What is the thing that you are so desperately clinging to? Is it relevant? And is it going to help your business get through these next few turbulent weeks and then through the next trying months? Find those sacred cows and banish them.

Regardless of your situation, the startup world fundamentally changed on Friday. I have two pieces of advice for you. The first is: acknowledge your reality.

“This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” – James Stockdale

Whatever your reality is, own it.

To be the best at fundraising, start by taking care of yourself.

I saved the best for last and it’s possibly the hardest. The number one thing you can do for yourself is practice self-compassion.

Lack of good deep sleep impacts your physical health, your mental health, your mental acuity, and even your reaction times. To keep your productivity high and your mental health strong, create a sleep routine and get good sleep.

While I’ve spent the last week and a half talking to you about tips and tricks for mental health, I’m not a trained professional, but I know the benefit of having one. I strongly encourage all founders to find a great therapist.

When was the last time that you gave yourself permission to spend time on yourself? It’s not enough to just spend time doing something that you want– to take a break one night and then fret all about the things that you could be doing or should be doing. This is completely counterproductive. Giving yourself permission is the critical part of this.

There are some inputs in your life that you can control such as food, drink and exercise. And there are some things that you can’t control, like your chronotype. And if you fight against this, you’re just going to make yourself tired and miserable.

Why is it so hard to ask for help?

Asking for help is important for everyone, doubly so for founders. We live in a society that values independence and self-sufficiency so many of us still struggle to ask for help, especially for our most vexing problems.

I’m here to tell you that asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness.

Prioritization is knowing the destination. Relentless reprioritization is continually navigating along the way to the destination.

It’s apropos that I’m releasing this episode today because Wednesdays are my GSD days. My Get Shit Done day. Taking time boxing to its logical extreme is the GSD day. No scheduled meetings are allowed on GSD days. None.

Kicking off a focus on founder mental health, my first suggestion is Timebox. You’ll hear me say this all the time: time is our most precious asset. Maybe a corollary to that is focus. I found that I can create focus by time boxing.

Kicking off VC Minute Season 2 with a quick update on the market and ready to roll with advice from guests as well as yours truly.

Thank you for your patience. It will be worth the wait!

VC Minute is quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better. This is Part 2 of the Season 1 complication, covering Episodes 26-50.

VC Minute is quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better. This is Part 1 of the Season 1 complication, covering Episodes 1-25.

If you’re struggling to raise venture capital, take heart. It does not invalidate your business. If you truly want to build this business, then you must focus on creating value for your customers. That is what matters.

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.”

FOMO, in the VC Minute playbook, is a subtle knife that cuts through silence to elevate you in a fund’s process.

Don’t say your pro forma financials are “conservative.” They are complete fabrications! And that’s OK.

If you call your funding round a “Bridge Round” it puts you in a defensive position. Listen to today’s #VCMinute for what you should say instead.

This week I’m covering things NOT to say to investors, starting with… exits. Talking about an exit strategy at the seed stage is ridiculous.

Happy Friday, everybody. It’s a Friday in July, and do you know, what’s the perfect thing for a hot summer day? A pool party! All the reasons investors say “no” can wash away when the pool party is packed.

There’s a big reason that funds pass or ghost on investments, but they would never share it with founders. It’s entirely subjective and often just based off gut instincts.

Another common reason venture funds say “no” is because they don’t see a path to returning the entire fund from that one investment. Wondering what that means? Here’s more…

When you’re talking to an investor that writes checks at your level, and they’re telling you that you’re too early, here’s the real problem: you haven’t sold them on your vision.

Your competition in that moment are the half a dozen other startups that I have in my diligence process at the same time as you.

Wrapping up the week with great advice from @sabakarimm – don’t email people asking if you can send them the deck, just send them the deck. That’s the purpose of it. Send it!

One of the most powerful things that you can do in your email deck is to break the reader’s frame of reference. My favorite example of this is from the Allhers deck.

Pitching is storytelling, and decks are a tool to tell the story. The email deck gets to meeting, the pitch deck gets the investment.

My number one rule for pitching and pitch decks is: Don’t make me think. Don’t make me work. Here are six examples.

The point of your pitch deck isn’t to get an investment. The point is to get a meeting.

It’s just like when you’re job hunting. The point of a resume isn’t to get the job. The point of the resume is to get the interview. The pitch deck is serving the same purpose.

You never know unless you ask. How are you going to get the investment if you don’t ask for it?

Bonus content: If you’re reaching out to a small fund, don’t email, every single person in the fund.

Time is our most precious asset; I’m grateful that you’d spend of some of yours with me. Thank you.

As you meet with potential investors, your goal with the first meeting isn’t to close the deal. It’s for both you and the investor to get data points on each other.

The wrong way to ask for referrals from your network is to say, “please introduce me to investors.”

A fundraise process starts with knowing who to target. Here’s my list of VC lists—all free.

There are three types of mythical creatures: big foot, aliens, and a funding round not described as oversubscribed. It’s funny because it’s true. But it’s true because it works.

This is completely counterintuitive but the amount you’re telling investors that you want to raise is too high.

When you set out to raise a round of capital, you’ll get asked about your runway. This is important because fundraising is a waste of your time. 😁

Founders part of your job in a pitch is to convince potential investors that you will get to the next level on the treadmill. And to do that, you need to three things: Here, There and Capital.

Raising venture capital is a treadmill. One that only gets faster and only gets steeper.

Your lead investor needs to be the one having the most fun at the pool party.

The last piece in your toolkit for driving action is deadlines. When you’ve got enough capital around the table, it’s time to pull it in. And nothing drives action like a deadline.

Pooled Interest or Soft Circled investors is how you use your system to move through investors systems.

You need to treat your fundraise like a sales process. The difference is that with fundraising, you need to close everyone all at once.

Do you have an investor update list? Are you using a CRM? You should be doing both.

Founders, put your email in your pitch deck. Please. That is all.

That’s a wrap for the first week of VC minute. I hope you enjoyed the kickoff.

Working within an investor’s system means getting through their process.

You can’t force conviction, but you can drive action.

Expect that over the next few months, you are going to get a lot of the SHITS from investors.

Show High Interest Then Stall – the VC strategy you hate.

If you state that you have a million committed, there better be a million dollars worth of capital in that pool, ready to party.

The only way other investors will know that there are other people in the pool is if you tell them.

Your job as the Chief Pool Party Officer involves organization and communication.

Raising a seed round is like throwing a pool party.