The vast majority of investors you pitch will pass, so use the time to ask for input & feedback. Ironically, it reflects better on you to ask questions than just pitch the whole time.

SpringTime’s Allyson Plosko shares three things that erode investors’ confidence in founders, and actionable steps that you can take for each to build, rather than erode, confidence.

What happens when you miss your milestones? Can you pause the VC Treadmill? Of course. Here’s how one company did it.

My friend Eric Marcoullier, multiple-exit founder, coaches startup CEOs now, has a great post that I riff on today: A CEO Has Three Responsibilities. I’d argue the CEO has only one.

As you come into the close of your round, a classic sales tactic and can be used effectively as you wrap up it up: the takeaway.

Another fundraising red flag is the “dribs and drabs” round. With this, you don’t know if you’ll have enough capital to make those key hires or fully execute your growth plan, so your growth suffers.

The massive returns needed to succeed in venture capital is one of the key drivers of the TAM obsession. Bigger markets offer bigger opportunities for growth and bigger exits. Or at least, that’s the commonly held belief.

Building a business is extremely hard. There are risks all along the way. I dig in on this and offer some questions to ask investors to gauge their risk assessment of your business.

We invest in risky businesses, which means that we feel we’ve got a good grasp on the odds of different types of outcomes, including a zero return outcome. When we hit on uncertainty, that’s when it becomes hard to get to a yes, because uncertainty is where we’re unable to assess the risk.

I asked my teammates for their least favorite thing to hear from startups and it’s, “six months after this seed round, we’re going to raise a Series A.”