MTL-News|How to raise money

Phase 1: get started with a few tens of thousands from something like Y Combinator or individual angels

Phase 2: raise a few hundred thousand to a few million to build the company

Phase 3: once the company is clearly succeeding, raise one or more later rounds to accelerate growth

Force (You wouldn’t need a rule to keep you going in one direction if there weren’t powerful forces pushing you in another)

Don’t raise money unless you want it and it wants you

Be in fundraising mode or not

Get introductions to investors

Hear no till you hear yes (Treat investors as saying no till they unequivocally say yes)

Do breadth-first search weighted by expected value

Know where you stand

Get the first commitment

Close committed money

Avoid investors who don’t "lead" (the expected value of an investor who won’t "lead" is zero)

Have multiple plans (Different plans match different investors)

Underestimate how much you want

Be profitable if you can

Don’t optimize for valuation

Yes/no before valuation (告诉investor自己并没有仔细思考valuation，现在只是想找个investor partner)

Beware "valuation sensitive" investors

Accept offers greedily

Don’t sell more than 25% in phase 2

Have one person handle fundraising (就是CEO)

You’ll need an executive summary and (maybe) a deck

Stop fundraising when it stops working (Don’t keep sucking on the straw if you’re just getting air)

Don’t raise too much (融资越多，下一轮融资压力越大)

Be nice (never to seem arrogant at all)

The bar will be higher next time

Don’t make things complicated