VC assumption - more capital accelerates best companies to greater success. Unfortunately, the data says otherwise techcrunch.com/2016/10/15/ov…

When getting ready to pitch VCs, founders often jump right into assembling a slide deck. I think this is a mistake. I’d suggest that you start by writing twenty headlines that sum up your startup, and only then build the slides. Here’s why: 1/11

Even for strong startups, fundraising is a marathon that requires near constant attention for 8-12 weeks. The process is punishing, and riskier than you might imagine. You need to prep for it as seriously as you would a race. /1

A few startups founded during the depths of economic recession in 2008-2009: 💳 Square 🚖 Uber #⃣ Slack 🖥️ The Trade Desk 🌩️ Cloudflare ☎️ Twilio 📖 MongoDB 📍 Pinterest 🎓 2U Keep building.

A portfolio CEO recently asked for advice about an unsolicited offer from a good VC: Facts: 💳 $20M/year run rate & doubling annually 🏦 Has $10M (most of the capital it’s ever raised) in the bank 💰 VC offer is $25M on a $150M pre-money valuation What should they do? /1

It’s possible to sell a startup for $1B and make less than someone who sells theirs for $100M. Exit value is a vanity metric.

🗣️ Don't Waste a VC Pitch Arguing 🗣️ Some of the best startup pitches sound crazy, & VCs are often skeptical. But I want to caution founders not to fall into “debate mode,” & to stay focused on the sale. Here’s how a pitch goes off the rails, & how to get it back on track: /1

Two Laws Of Startup Physics Fifteen years into my venture capital career, I’ve come to believe there are two undeniable laws of startup physics: Capital compounds both positive and negative formulas. All positive formulas compound at diminishing rates of return. 1/55

The most common exit opportunity is not a multi-billion dollar IPO but a $50M-$100M acquisition. If you’ve raised a modest amount of money, that can be a transformative outcome. If you’ve maximized VC at each stage, many, if not all, of those opportunities will be closed.

Startups don’t just “run out of money.” They wait too long to address problems while they had money. Failure doesn’t usually happen “to” startups. Problems are rationalized until it’s too late. Too much money multiplies this problem.

Stock options are a key lure of working at a startup. But explaining them, and particularly their value, is a challenge for a few reasons: 🤩 Expectations management 🎲 Valuing risk is hard 💱 Financial complexity Here are some thoughts on communicating options. /1

My grandfather, George Feldman, "Grampy" turned 112 today - The 2nd oldest man in the United States and the 5th oldest man in the world. This afternoon we got news that he passed away. It's with great sadness and great appreciation, for the life he lived, that I share this news.

On Making Your Startup Inevitable /1

Startups don’t just “run out of money.” They wait too long to address problems while they have money. Failure doesn’t usually happen “to” startups. It happens when founders rationalize problems until it’s too late. Startups need to proactively tackle their biggest problems.

Let me rewrite that title in a more fair way: "When it became evident to Pres. Biden that it was time to gracefully step aside, his party briskly rallied around his running mate VP Harris."

When pitching your startup, instead of a linear flow, think of your startup’s story like a pyramid with many layers. Each layer of the pyramid is the entire story of the company at different levels of resolution. /1

Many VCs say founders won’t build a billion-dollar startup unless they are willing to gamble it all from the start. Nonsense. To become a billion-dollar business, a company first needs to be a $10 million business. Founders don't win by skipping to the end game.

Don’t depend on VCs, or anyone other than your customers, for validation. Prove your product’s value with traction. Remember, VCs are financiers, not oracles.

A couple of notes on Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOP): 🗜️ESOPs are as much for your benefit as your VC: There are many ways VCs can hurt startups — this isn’t one of them 🍤 Startups shouldn’t skimp on ESOPs: This is the capital you use to recruit talent Let me expand: /1

Startup founders: In a crisis, your cash position is your shield. /1

While founders are experiencing insane highs and lows, your team members cannot be whiplashed by that same level of volatility. They're committed, but not nearly as committed as you, which is why they might run for the hills if you expose them to your every emotion.

“Why Now?” Most VCs will ask this. But this question misses great startups. Investors are asking if your oppty is: 🤖 New tech? 👽 Emerging user behavior? ⚖️ Regulatory change? Major macro shifts matter, but special founders are often overlooked as key vector of success. /1

.@dharmesh is one of the best entrepreneurs of his generation, but he's also an extraordinarily successful angel investor with a portfolio that includes Coinbase, Okta, Dropbox, Drift, among others. This post explains his "weird & wacky" process: onstartups.com/a-weird-and-w…

It's worth noting Airtable raised only ~$10M over the first *five years* of its existence. Today, a lot of "seed-stage" startups burn that in 18 months. Go slow to go fast. well done @howietl! techcrunch.com/2021/03/15/ai… #ProudInvestor

It’s often said that the founder/VC relationship is harder to get out of than a marriage. Put that way, it’s shocking how few data points inform investment decisions. That means it’s *really* important that you get them mostly right. Some thoughts on how to do that: /1

Much of the reason they've all shut down is too much capital. Mistaken for optionality, excess capital is actually driver of needless risk.

This may feel like an old school approach, but your story is everything. Stop thinking of your pitch as a checklist. Start thinking like Lin Manuel Miranda. Don’t throw away your shot (Apologies to @Hunterwalk). 11/11

Founders, if I told you that you could: 🧱 Increase productivity ♻️ Reduce turnover 🤗 Build loyalty All in 15 minutes a day, you might think I was peddling snake oil. There’s actually an easy way to do it. Show gratitude Here's a simple practice that I've seen work: /🧵

“The End of The Era of Indifferent Capital” The next year will be challenging for startups. Promising companies will struggle. Many will fail. The only consolation is that the "era of indifferent capital" is coming to a close – may it never return. /🔗

The market is in tough shape. Nothing you can do about that. VCs are taking a lot of meetings and not writing many checks. Nothing you can do about that. The only things you can control are 1) Your growth rate 2) Your burn rate and 3) your messaging. Focus on those.

If you're unsure about how well the VC market will respond to your progress, pitch 5ish firms to get a feel. If the response is cool, take time to address weaknesses and revisit in a few months – don't keep pitching. Don't burn good VC leads who won't reconsider later.

Amazing to think this week is the 10th anniversary of Founder Collective closing its 1st fund. It’s flown by and we’ve been so lucky to work with such an amazing group of founders and collaborators over the years. Thank you! And huge thanks to my partners @dafrankel @micahjay1!

Most pitch decks will have slides addressing the following themes (often using these exact titles) 🔥 User Problem ⚙️ Product/Solution ⌚️ Why now? 📈 Market ⚽️ Team 👩‍💼 Business Model 💹 Financials 🥊 Competition 💰 Fundraising You should touch on all these topics, but... 3/11

All this crazy capital influx is going to really mess up lots of great startup companies.

📺 This is more like writing a 30-second commercial about your startup Why is 20% of your equity worth $3-5M? The answer, and that script, should be the backbone of your pitch. If Hollywood can tease a 2-hour film in 30 seconds, you can tease a 45-minute meeting. 6/11

If capital was the key ingredient to success, no startup would stand a chance against well-funded incumbents. Yet startups successfully take on incumbents every day with a sliver of the capital. Don’t use money to close a gap in a race, use it to change the game.

If you've found this example helpful, I encourage you to check out my most recent op-ed at @TechCrunch making the case for why confidence, not capital, should drive acceleration at startups. techcrunch.com/2019/08/13/co… /End

For those that requested I post in a single tweet instead of 56: The Two Laws Of Startup Physics Fifteen years into my venture capital career, I’ve come to believe there are two undeniable laws of startup physics: Capital compounds both positive and negative formulas. All positive formulas compound at diminishing rates of return. 1. Capital compounds positive and negative formulas We are fond of saying, “Capital has no insights.” It doesn’t have the answers to your problems and can actually only fund two things for a startup: A) Experimentation - which rarely is expensive. B) Scale - which compounds whatever is already happening at the startup, whether compounding toward greater intrinsic value or compounding the startup’s value to zero. Capital can scale intrinsic value rapidly if you have an engine that allows it to turn $1 into $5 of value. If it has an engine that turns $5 into $1 (or even $1 into $0.99), capital will ultimately compound the negative value formula to zero. 2. All positive systems compound at diminishing rates of return Sooner or later, the return on each dollar invested will shift to negative. If you’re unaware of the point at which compounding goes into the red, you start compounding negative value. Paradoxically, the desire for growth often prematurely drives startups into negative compounding, ultimately leading to failure. In my experience, startups that internalize these rules have done incredibly well. Failure to respect the rules of startup physics - capital compounds good and bad, and all positive compounding eventually diminishes - has been the cause of just about every startup failure I’ve seen that can’t, simplistically, be written off as “no one wanted the product.” The positive compounding formula Experiment with small amounts of capital until a formula is found that generates a surplus of intrinsic value on each dollar invested. Then, and only then, should you deploy capital in an attempt to scale that specific formula. While this may sound obvious, most startups, out of ambition, attempt to skip directly to the scale phase without fully developing a formula that consistently produces positive value. Startups that don’t have a working economic engine may be able to raise round after round of capital, even at massive valuations, but will almost always compound to zero over time. It’s nearly impossible to fix a negative formula startup with an abundance of capital. Defining intrinsic value While the easiest way to evaluate a positive value formula is directly financial (we invest $1 and generate $3 back), often intrinsic value is created and isn’t clearly financial at the start. This type of intrinsic value presents real complexity because it is difficult to quantify and can be easily rationalized as positive value, even if the compounding of it is actually negative. Certainly, many companies create intrinsic value ahead of measurable economics. Still, it can be dangerous to believe you can spend millions with no source of true validation – and venture capital is a poor source of validation. For example, having a vast proprietary data set may have value, but not nearly as much as hoped. Likewise, building a massive IP portfolio may be valuable, but not when compared to the $100M invested to create it. The signals a startup needs to validate its thesis will vary and are not solely financial, but the key point is that founders should seek out validation in the most inexpensive form possible. Some of these experiments will focus on the product, others on the market, but overall, startups should test their assumptions against an unforgiving reality. Without finding a way to test reality, scaling is perilous. Although a founder’s confidence in an idea may initially be intuitive, they should balance it with proof of high confidence in ROI for the sake of all stakeholders. How diminishing rates of return work in practice When startups attempt to grow, they invest in levers they hope will sustain their positive value formula. These levers inevitably perform at a diminishing rate. New value drivers must be found through experimentation. Here are some examples I’ve witnessed, many times over, of how well-intended scale-up starts to diminish in performance: 🔔 Adding marginal new features Each feature’s value is usually less than the previous features, but each addition creates more complexity in engineering overhead, marketing, and customer service. 👻 Pursuing low-performance customers Customers that fall outside your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) will be slower to convert, more sensitive about pricing, and churn at higher rates. Thus, they will have lower returns than your core ICP customers. 💸 “Investing” in marketing High-performance channels saturate rapidly, forcing spend in more expensive and less well-optimized alternatives. The low-hanging marketing fruit is quickly exhausted, but the relentless desire for growth drives toward negative value marketing spend. 📈 “Scaling up” sales Newer sales hires will typically perform less well because they have little experience with the company and product, stretch the marketing-generated leads, get less focused training, etc. Also, when startups scale sales quickly, they are rarely as disciplined about hiring. Therefore, the average sales rep tends to diminish in performance as the company scales. 🕳️ Customer success missteps Customer service will be less efficient as the product scope and customer profile expands. The same challenge in scaling sales talent is true here - lower performers are more accepted the faster the company is growing. 🗓️ Putting faith in the mythical person month At a certain point, executives will get into empire-building mode and attempt to add people to accelerate a particular initiative. This extra headcount consumes resources and results in less productivity. 🌪️ Exec focus Leadership focus is a finite resource that will be spread thinly through expansion. Every system you expand will perform less well, and lower-performing employees will need more assistance. In short, scale dilutes the C-Suite’s attention from key priorities. Startups need to invest in all these areas to grow, but how founders make that investment can be the difference between success and failure. Why are these rules so hard to follow? 🚆 Capital creates inertia The faster you spend capital, the harder it is to stop. As startups scale, stopping a dollar of spending is harder than deciding to spend it in the first place. 🏁 Capital demands acceleration Admitting mistakes is hard. It is painful to go from doubling your sales force in one year to stopping it or even cutting it the next. It’s easier to hope that problems will resolve themselves with time – but they usually don’t. 🙈 It’s easy to rationalize diminishing returns Founders launch companies because they believe in their vision. VCs invest because they want extraordinary results. Diminishing returns are easy to ignore and truth becomes harder and harder to engage. 🪞 Vanity metrics are an alluring mirage Founders cling to the metrics they can control, even if they aren’t correlated with the startup’s ultimate goal. The appearance of growth, regardless of the cost, can drive a founder to ignore the laws of startup physics. 🤑 Marginal activities get overvalued It’s easy to imagine that you’re creating future value that more than makes up for present losses, e.g., believing that your “data” will drive a significant revenue stream, without a clear idea of who will value it, how, and when. 📉 Rates of return can diminish rapidly Founders and VCs are frequently surprised by how quickly a marketing channel can go negative or how expensive acquiring the wrong customers can become for the business over time. 🧾 The bill comes due suddenly A startup can compound negative value for months (even years), but the scale of the loss may only become apparent at an inflection point, typically when trying to raise capital - particularly when the capital markets have tightened. VCs own much of the blame Startups often fail to follow these laws of startup physics because the support of VCs becomes a gravity well. Most startups can’t rapidly pivot to profitability, so they have to ensure they can raise another round of funding. Growth is the primary currency of the venture industry. VCs will upsell a startup’s growth to future investors and take a markup on their books. Markups help VCs raise money for their funds and grow their capital base over time. Most VCs want growth so badly that they’ve come to demand it regardless of the cost. This obsession is a short-term optimization with huge long-term implications for the startup, its founders, employees, and, ultimately, investors. Investors value their startups based on how much money they raise and at what price, rather than thinking clearly about intrinsic value, which has only loose correlation to private valuations. Entrepreneurs respond to this market demand by spending poorly on activities they know drive vanity metrics that aren’t sustainable to ensure their revenue continues to grow to meet their short-term goal of raising more money. Many VCs don’t want to spend time engaging these laws of startup physics because they don’t align with the short-term VC incentive structure. Investors often lack the patience and incentives to make wise long-term decisions. A cautionary case study Pressure from investors often leads founders to make simplistic assumptions. For example, VCs will tell a founder with $8M in revenue that they need to get to at least $20M in revenue in the next 24 months to close the next round. The startup triples its spending on engineering, sales, marketing, and customer service. If you check back in a year later, revenue will most often be up, but closer to $12M. Sales haven’t grown proportionately to the spend, but the startup has less runway and needs to impress the VCs, so they increase the investment in their broken model in a last-ditch effort to hit the magical revenue target. Even if they successfully manage to do so, the pressure only gets higher! The new VCs want to see continued growth, so more resources are fed into inefficient systems, compounding negative long-term value. The only viable strategy is to make hard choices – constantly. So, how do founders forestall the nuclear meltdown that arises from misapplied startup physics? Don’t consume your capital in response to the conventional wisdom propagated by VCs, whose incentives detract from long-term intrinsic value creation. Instead, focus on low-cost experiments until you discover how to create positive value formulas that justify increased spending. Focus on learning fast, not burning fast. Regarding products, this might mean tying resource requests to improved NPS scores. In sales, be exacting with KPI expectations around the performance of reps. In marketing, strip emotion out of spend and create an ROI-driven framework. Discipline is critical; when something stops working, you must stop scaling. Immediately. Startups have blown millions of dollars in a quarter because founders mistakenly believed that a diminishing rate of performance was temporary. Four approaches that work: 💡 You can’t skip the experiment stage There is an industry incentive structure that encourages you to skip many experiment stages. You want and need things to work, so you’ll bet everything on them working. This approach is a dangerous, slippery slope. 🪙 Experiments should be small Experiments don't require huge budgets. Consider ways to gather data with a single person and small dollars. If you get promising data, invest more, and repeat until you have confidence that you can turn $1 into $1+ at scale. ☝️ Only run a few experiments at a time Signals in the data from your business should inform your hypothesis. Focus on a few ideas where you have high confidence, not every cool idea. Serialize your experiments to give them the full focus/quality execution they deserve. ❓ Ask better questions Would you rather grow your topline by 20% and burn a little? Or grow it by 30% but burn a ton of cash? The answer to this question is critical, but startups and their VCs often fail to consider it. If you lack confidence in the ROI of your investments, the best thing to do is pause and experiment with a new thesis – as inexpensively as possible. A pause might negatively impact your relationship with investors and your team. However, to win you must ensure your team invests capital wisely to create long-term intrinsic value. It is better to slow things down and reorient towards sustainable growth instead of pursuing an agenda that relies more on luck than logic. Capital has no insights! To win, one must respect the laws of startup physics.

“I don’t see who would acquire this startup.” I’ve heard this excuse from VCs explaining a decision to pass on investing in an atypical market. It’s usually a diplomatic way to express a deeper concern about a business, and it’s often a mistake. Here’s why: /1

I never thought the VC industry had much in common with day-trading, but as VCs sit in our home offices, are expected to make instant decisions, driven by FOMO, and behave more and more transactionally; VC and day-trading are starting to look quite similar.

Coffee for venture capitalists!

🐳 Start with a splash Launch right into the biggest statement you can make about your company's impact in the future. The message from the outset should be “If we do our job right, we will completely change the way...!” 7/11

Happy 111th Birthday to my Grandfather, George Feldman. The second oldest man in the US, 5th in the world and 94th oldest man in recorded history. You’re an inspiration to us. We love you! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List…

Those who suggest that startups should only hire A players are grade inflators. They’re calling B players A players. The actual A players are too rare for this to be a practical hiring plan. Look for 10X engineers but don't pin your startup's fate on them.

One argument I hear in favor of big $$$ fundraising is that it will help in recruiting. It’s a logical enough belief but mistaken. It assumes there’s a linear relationship between the amount of funding raised and caliber of recruits. 1/16

Over my past 10 yrs in VC, very few founders have sent updates after seed rounds that included something like "due to minimal burn, we currently have 4 years of cash." @howietl lives and breathes a GO SLOW TO GO FAST mindset forbes.com/sites/stevenberto… #proudinvestor

The biggest barrier to scale at a startup isn’t capital, it’s time & attention to design and run experiments testing the core tenets of the business. Even doubling the burn rate, this founder had enough capital to operate for two years. Where would they spend the new money? /3

A new blog post that sums up a ton of my learnings over the past 7 years as a VC (drug dealer ;-)

The worse the job numbers, the better the stock market. I don’t get it.

Founders need to be ambitious and there’s nothing wrong with “going big,” but this mindset can lead to bad decisions and negative consequences at the early stage. /1

Given what has happened over the past couple of years, many startups have raised the last money they'll ever be able to and don't realize it yet.

It's hard to digest lots of content. Narratives are much easier to digest & simple narratives more so than complicated ones. What are the handful of things you really want the investor to remember? If you tell the story well, they'll dig-in to more of the complexity later. 2/11

It doesn't matter whether a startup's burn rate is $10K/month or $10M/month; if their burn rates are higher than their investor's enthusiasm, they'll die. And the baseline enthusiasm of most VCs has been dampened by this market correction. Prepare accordingly.

A startup founder's personal board of directors should include: 🔬 A peer who can provide a sanity check 🔭 A founder who is ~2 funding stages beyond you 🛰️ A mentor who provides a longitudinal assessment via @dafrankel medium.com/@foundercollectiv…

We've been busy at Founder Collective. Announcing FCV.

Startups aren’t just ideas. They’re not destined to be born. They’re not fated to turn out the way they have. They happen because entrepreneurs *make* them happen. Successful startups are made, not born. /5

Starting work on our quarterly valuations right now. Very challenging. Never has previous round valuations felt more stale and inconsistent with the current market.

🎨 Paint a picture with words Specific > Generic, every time. Instead of a slide title that says “Team,” you could write, “We’ve worked together for 5+ years at Uber and introduced ____ together” Repeat for every slide. 8/11

Until you have built an engine that can reliably turn a $1 into $2, or in this case, $1M/month invested into $2M/month returned, don’t meaningfully scale your burn rate. /6

Every founder should have a “forwardable” email template that includes: 📝 A 1–2 paragraph teaser about your startup ✅ 5–10 bullets about your company: traction numbers, press clips, notable milestones 📁 Deck/Docsend link Have it ready for fundraising, recruiting, PR, etc.

Stop assuming worst case is a down round. External down rounds don't really exist for seed-stage startups, and in most cases, for companies with <$5M in revenue. Nearly all VCs would prefer to fund something new with more potential and fewer headaches.

Growth at what cost? techcrunch.com/2017/10/26/to…

Happy 110th bday to my Grampy. According to Wikipedia, he's the 3rd oldest man in America! Thanks for being such an inspiration!

Any founder who has been lucky enough to be funded by @dafrankel knows how good he is at identifying opportunities and supporting founders. But CPNG & OLO IPOs within a week, that's just epic VC performance!

VCs won’t let you spend the money over five years! With $25M, you’ll be pressured to spend on questionable growth strategies whether the engine works well or not. Monthly burn will go from $200K to >$1M. Despite best intentions, you won’t buy time, you’ll just spend faster. /8

🥇💰 On The Perils of Pricing to Perfection 💰🥇 These days I find myself talking with our founders often about the perils of pricing to perfection: Founders need to balance the desire to optimize in the short-term against potential long-term fundraising complications. /1

This isn’t easy. In a 16:9 slide format, with 28 point title font, you can only fit in ~15 words or ~75 characters per slide. You likely won’t use more than 300 words! Use a subtitle if needed, but brevity is important. The story needs to be crisp. 10/11

In this unicorn-obsessed era, the lack of appreciation for any exit under a billion dollars is a failure of vision at best, and unfortunate cynicism at worst.

A company’s burn rate over time does more to determine its dilution than the valuation it negotiates at a financing event. And nothing increases burn rate faster than easy capital that comes with an outsized valuation. techcrunch.com/2018/07/20/re… /9

Strong companies are not built by people who hope to get rich quickly, but by people who are motivated by creating something of value and executing an exciting vision for the future.

We recommend companies explain stock options in the context of the “preferred equivalent value” of the startup at its current valuation. For instance, “Investors most recently would have paid $100K to purchase these shares and they invested hoping for multiples in return.” /6

Misleading to show this chart without noting that the top 10% of wage earners in the US receive >45% of all income.

Amazon wasn't the first company to sell goods online Google didn't invent search Airtable wasn't the first cloud-based database Pick a successful company, and you can almost always point to the sad story of a failed predecessor that had the same core idea. Execution > Ideas

Prepare for rejection. A lot of it. A promising startup will get 17 or 18 “no’s” for every “yes.” These brush-offs often have less to do with the startup in question than idiosyncratic context or concerns for each VC. Still, it stings. Don’t get demoralized. /2

Money will solve surprisingly few of your problems. Money is not what’s keeping you from finding a unique way to reach your customers. You can pilot most channels with a few thousand dollars, and when your fundamentals work, money becomes very easy to raise.

Well publicized - Uber has raised ~$15B. Yet the press is shocked @Uber is investing billions. Huh? What was the money for? Uber kittens?

I recently tweeted that when pitching: “Launch right into the biggest statement you can make about your company's impact in the future.” nitter.app/epaley/status/11041009… A few more thoughts on pitching the big idea: 1/13

I believe @Whoop is building a generational brand in Boston. They're hiring for 70+ positions across the company. Join @willahmed/@johncapodilupo on an incredible journey. A fringe benefit is an incredible view from their new offices. whoop.com/careers/

📣 9AM-Pitch Meeting 🗃️ 10AM-Pipeline review 💰 11AM-Help Portfolio co. fundraise ☕️ 12PM-Lunch with peer VC 📝 1PM-Blogging 🔬 2PM-Diligence time! 🗣️ 3PM-Meet with partner 📨 4PM-Reply to ~87 emails Sound good? We're hiring a Principal in NYC! medium.com/@foundercollectiv…

I want to send a special thanks today to @ryangraves for pitching the Ubercab vision to me and @btrenchard 9 years ago and including @fcollective on this amazing ride! #grateful

1/ @foxnews has become little more than a propaganda machine for a President who thinks daily lies to the American people are acceptable & white nationalists are “fine people.” He's been fanning the flames of their hate & collaborating with @foxnews as the megaphone #boycotthate

True Dilution = Burn Rate - Accretion of Value My new post on @TechCrunch exploring how dilution is so misunderstood by the startup ecosystem. Let me know what you think. techcrunch.com/2018/07/20/re…

I understand bars were packed last night in Boston. @MassGovernor you’ve been too slow responding here. Perhaps unpopular but you need to take action immediately. Please close all bars and seating service at restaurants now!

📦 Prep an intro package Write a “forwardable” email that includes: + A 1-2 paragraph teaser about your startup + 5-10 bullet points about your company: traction numbers, press clips, notable milestones + A deck/Docsend link /10

VC write checks when they feel like your startup presents an excellent opportunity to return multiples on capital. Startups rarely look less likely to return to investors than when they are about to run out of money. Running out of money isn't a fundraising milestone.

🖼️ Add images last Only start adding images to your deck after you’ve got the twenty or so slide headlines in order. Graphics are a crutch. They should only be there to support each headline. Ideally, there are no other words beyond the headline. 9/11

There are a million nuances and edge cases, and no tweetstorm can come close to preparing you for the exhaustion of fundraising. That’s why it’s important to have aligned VCs and to prepare as you would for any other endurance event. /25/End #CollectiveWisdom

The sensational focus on Theranos steals focus from a group of landmark women entrepreneurs and wastes an opportunity to inspire the next gen with heroic tales. My colleague @josephflaherty shares stories of five female founders who built $1B companies. techcrunch.com/2019/05/03/de…

“Why now?” misses great startups: 💬 Slack was dismissed for being a more polished ICQ 🎦 Zoom was the 137th video conferencing tool 💊 PillPack was founded in 2013, but arguably viable in 2003 🛏️ Airbnb commercialized a behavior that Craigslist pioneered a decade before /3

👉 Fixate on leads This is very important: Don’t set up meetings with firms that don’t lead rounds. If you find a lead, you’ll have no trouble filling out a round. Conversely, a lot of lukewarm interest and no lead makes a deal seem weak and process seem endless. /7

Ben - so sorry for everything you've been going through. Sending prayers to you and Grace. The lack of empathy from those you trusted is painful to hear. @BoltVC is taking a terrible loss. So disheartening that your partners don't understand that. medium.com/@BenEinstein/canc…

To summarize, your pitch will seem inevitable if you can: ✅ Frame a narrative that makes a market shift feel inevitable ✅ Produce data to support the counter-intuitive part of your thesis ✅ Demonstrate that you're the person destined to make that change happen. /End

At the early stages of a startup, your financial model is likely to be laughably inaccurate. That said, even an inaccurate model can reveal many useful insights about a startup. Great insights via @micahjay1: medium.com/@foundercollectiv…

Very important for all the people tempted to normalize Trump or say “he wasn’t really so bad” to consider this. He’s dangerous - Has no compass and is willing to do anything that serves his personal agenda. That’s why most of those closest to him don’t support him this time.

"Startups are bought, not sold" is one of the biggest value-destroying myths in VC. Founders can and should lay the groundwork for a sale years in advance by proactively reaching out to and meeting with potential acquirers. Don't wait to be "discovered" by corporate M&A teams.

It’s said, “there’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” but ideas are wildly overrated and pretty much worthless until there’s an entrepreneur with the capability and will to endure the challenge of proving an idea’s worth. /end

VCs get excited about products and markets. Founder stories certainly move the dial. Big picture: investors want to back startups that feel *inevitable.* More than any fact, they’re swayed by this feeling. /2

🙏 Acknowledge feedback: One of the most powerful moves is to acknowledge feedback & address it in real-time. There should be a lot of sentences like: “In most cases that’s right, but here’s how this is different…” “I too was surprised at first, but then...:” /7

Our partnership @fcollective just agreed to move money back into SVB. SVB is a pillar of the tech ecosystem, and we want to see it continue and thrive again. Those who feel the same should consider joining us knowing the bank is stable and fully backed by @FDICgov.

I’m sure there are plenty of VCs that would criticize this as “small ball” advice, but I can point to ~$80B in recent exit value that demonstrates that putting off big capital raises isn’t a bad idea. Take your time to build a cash-generating engine and go slow to go fast. /13