162. Utilize Fractional Talent To Access Experienced Executives
Fractional talent is a great way to get experienced team members on a part-time basis to augment your full-time staff in a cost-efficient way.
September 29, 2023
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Fractional talent is a great way to get experienced team members on a part-time basis to augment your full-time staff in a cost-efficient way.
Matt literally wrote the book on startup boards. Heed his advice and find the best possible board members, keeping a balance between independents and investors.
Start your hiring processes while you’re fundraising so you can hire as soon as you raise. Otherwise, you waste valuable months.
The next two post-funding mistakes are over-spending and not forecasting cash. Cash is king!
There are three post-funding mistakes Matt regularly sees from founders. The first is under-reporting.
While funding is down, it’s down less at Seed. Angel investing is down, but it’s likely leveled out and will hold steady. There is still a plethora of capital available, and there are incredible tools to start businesses using low/no-code. There’s never been a better time to start a company.
Please listen to Peter’s message about option exercise window. Personally, I agree with him that exercise windows should be longer for employees. The 90-day industry standard is just an arbitrary number.
As fundraising constricts, investor-friendly terms come out. Understand the effect these terms have on you and your company, as well as the effects of stacking SAFEs.
On Tuesday, September 12th our friend and operating partner at SpringTime, Jessie Dixon, passed away after a battle with cancer.
As fundraising constricts, investor-friendly terms come out. Understand the effect these terms have on you and your company, as well as the effects of stacking SAFEs.
Founders, whatever you think it’s going to take you to raise this funding, it’s probably going to take longer. So, begin those conversations earlier than you think you need to.
Founders are always going to add value, no matter how big or small the check size is.
Rescripted has over 60 Angels on its cap table. How did they do it? Networking “like a crazy person.”
One of the best pieces of advice Abby got: seriously evaluate if your business actually needs venture capital.
Your team is also watching your company valuation.
Do you want industry expertise or operational experience from investors? Write out what you want before you start fundraising.
Personalized, forwardable emails that your connections can send along will unlock doors to new investors.
Where are you in the process? What’s your valuation expectation? Abby provides guidance on answering both of these trick questions.
Watch out for these VC “trick questions.” How you answer will impact how far you get in their process.
Staying top-of-mind with investors bends recency bias in your favor. Here are four ideas.
Staying top-of-mind with investors bends recency bias in your favor. Here are four ideas.
When a venture fund is asking for “Tuesday Expenses” it’s because someone in the firm has direct experience with that, whether good or bad.
VC’s are pattern matching all the time and recency bias can really put its thumb on the scales when it comes to decision making. Do you best to understand the patterns, especially the recent ones.
When founders ask me whether they should be targeting pre-seed or seed, I have three clarifying questions.
If you don’t have a network of investors, start building that network now, before you need to fundraise.
So much of fundraising can be made easier by some advance work. One of the critical pieces are the follow up materials.
Your fundraising story will evolve as you continue to pitch. Keep checking in to ensure your story is still aligned with your mission and values.
“Fundraising Friends” is a great way to get unfiltered advice throughout your fundraise process. Hear how Neha did it.
Use Time Blocking to create space between pitching investors and working with your team or customers.
Pre-Seed fundraising allows a founder to live inside the vision of their business.
People often think of angel investors as only friends and family. But they could also be anyone you’ve had a business relationship with in the past.
After you pitch an investor, they have to go back and pitch their team.
Season 3 Guests. And do you use your own email when emailing investors?
It’s important to build a diverse team because diverse teams outperform non-diverse teams. It’s important to invest in great founders. And women happen to make great founders.
Distraction is like kryptonite to founders. Yet fundraising is one giant distraction.
Asking questions and asking for the next step are crucial to running a good fundraising process.
Rachel’s big lesson was leaning into the big vision and not being afraid to put up projections that were a big stretch.
When you take time for yourself, don’t think of it as taking you away from your job. Recognize that it is part of your job.
You can’t convince investors they’re wrong. That statement could be the whole episode followed by one minute of silence for reflection 🧘
Founders are eternal optimists. It’s a benefit to your company for you to think that the company is always going to prevail in the end. At the same time, founders need to be grounded when it comes to economics.
Let’s reframe this: investors don’t pass on YOU; they pass on opportunity right now for a specific set of reasons. Some of which you know, some of which you don’t know.
Fresh off a Series A fundraise, Rachel McCrickard offers her fundraising guidance—and it’s excellent.
Money is a tool, and you should use it as an accelerant for an opportunity that you’ve identified.
A mistake in fundraising is being ambiguous when it shouldn’t be ambiguous; it should be truly a process.
This simple format for updating investors is all you need. The 3 P’s: Plans, Progress, Problems.
Josh shares the quintessential example of “ask for money, get advice; ask for advice, get money.
Josh Sanchez, CEO of FloatMe, has raised over $50M in equity, venture debt, and credit. His message to first-time founders: accountability.
Why is the differentiation between pre-revenue and any revenue at all so important? The answer is from a classic startup post.
Ask a VC, “do you invest pre-revenue?” and 90% of them are going to say some version of, “it depends.” Think of revenue as just one throttle. What are the other throttles you have down?
Messaging market fit is making sure that the right people are hearing your message, but that it also fits with their beliefs and what they want to hear.
CDFIs are an excellent place to get support, connections, and possibly funding.
Plan B is another way to make Plan A work.
Don’t waste time trying to convince non-believers, find your true believers.
Anybody should be able to create the future, wherever they exist. They just need opportunities, and so we have to make opportunities easier for them to capture.
You cannot possibly over-rotate when trying to compensate for something that you’re not.
You know your business so well, that you personally don’t need visuals to explain it. But your audience doesn’t share your knowledge.
A venture fund’s most trusted source for referrals is its portfolio. Stand out from the crowd by getting an introduction through a fellow founder.
Don’t get sucked into these toxic myths of entrepreneurship.
The Conscious Entrepreneur Summit was created to build a community of people who are entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs who are committed to their personal growth.
How do you recognize signs of your own burnout? What do you do about it?
“IF this thing happens, THEN I’ll be happy.” How many times have you fallen into the If-Then Mindset trap?
Alex Raymond, host of the Conscious Entrepreneur Summit, joins us this week to cover imposter syndrome, toxic myths, burnout, and more.
Dama explains how she used “unbiased” opinions (of her strategic investors) to help new investors reach conviction.
Sometimes your choice is between taking any money and running out of money. In those cases, you can’t be selective. But if you can optimize for one thing with your investors, optimize for trust.
Dama identified her weak point in investors minds and forced herself to lean hard into the other direction. It worked.
The three things Dama would do differently if she could re-do her first fundraise.
Dama, the CEO of our portfolio company Manatee, pulled a fundraising rabbit out of her hat. She shares her fundraising advice this week… and it’s good!
Why do you get a lawyer? It’s because you need a guidepost, and you need someone who’s going to help you navigate the parts of your business you don’t even understand.
Does your lawyer know what NVCA stands for and where to find the NVCA standard docs? If not, they’re going to make you look like a fool in term sheet negotiations.
Your lawyer should be a resource who can help you achieve your strategy, making the law work for your business.
Great lawyers will help founders find and understand the things they don’t know that they don’t know.
SpringTime’s lawyer, Carlos Cruz-Abrams from Cruz-Abrams Seigel is joining us this week to share his insights on why startups need a startup lawyer.
I want to hear your insights on the VC Minute. What can you share about your fundraising journey for the VC Minute community?
Learn, in excruciating detail, why you should never raise a Bridge Round, then why & how it should be an Insider Round.
The story of a bridge round is always the same from an investor’s perspective. You raised money. It wasn’t enough. And now you’re coming back to raise even less money…
In a world of information asymmetry, your current investors have the most information. And if they’re not willing to step up, that is a very bad sign.
Seed investing is a team sport. The fewer team members you have around the table, the weaker position that you’re in and the less likely you’re going to get to the next level.
This week we’re covering that Dreaded Bridge Round – why it’s the hardest round to raise and how you can avoid it.
How do you generate your Aha Moment? With practice and iteration.
The best pitches create Aha Moments You’ll know when you’ve hit it because the tone of the meeting changes. It becomes a true dialogue,, the questions come from a place of curiosity, or it turns into a brainstorming session.
As the CEO of this business, you are going to be responsible ultimately for every aspect of it. Show that you know your numbers and it shows that you know your business.
Put the focus on what the business is and the vision for its future. Use the past and the pivot to support that story.
Men get funded on potential and women get funded on proof.
Giving up equity is like getting married. You have to be transparent with your partner in a relationship in order for it to be successful.
You can get investment from someone who is not an actual user of it. Founders need to be educators.
An investor buys into YOU before what you do. Lead with your story to build credibility showcase your qualifications.
I’m stoked for this week’s episodes of #VCMinute. This is the first of many weeks with a guest on the mic 🎙 Kat Weaver is a pitch coach with Power To Pitch and she has fantastic advice. Today’s focus is on tailoring your pitch to specific audiences.
When you’re talking about the reasons why you’re fundraising. I want to be sure that you have the right reasons. The wrong reasons to fundraise are to make hires, to extend your runway and to get to a Series A.
If the investor who takes your first meeting can’t explain your business back to their partners, you’re not going to get a second meeting.
Fundraising is a function of your job as a startup CEO. If you don’t do it at the seed stage, you’re going to suck at it the Series A and beyond.
One of the things that I see founders trip up on all the time is they get going and they are a runaway train.
If you keep going back to the same investors with the same story and without significant progress, it’s a negative signal. You need to cross those investors off of your list.
There are three things that I’m looking for in a cold email. 1) What is this business? 2) Is this for me? 3) is this interesting?
There are three things that I’m looking for in a cold email. 1) What is this business? 2) Is this for me? 3) is this interesting?
Go back through your deck and apply the principles of essentialism. What is absolutely essential? And I’ll give you a hint, it’s way less than you think.
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