1) Fundraising requires knowing what stage your company is at and understanding the expectations of investors for that stage. The earlier the stage, the smaller the funds needed and the focus is more on customer discovery and validating the business model. 2) Later stages require more funding as money is spent on growing the customer base and building out the team and product. Investors at different stages expect to see increasing traction, revenue, and growth. 3) Companies should avoid overvaluing themselves early on or raising too much money too quickly, which can lead founders to lose focus and companies to fail. The smart approach is to raise money appropriate to the stage from investors who understand what is needed.

1. Fund Raising 101
Nasser Ghanemzadeh
@ghanemzadeh
Cover of Fundraising Field Guide

2. “Don’t look up for Easy Money, search for
the Smart Money”
- Matias Honorato

3. Raising
Terms Valuation

7. Death by
Overvaluation

9. “Too much money too early often fucks companies up”
- Mark Suster, Upfront Ventures
“Too much money right after you hit your stride fucks
companies up”
- Mark Suster

10. Ash Maurya

11. @ghanemzadeh
Time
Traction
Problem/Solution
Fit
Product/Market
Fit
Growth
Which stage are you at?
It's very important to know.

15. Postmates scale
116 weeks to get to 500K deliveries, 20 weeks to 1M & 10 weeks to 1.5Mrbnb

18. If you are in “Seed”, don’t act like “Series A”
Series A
Seed
Pre Seed
To. 15M
To. 50M
To. 800M
To. 2B
Angel investors
Accelerators
Family and
friends
Bootstrapping
Angel group
Early stage VCs
Later stage VCs
3-6 months 6-15 months 12-18 months
●
Most of the money is spent
in acquiringnew customers
●
Building the team to run the
business
●
The funding is spent in
building the product to be
able to support a bigger
base of customers/users
●
Customer discovery
●
Changing and
modifying idea,
product and business
model
Amount of
Funding
Time
Abdullah AlshalabiAbdullah Alshalabi
To: Tomans

20. Must Read

21. Read

22. Fund Raising 101
Nasser Ghanemzadeh
@ghanemzadeh