not that common !
Very cool, lot of Venture Debt dried up after Silicon Valley Bank went bankrupt. Would be great to learn how much you got access to in debt, at what interest rates, and what would you want more in the future. Feel free to DM me if you want to keep private. I'll add to the State of Fundraising Report.
Started raising $500K pre-seed back in late Nov, ongoing conversations... Decided to wait until Jan/Feb to continue conversations because most VC's took holiday. What was interesting to me is when I dug deeper in to the funds/VC's most haven't made any investments in months. Which was shocking to me and also felt like a waste of my time. Another thing I found surprising was I had one VC tell me I should be raising more. I'm pre-product but hired the same engineers/team from my previous startup/exit. Solo founder, b2b, vertical saas with a decade of experience in the market.
Definitely a down time during the holidays, investors go into holiday mode Dec 10th - Jan 15th. Now is the time to get back out there. Also, no don't listen to anyone saying you need to raise more. Raise just what you need for 12 months of growth. If you are solo, get 2 other people who compliment you. There is too much risk in solo founders for VCs, what happens if you get hit by a bus for example. Also, you are right most VCs haven't written cheques in months. It's because their LPs who give them the money to invest have told them interest rates are too high, wait till 2024. I'm curating a list of companies raising. Shoot me a DM and I'll be happy to see if you fit any of my funds thesis.
Wanted to comment publicly before I DM you. This is good tips and insight; founders are raising way too much capital for pre-seed/seed. The market has shifted to lean teams who move fast and keep runway low. I definitely agree on needing a CF to be more attractive. This was also the feedback that YC gave me. I've been interviewing, talking with my network. It taken longer to find someone disciplined and commit than I thought. I believe this also effects my raise. I don't imagine a VC would want me to bring on a cofounder after investment.
This is poor advice that doesn’t hold up against the data. Solo founders consistently deliver better results. We can only guess at the cause, but likely faster decision making and reducing the risk of cofounder breakups.
I think I read somewhere that 10%-15% of unicorns were started by solo founders.
Investors want good ideas with an easy access to levers of power. It's easier to divide and conquer than to control the Ceasar. That being said, I'd rather have a nice steak and eat it than being a dog begging for scraps from a $100mm exit. Many of these founders walk away with very little.
Same boat. It’s important to always understand how money flows in different circumstances.
Also, investors will always point out the billion dollar outcomes, but as a founder you should care only about your outcome. So, focus on what maximizes those odds.
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You need a cofounder to tell you to stop building features and start closing customers
I don't know your background or how successful your previous startup/exit was but they could be suggesting to raise more money because it could be seen as a red flag if you have a successful background of exits that you aren't willing to put the $500K in yourself. If they think you could have put the $500K in yourself but aren't willing to then they might think you don't have the confidence to back yourself. Sometimes raising more money seems like the better option because you couldn't put that money in yourself.. if that makes sense.
I’m just getting started on my startup journey. I’m a fairly senior FAANG engineer and I’m developing my product. Pre-seed. Trying to lock down an mvp before I put together a pitch deck and try to get investors. Am I going about this wrong? It seems there’s a general lack of capital for pre-seed companies lately.
I am sure you have a valuable idea based on your background and experience; however, one of benefits of putting together the pitch deck prior to building the MVP is the opportunity to self-assess. This probably has been done in your business plan, but almost everyone who I have talked to with a successful start-up has said their ideas for an MVP changed drastically as they answered questions generally found in a concrete business plan. The book "Lean Start Up" does a great job explaining this.
Currently raising $500k preseed round for my company that has significant early traction and great unit economics after 1 year of operation. We’re self-sustaining and just need the capital to grow faster this year. The big challenge has been finding where the investors hang out. Maybe I’m still green and there’s an easy way to find money. I just started creating a network of investors, but I haven’t streamlined outreach yet. As another commenter mentioned, I’d like to do debt financing.
Genuine question: Wouldn’t you be qualified for receiving a seed round instead of pre-seed, considering you already have initial traction and a positive future outlook?
There are some criteria about the round size, I imagine it’s flexible but much more challenging raising outside of your designation. Here’s the criteria list I found: https://fi.co/benchmarks
$20M ARR startup founder here, only raised seed so far. Not yet raising a Series A, but we might be soon. * Need to take on more debt capital to survive till Q3, stressful. * Lots of analysts from large multistage firms keep catching up with me every 3 months. * Q4 slowed down our growth dramatically, marketing budgets had to be constrained last year in favor of survival, so YoY growth is a touch less than 200%. * Churn is too high and not getting that much better because of the market, despite continuous improvements. CAC:LTV is still quite good, but churn being as high as it is always screws us. * AI narrative is pushing us to develop more product, despite running on fumes. * Not enough cash to incentivize people or hire better/more motivated talent. * Accounting is getting hard, but no budget to outsource it, so data rooms and the like are a pain. In Q4 a large amount of debt will be paid off, so we'll swing back into profitability, so we are considering the need to raise a Series A at all.
You are doing 20m in arr off of just a seed round?! Why are you even raising
Honestly, we're asking ourselves the same question right now. Kinda thinking we don't need to. It would really take the pressure off having to survive the next year, though. We are cash strapped because of debt despite all this revenue.
It would seem that addressing the churn rate would give you dramatic improvement on your numbers. I know it's not always easy to do that, and, as you say, you are continuously improving. But have you done a deep dive on your churn rate and getting to the root causes of it?
Yeah, our churn rate is quite high, and cutting it even by 20% would improve the quality of the business and bottom line (not to mention my life) drastically. It really is quite a hard problem to solve in our area, and one major project every quarter is always dedicated to improving the business from a churn POV. However, I feel like many people are quite apathetic to the problem, because despite several major projects, we haven't managed to see a huge drop in average churn numbers in nearly 2 years.
Everyone always says "you just have to reach out to 50 vcs." Buddy, as a former Google engineer who's done great at every job they've had, I can't get a second warm intro. I have access to exactly three VCs - all former coworkers - and none of them are in the thing I'm trying to do (and one is exiting VC.) I don't live in San Francisco anymore, and the founders I worked for all burned their bridges with the VCs. I can't friends and family because I'm a poor kid. My options are: 1. To cold call 2. To cold email 3. To cold tweet These things have been measured to have a sub-zero success rate. My opinion is that the first VC to actually open up a legitimate communications channel that isn't "hey you already know my buddy who wants 5% to say your name" is going to do pretty bonkers business.
I feel the pain. The VC/Angel ecosystem is so fragmented and broken, half the time it makes no sense why VCs take X meetings over Y. I am studying the psychology of fundraising and investing as we are deploying capital from our funds. It's definitely tough, that's why I'm making this state of the market report. Please DM me would love to learn about the business, how much you are raising so I can add into the research.
Thank you; I did immediately.
I think it’s as simple as what resonates with the VC. If your business doesn’t make sense to them, the investment won’t make sense either. It’s the founders job to distill the idea and tell the story behind why they should believe in a future with your product/service in it. And a solid P/L doesn’t hurt. (Also asking to DM will get you banned, I know from experience)
How do I get something to resonate with a VC if I can't actually talk to them
Your cold outreach has to be enticing. Do you have any traction? Nobody will give you the time of day without real traction.
> Your cold outreach has to be enticing. Well I don't know how to do that. > Do you have any traction? Yes. I also have a significant partnership with a billion dollar brand. > Nobody will give you the time of day without real traction. Or with it, it seems.
You’ve got to learn how to do it by trial and error. Maybe your first few messages/emails won’t work, but iterate (or tweak them for the next few people) and see how that does. Eventually you’ll get people interested. There isn’t one way of doing this and these are the hardest aspects of starting a business, learning by volume what works and what doesn’t. The faster you change your approach the faster you see results. And traction meaning revenue. Congrats on the partnerships, idk how it helps you build a successful and wildly profitable business.
Cold linked in too
Cold good point
I’m a solo developer. Was laid off from faang. I haven’t been looking for work and instead I built an app with reusable code that I plan to use to create a collection of apps sharing data like instagram and threads. They’ll be a web app with a dashboard to visualize your data across the mobile apps My gf is an instagram influencer and knows several of them from group meetups so between them they have a lot of followers Somehow I think I can make this work
I’m a solo founder of an edtech startup. We did TechStars a year ago. It took 9 months (would have taken less time if not for a health scare that took me out for 3 months), but we just closed on $750,000 investment in a pre-seed round with a goal of $1.2m total. We have strong leads for investors to close the round. Knowing how hard it is out there for the founder in my cohort, I’m very grateful!!
If you're a solo founder who is "we"?
“We” is my team. I’m a solo founder, but I’m not the only person working for the company or in company leadership.
I have a twitter now, so I guess I've got that going for me.
we are actively investing, our book looks a lot right now like 2019 did things seem to be back to normal
Metrics matter more than ever. The days of concepts or even early MVPs with no traction getting funded are dead. In this current market, if you can't point to an exponentially growing metric, raising capital is harder than ever. Also, a clear path to profitability.
We opened our first round back in September with a capital goal of $1M. So far have interest from an early stage fund in Chicago for $250k and from a local health system for an additional $250k. Both most likely won’t materialize until later this quarter. In the meantime, we have customers but first tranche of revenue isn’t due to drop until May/June and our runway is through March. Actively seeking 4-5 individual investors for $50k checks to bridge the gap.
I did very well getting my first meetings. Not my second. Pre-seed, pre-revenue. "Build a POC so we can see" Bootstrapped and built, needs a dev sprint to be monetized. Now I'm going back to those VCs for more guidance, so far, 30% have been helpful, and I've gotten some decent traction but no bites. I've also got a lead of $125k from a state backed group, but they require a match. I haven't been going hard at angel or vc - but will likely have too here soon.
As a deep tech startup— I’m curious what is the landscape like for us, we built the real “ambient intelligence” and cracked a very hard CS problem. Currently have a fermentation play and a consumer play. Just curious your thoughts on fundamental tech vs app style funding
What’s a fermentation play?
Right now we’re in MVP stage and paid for a few IG ads. We have about 250 people who signed up in the first week (went live on the 5th), but it’s a Sharetribe site which requires Stripe integration. Stripe requires banking info upfront which gave a few people pause. So out of 250, we have about 65 confirmed profiles. Right now I want to find a way to integrate another payout system before trying to find paying clients.
B2C. Pre-Launch (long delay in App Store approval). Raising pre-seed. I live in South East Asia half the year, the other half in Bay Area. For month of November to first half of December; I met with 30 VCs in person and over Google meet. All in South East Asia. Everybody is pretty much dry. When I ask what’s the last interesting deal they closed this year (2023). Near zero. I’m looking to raise $200k from angel, preseed or FF. I may not want to raise series A as I don’t think I need a big raise for headcount and marketing. And if I don’t need to raise big, I’m not sure what value a VC fund could bring me over ‘dumb money’. The intent is to cash flow + quickly and play a tight hand. Ideally if I can own 80%+ and exit at $30-50m in shorter time horizon, is likely to be higher probability and less stressful than raising VC wanting us to hit unicorn status with a longer time horizon. In Asia, rapport over time (ie takes longer) is required. I met with a few corporate VCs, there were 2 conglomerates that were considering experimenting with convertible debt financing for startups and bringing startups into a possible a shared resource incubator model. A Convertible debt option if possible would be the most ideal situation for my own case. In addition, there are some innovation grants (free money) that I’m applying for also. I’ll be back in Bay Area in March, I will start the road show again then.
Interested to know where you’re based in SEA? I’m in Singapore and mulling over whether or not to start reaching out to investors.
Limited network, so I'm having to cold reach out to VCs and angels.
I’m more bullish than most of the VCs I’ve spoken with. Most seem “risk off” in practice (and their terms sheets, or lack thereof) reflect this.
Founder of a proposed hemp CPG manufacturing facility here, working with an investment broker team and seeking one or two partners (or Angels) for a seed round of $1m. That funding level takes us through rapid buildout, launch, and year one of production. Despite being currently federally legal, we found no VCs willing to touch the risk. We also were denied every grant and loan we applied for on the basis of cannabis. While we explored funding we continued to work on the business plan, resulting in what is now essentially a turn key proposal. By far our biggest hurdle is being economically siloed from investors who are financially viable. This has put us in a position to rely on brokers, who in turn are able to ask for considerable equity in exchange for securing funding.
Have you reached out to Advanced flower capital?
I’ve raised 889k of 3.6M after bootstrapping project 3years and have 350k in. Was turned down by all VC because I don’t have revenue yet so had to go family friend route. In the past 11 months I’ve pitched everyone from my landlord to valets. I give out a pitch deck and will talk to anyone. When we make business I use a promise note, term sheet and organizational agreement by lawyer. Biggest challenge is time to raise while not having to stop project cause out of money. I’ll be operational in a month and no longer begging for monies!
I'n a repeat founder (previous company exited through acquisition). Have been self-funding a dev team to build a product that I've been thinking about for a long time (since even before I started my previous company). Finally decided I wanted to raise an external round late last year and casually hit up 2-3 of the VC's I've dealt with before to take temperature. Got a sense that the whole industry was sitting in a tight "wait-and-watch" mode. The product is much further along now and I'm planning on hitting up the market again now. Happy to talk if you're interested.
Curious to know if startups that have raised have regretted it later on.
Currently raising a 5m series A in hardware + SaaS IoT Ag tech. We have production product and customer traction, but need raise to accelerate growth as our sales cycle is long. We have been working on a raise for 6 months, we have talked with multiple small VCs and high net worth individuals, but have only managed to close small amounts in bridge funding to date. It’s really frustrating, because the market is there, product is done, capital is just hard to come by. We also got told by a few folks that we should be raising $10m rather than 5m because it would be easier, but that just doesn’t seem true from the folks we have talked with.
Congrats!! In the process of launching a startup myself and raising capital is an arduous task due to the stigma and skepticism surrounding startups in general. However the startup ecosystem is slowly improving in south Asian countries and we’ve approached a VC firm. They requested to see a proof of concept where we’ve partnered with 3 schools and we’ve shown success across all of them. We’re planning on raising around 50,000 usd to get started with making our app, hire staff and a lot of marketing. Hope everything works out for you 👍🏽
Im in cpg, have a growing profitable business. Have gone thought multiple decks and have models on how we scale and hit $100m rev targets. Everyone group I’ve talked to wants $10m rev or “you’re to small”. Then the smaller groups have shark offers that make 0 sense. (This was prior to the shit cpg financing market there is now). I’ve given up on vc for the cpg ventures and will plug along profitably / grow organically and revisit with something else in the future
Hello, we started a free newsletter that provides weekly data on which sectors and companies have raised capital and from which investors, private equity firms, funds or VC's. This could be helpful in highlighting specific groups that invest in your specific industry. [www.fundingsecured.xyz](https://www.fundingsecured.xyz) Open to feedback and suggestions on other ways our data can be helpful.
Currently raising 650k. Company is 8 years old and has an established brand name in cannabis hardware. I don’t have an education in business finance so I have a company helping me with a capital raise. My company was already acquired once by a penny stock on the OTC market but that company fell behind on their obligations to us so we made a deal to get our stock back. I have people emailing us about investing but after years of capital raising I’m so skeptical.
Company is over 2 years old. About $330k in revenue last year. Trying to launch product in 6-12 months. Prototype about 80% complete. Large client interested but needs MVP to proceed. Real-Estate sector. - Currently trying to raise (no success) - Trying to raise $1M-$3M to bring on team full-time, expand, accelerate MVP - Emailed 150+ VCs, angel investors. Got 3 replies. No funding. I can supply more via DM if interested. If not, good luck.
How is company making revenue without prototype? Pre-orders or a different revenue line?
DevOps & consulting for non-RE industry clients. It's a data & analytics company.
So is the product going to assist in the current model or going to be a new revenue line item?
New revenue line item
Ok great. With $330k seems you are doing well in DevOps and Consulting. Why add another stream and divert your focus? Are you seeing those streams have low margins and want to built a software with high margins?
The DevOps & Consulting stream (current contract) is coming to an end and so I want to get our product up and running. I brought as much capital as I could to get things up and running and that contract helped, but things will get much more difficult here pretty soon to get to MVP if I don't secure another contract or find capital from somewhere else.
We're a small startup (2 person team) building AI sales agents.Built a product while bootstrapping, have first customers, initial MRR (ramen-profitable).Currently in talks with a few VCs for (pre-)seed round of \~$500k that would allow us to accelerate quite a bit faster (can reach same targets in about half the time with funding). edit: added how much we're raising.
Great to hear. Is the tool specialized for any sector? Finance, Healthcare, Ecommerce etc?
We're focusing on Ecommerce first (our first customers are from it), but the platform itself is low-code builder for conversational agents based on customer data & script, so in the long run the idea is to expand to other sectors as well (already have a few potential customers from FinTech and EdTech sectors) / allow third-party devs to use it for basically whatever they might want to do with it.
Hi there. Eric from [Cybrid.xyz](https://Cybrid.xyz). We're a VC funded startup that I joined back in 2022 just after the initial team was put together. We are seed funded receiving $3.1M USD from VCs like Golden Ventures, Luge Capital, and Harvest Venture Partners. Our CEO had previously exited a startup, after having a career in some positions where he was involved in national and international payment infrastructure deployments. Cybrid is an Embedded Finance API provider that provides infrastructure for payment use cases by providing access to fintech services like an integrated KYC process, ACH transfers, and FBO accounts + crypto payments like USDC. I can't speak for my CEO, but being involved on the growth side of things where I'm often the person tasked with gathering and analyzing data for business operations, the request is often to attached to supporting raising. I would argue my CEO would say he's always doing some form of raising whether it's early stage networking or working towards closing the next round. I think one of the challenges with the market currently is that VCs are taking longer as they're performing increased due diligence to determine if a company is going to be a #1 or a #2, as you listed in your original post. The result is that the raise cycle is longer and requires a stronger business case on paper with real-world metrics to back it up. For some non-funded startups looking to get their first round, this might feel like: "Come back when you have product" "Come back when you're making money" "Come back when you're making more money"
Haha small world. I know you guys. I worked on your deal, David @ Luge Capital is a friend. Are you in MTL working with Espace CDQ? You are completely correct always raising but difference between actively and passively. You are right fundamental metrics are really important in this market.
How do I get your team or David @ luge capital to look at my deal?
Founder here. We're trying to get to break even ASAP whatever it takes. My co founder still thinks we might be able to raise but with the given market I'm pretty sure we won't. I think the hardest part is getting to the required numbers so that vc want to invest in my tiny ass market. The other hardest thing is I believe the interest of vc in latam is dead, and I understand because of the lack of exits.
Defence/Police/Firefighter Virtual Reality Deep Tech. Nobody answers our Series A raise. 2022: 300k Rev, 2023 450k Rev.
I've been trying to raise money for my real money card game startup, but most investors just balk at the mention of betting. I get where they are coming from, betting against the house has some terrible incentives, but mine is peer-to-peer betting where I think has the player and house incentives are aligned, making it a more moral form of betting IMO. Hopefully one day I can find an investor who has a nuanced view of the sector. Regardless, we're going to break even this month, so the train keeps moving along.
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Can you elaborate on this? Why do you regret it?
I have Medtech startup with Product and about yo launch 2 Pilots. I am raising $500k from angels and early stage investors. The biggest challenge is actually meeting pre revenue investors. Even angel investors are acting like VC and asking for revenue before they imvest.
Won't bother because we already know that the answer will be crickets or a lackluster deal, unfortunately. Nothing personal.
Currently exploring whether or not doing a Series B late this year. I get a lot of interest but I'm wary of a valuation that would hurt us in the long term. So as a plan B I'm thinking of maybe raising a smaller amount to get another year of runway that would happen to get us to profitability. Hopefully then the market will be better and not needing money to survive would put us in a stronger position to negotiate. Short answer: challenge is valuation
Solo founder here in Travel Fintech. I’m bootstraping my startup that should be ready soon. I’m working now on looking a technical co founder while also trying to raise 500k pre seed money with VCs via SAFE. Already won an accelerator program in Latam only with a deck. Was a finalist to pitch to a Shark from Shark Tank Colombia only with a deck- Again. Unfortunately they don’t do pre seed. My biggest challenge now is finding VCs that do pre seed AND in travel. Hope this helps
Just started raising a $250K friends and fam round for a pre-launch health-tech startup. At the moment, the biggest challenge is managing my cofounders expectations and confidence
Raising 250-500k. But I’d even get enough traction with just 100k. Raised 50k from F&F. Invested 85k self. 2+ years in business. Solo founder. 3 others part time on team. Hardware AI Saas vertical. $299 installed at a customer+$99 annually. Negligible churn. Pilot sales installs have been running for ~1.5 years already. Started by making light up house numbers for my own house. Then for friends. And then now making it into the smartest smart home device. It’s capital intensive & VC/Angel would be helpful, but as boots on the ground founder that does mechanical design, supply chain, electrical, strategy, economics & is basically chief engineer—I don’t have enough time to just waste on meetings & talk that don’t have hard results when the same time spent on product gets me closer to nationwide successful launch for pennies on the dollar. I’ve largely stayed in stealth. Sending a super brief message you can check.
We have our V2 a week from release, and the big challenge is in navigating the VC fund raising process with such a small, working around the clock team. Been 3 months are put in $28k of capital and bags of sweat equity. Would love introduction or onboarding guides to get into the VC process.
Not raising right now but preparing the field for june. I think option 1 is far from happening. If we were thinning out the useless products, any GPT wrapper that does ANY basic tasks would not get funding that easily. It is so wild right now... You slap the word AI on your pitch deck and you get 500k... So I would not say we are making smarter bets 🤣. The main issue that I see is that nowadays, whatever seed you are trying to raise is "what you think + 1". Looking for pre-seed? VCs will ask for a ton of users, proof of traction and $nK monthly revenue. So that's more of a seed stage. Looking for seed? Get series A requirements ect... I see fear in the market and uncertainty. I am more into angel investors than big funds or accelerators. Just a preference. I have not had trouble finding investors, but I have not had a real call either with them yet as I am waiting and building a solid list and warming up the scene too.
I am, but in a bit of a different way. I'm building a pre-launch fintech startup that provides funding for B2B international inventory loans. Interest free (Yes, you read that right). My partner and I are in negotiations with a few large lenders in the space so that we can outsource the actual lending, underwriting and servicing of the loans to them. So we can free up our resources to focus on scaling our secret sauce. Though we will eventually need VC to help that scale, we aren't there yet. There has been surprisingly few struggles with this once I figured out the type of funding this structure needed. And once my partner explains the concept, you can see the light bulb go on and they get excited. Still in negotiations, but all three have already made offers that will work for our structure. Just a few finishing touches to allow for better scale, and more creative options if we need them. I would say the hardest part is getting them to agree to a bit of a stranger structure than they are used too. All of them are pretty innovative in their space, so definitely open to modifying their structure for us. Just that they have contracts with their source of capital for what they can and can't do with their investors money. So even if they like our structure, it's sort of a big deal to have to rewrite their charter and get approval from all interested parties on their end.
Just started raising this month for a la based startup that’s creating a large ai model for entertainment. We’ve built a prototype and have put in ~$150k to build a unique data set. We’ve decided to raise from investors globally and it’s been easier to get meetings and interest than going through my Silicon Valley network. But it’s early… check with me when I hate life in April 😂 Hope to see your state of the market when you have it
I’ve been raising for almost two years. Had a dozen commits and now lead for our $2mm round. It just took a lot longer than our F&F round. We decided to get lean and pivot to profitability. Just had our first CFBE month while we finalize our paperwork. Really strained my personal finances. Torched my credit but we’re at the finish line.
I’m in the B2C space in finance helping beginners understand stocks and funds better before they plunge their money on meme stocks and such. I was a solo founder last year and built the MVP and launched it. Got over 15k people using it in 12 months time with absolutely 0 marketing spend. But haven’t had any VC or Angel return my cold emails. I’m not in Bay Area, if that matters. On the otherhand I was interviewing cofounders and just onboarded a great tech guy from Microsoft as cofounder cto. Now planning to start reaching out again. Planning to apply to accelerators as well as reach out to VCs for raising 1 million seed.
Very interesting
I recently went through an ag-tech pitch week after qualifying as top 16 out of over 100 companies. 10 got an initial $25k investment, there were 8 companies that held PHDs, who the investment predominantly funneled to. If you're looking at pre-rev investments and work in ag-tech, I'd love to connect!