VC Minute – quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better.
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One thing that Dama said two weeks ago really inspired me. Well, actually a few things inspired me, but I thought it was worth providing an outside perspective on how Dama addressed her self-described “weak point” in fundraising.
I’m going to paraphrase a bit. She was getting feedback that she wasn’t showing investors that you wanted to build a billion dollar business. She said she’s such a softie who just wants to make the world a better place, so she put a sticky on her laptop that just said, GREED.
She poured her energy into appealing to investors’ greed. And I’ll tell you when we met with her, we didn’t think she was overly greedy per se. Our impression in this regard was baseline; check the box and move on.
My point to you, dear founder, is this: you cannot possibly over-rotate when trying to compensate for something that you’re not.
Let’s say you told me I was too nice and I should stop trying to build rapport. So I put a sticky on my computer that said COLD. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t truly be cold.
If you’re getting feedback that you’re not exhibiting a killer instinct, not selling enough, whatever, if you leaned into that, just for the sake of getting a funding round done. You couldn’t possibly overdo it.
Now you have to be honest with yourself about what that aspect is. But let’s say you don’t sell. Don’t be afraid of leaning hard into being salesy, because you won’t come across that way.
And tomorrow we’ll talk about the other side of this coin: just being you.
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