Intensity is the key for successful fundraising

My number 1 mistake in the past was talking only to a *few* investors and connectors at the time. Unless you've made your previous investors rich or have astronomic traction, this doesn't work. Today, to run a successful funraising campaign, a typical startup should operate with the numbers like these:

Cold contact *200 founders* based on your space, demographics, business model
Convert *100 founders* to become your supporters
Source *200 investor leads and intros* from your supporters
Get *70 investor meetings* from your supporters
Get additional *130 investor meetings* from first wave of investors (both investing and passing)
Convert *30 investors* from 200 investor meetings to invest in your seed round

Do all of the above within 2 months. In other words, you will need to communicate with 500-1000 supporters and investors over 50 workdays, or 10-20 calls and chats each days.

If you are doing 2-3 contacts a day, the numbers will rarely add up. If you hope that one ~magical~ connector or investor will _create critical mass_ for you, in most cases, you will end up disappointed. Seed investing has a lot of randomness, you need to talk to a lot of people to fill the round. At the same time, use every contact to improve the pitch. Learn what resonates and what doesn't. Your conversion rates at the end will be much better than at the start.

For Openland, we talked to 200+ YC founders and 140 investors for our seed round. Only 30 investors ultimately invested, all with small and medium checks, without a clear lead investor.

By Yury Lifshits, Superdao CEO
@lifshits

#fundraising

@unicornholding

Always treat the person sitting next to you with kindness, as in the future, circumstances may change, and you may find yourself in a position of need

Life is full of unpredictability, success and failure are often separated by a thin line. Today, someone may be struggling and experiencing failure, having faced setbacks in multiple startup ventures and finding themselves financially strained. However, tomorrow, they may rise again and create a new successful business, becoming a true visionary. Therefore, it's essential to refrain from offending others and always maintain a kind and considerate attitude. After all, we never know what the future holds.

The best founders are always very responsive. I used to wonder why. It indicates decisiveness, focus, intensity, ability to get stuff done. Basically, it's an early predictor for the founder qualities that matter most.

Sam Altman, CEO open.ai

@unicornholding

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@unicornholding

Here's what you need to know (and avoid) when it comes to company growth:

(from a former ycombinator partner who failed a bunch of companies and sold one for $1 billion)

1. Don't over-rely on press as your primary distribution strategy.

There are very rare cases of companies that manage to hack the press by forcing reporters to write about them over and over again.

This is rarely a replicable and more importantly, sustainable, method of effective distribution.

User acquisition strategy needs to go way beyond just having a few great stories lined up on TechCrunch

The way to achieve this is to make your product 'intrinsically viral'

aka: build something so dope that people will be forced to share it with their friends

Tesla's cars are a great example of physical products that have intrinsic virality built into them, without relying on extensive advertising campaigns

They self-drive 🙂 their own marketing

2. If you haven't figured out initial growth for your company, the last thing you should do is hire a marketing specialist

I see this a lot in technical founders who have just raised a huge round and have no idea what to do with it (cont.)

If you don't have PMF, but force-feed marketing anyway you will run into two outcomes.

Your entire business fails; or you succeed in *spite* of your hires. While one is marginally better, both are far from ideal.

3. Growth masks all problems

Whether its a morale, management, or recruiting problem - it boils down to having a 'growth problem.'

(cont.)

During high-growth periods, these problems are masked. This can be helpful because it won't impede your ability to recruit people or be productive.

However,

4. Growth never lasts forever

Low-growth periods are inevitable, and these tend to be the times when those masked problems become very apparent.

Two implications here:

(i). Do whatever you can to keep growing - super important.

If you can just get *some* growth going, you will find that other problems tend to work themselves out (at least temporarily).

This needs to happen as a baseline for your startup to even be functional.

(ii). Do not accumulate too much debt in the areas that are masked by growth - as soon as growth slows down, these problems will become serious.

It is crucial that you are able to handle them without being so overwhelmed that growth completely stalls and you go into free-fall.

Proactively monitor and tackle pressing issues during high-growth periods, instead of scrambling to put out fires while the ship slowly sinks.

https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1434230120777011202

#growth

@unicornholding