1. To cold call
2. To cold email
3. To cold tweet These things have been measured to have a sub-zero success rate. My opinion is that the first VC to actually open up a legitimate communications channel that isn't "hey you already know my buddy who wants 5% to say your name" is going to do pretty bonkers business. | | | I feel the pain. The VC/Angel ecosystem is so fragmented and broken, half the time it makes no sense why VCs take X meetings over Y. I am studying the psychology of fundraising and investing as we are deploying capital from our funds. | | | I think it’s as simple as what resonates with the VC. If your business doesn’t make sense to them, the investment won’t make sense either. It’s the founders job to distill the idea and tell the story behind why they should believe in a future with your product/service in it. And a solid P/L doesn’t hurt. | | | How do I get something to resonate with a VC if I can't actually talk to them | | | Your cold outreach has to be enticing. Do you have any traction? Nobody will give you the time of day without real traction. I don’t know how to do an enticing cold outreach | | | Metrics matter more than ever. The days of concepts or even early MVPs with no traction getting funded are dead.

In this current market, if you can't point to an exponentially growing metric, raising capital is harder than ever. Also, a clear path to profitability. | | | I’ve raised 889k of 3.6M after bootstrapping project 3years and have 350k in. Was turned down by all VC because I don’t have revenue yet so had to go family friend route. In the past 11 months I’ve pitched everyone from my landlord to valets. I give out a pitch deck and will talk to anyone. When we make business I use a promise note, term sheet and organizational agreement by lawyer. Biggest challenge is time to raise while not having to stop project cause out of money. I’ll be operational in a month and no longer begging for monies! | | | Currently raising a 5m series A in hardware + SaaS IoT Ag tech. We have production product and customer traction, but need raise to accelerate growth as our sales cycle is long.

We have been working on a raise for 6 months, we have talked with multiple small VCs and high net worth individuals, but have only managed to close small amounts in bridge funding to date.

It’s really frustrating, because the market is there, product is done, capital is just hard to come by.

We also got told by a few folks that we should be raising $10m rather than 5m because it would be easier, but that just doesn’t seem true from the folks we have talked with. | | | Everyone group I’ve talked to wants $10m rev or “you’re to small”. Then the smaller groups have shark offers that make 0 sense. (This was prior to the shit cpg financing market there is now). | | | Company is over 2 years old. About $330k in revenue last year. Trying to launch product in 6-12 months. Prototype about 80% complete. Large client interested but needs MVP to proceed. Real-Estate sector. • Currently trying to raise (no success) • Trying to raise $1M-$3M to bring on team full-time, expand, accelerate MVP • Emailed 150+ VCs, angel investors. Got 3 replies. No funding. | | | I think the hardest part is getting to the required numbers so that vc want to invest in my tiny ass market. The other hardest thing is I believe the interest of vc in latam is dead, and I understand because of the lack of exits. | | | The biggest challenge is actually meeting pre revenue investors. Even angel investors are acting like VC and asking for revenue before they imvest. | | | Currently exploring whether or not doing a Series B late this year. I get a lot of interest but I'm wary of a valuation that would hurt us in the long term. So as a plan B I'm thinking of maybe raising a smaller amount to get another year of runway that would happen to get us to profitability. Hopefully then the market will be better and not needing money to survive would put us in a stronger position to negotiate.

Short answer: challenge is valuation | | | Raising 250-500k. But I’d even get enough traction with just 100k. Raised 50k from F&F. Invested 85k self. 2+ years in business. Solo founder. 3 others part time on team. Hardware AI Saas vertical. $299 installed at a customer+$99 annually. Negligible churn. Pilot sales installs have been running for ~1.5 years already. Started by making light up house numbers for my own house. Then for friends. And then now making it into the smartest smart home device. It’s capital intensive & VC/Angel would be helpful, but as boots on the ground founder that does mechanical design, supply chain, electrical, strategy, economics & is basically chief engineer—I don’t have enough time to just waste on meetings & talk that don’t have hard results when the same time spent on product gets me closer to nationwide successful launch for pennies on the dollar. I’ve largely stayed in stealth. Sending a super brief message you can check. | | | We have our V2 a week from release, and the big challenge is in navigating the VC fund raising process with such a small, working around the clock team.

Been 3 months are put in $28k of capital and bags of sweat equity.

Would love introduction or onboarding guides to get into the VC process. | | | I’ve been raising for almost two years. Had a dozen commits and now lead for our $2mm round. It just took a lot longer than our F&F round. We decided to get lean and pivot to profitability. Just had our first CFBE month while we finalize our paperwork. Really strained my personal finances. Torched my credit but we’re at the finish line. | | | I’m in the B2C space in finance helping beginners understand stocks and funds better before they plunge their money on meme stocks and such. I was a solo founder last year and built the MVP and launched it. Got over 15k people using it in 12 months time with absolutely 0 marketing spend. But haven’t had any VC or Angel return my cold emails. I’m not in Bay Area, if that matters. On the otherhand I was interviewing cofounders and just onboarded a great tech guy from Microsoft as cofounder cto. Now planning to start reaching out again. Planning to apply to accelerators as well as reach out to VCs for raising 1 million seed. | | | After the bull run we had in 2020-2022, we had a record number of financings in VC. But after the interest rates went up, the VC market pulled back hard leaving many founders with no options in capital raising.

We can see it one of two ways, 1) We are thinning out the herd of unnecessary companies with no product/market and inability to survive. 2) There requires a minimum about of capital deployment to ensure a market that runs on 10 year cycles has enough capital to grow into mature companies. |