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When I started raising money, I was doing everything wrong. And one of the first rules that I say in my book Fundraising is, uh, don't say you're fundraising. As the second you say that you're fundraising and you're on the clock, meaning people are gonna be like, all right, well his round should blow up and be over soon. Because if this is a hot company, I'm gonna have a limited window. So if in two weeks your round isn't done, people are gonna be like, why aren't others investing?
And so they're gonna you know, they're gonna walk away. And if you build up a bunch of no's around your company people are not investing, then that's you know, the network becomes aware that all these people didn't invest, and you're kind of screwed. So, you know, one of the first lessons that I learned from a great mentor of mine, his name is Michael Cartery, as this company play Co, very successful gaming company. He was giving some talks on fundraising, and he taught me this, just don't
say you're fundraising. Just go build relationships first. Go and meet investors and get them excited about who you are as a person, and casually get them excited about your idea instead of going and saying I'm pitching you, which automatically puts them on a pedestal versus you.
Right, you're not peers anymore.
Now they're on a pedestal, and so it sets the dynamics incorrectly from the beginning. You're not building a relationship and you can get this domino effect of nose which could really screw you before you even begin.
So I did that in the beginning. I learned from those mistakes.
I had some great mentors who helped me reshape my fundraising strategy.
So you said something, or you say when you said, if you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, to ask for money. Yep, that's how I said it correctly. Yeah, so can you elaborate on that.
Yeah, it's a pretty common adage in Silicon Valley and so I certainly didn't invent that. But uh, if you go to someone and you say, hey, I want, you know, to pitch you for funding, They're most likely going to give you advice. It's going to say, hey, you know, I'm not able to fund you right now, but how
about I give you some advice. Whereas if you go to them and you show a genuine interest in their advice, but also, potentially even more importantly, you really impress the shit out of them with who you are, and that person has money or is an investor, they're going to organically want to invest in you.
So let's say I have a company and I'm trying to raise money. I know a very wealthy guy. Instead of saying, hey, do you want to you know, hand my pitch to give me money to put my startup, and we say, you know, I have this idea, da da da, And I really respect, your your opinion. Would you want to just hear about it just to kind of give me some feedback on it? And then you just do a really great job presenting it, and then they're like, damn, I gotta be involved in this situation,
but you're not. You don't look like you're so eager to just only get their money. You really genuinely want their advice. But then by you not wanting to take their money, they want to give you money even more.
Exactly, this approaches a win win makes it more comfortable for them, right because they don't like saying no to you. It makes it more comfortable for you because if if you're doing a good job, they're gonna want invest. If you're talking to an investor whose job it is to invest, who invests, they need you just as much as you need them. So if you're sitting in front of them and they're like, oh shit, this dude is gonna fucking kill it, they will pro actively say how can I
get involved? And they're going to be just as likely, if not more likely, than if you came to them explicitly trying to pitch.
How intentional are you about it? Before you even go to get the advice. Are you strategically targeting the people that you want to get the advice from? Like, is there a list? And it's like if I could meet or get in front of this ten or twenty people this month, that's my target. Like how did you go about it?
Well, in the beginning, you know, beggars can't be choosers, right, so you kind of will try to get meetings with anyone who has money, right.
I mean, now you.
Can be as you go later, Sage, you could be a little more picky, and you should be picking. I mean, you should try to avoid putting sharks on your cap table who are at odds with you or who are very short termistic and they're going to create issues for you.
You should avoid.
Those to the maximum extent possible. But you know what I would do is I would try to build my network in a very strategic way, so I would host like happy hours or dinners. I'd do this on a college budget. I mean I didn't spend I spent minimal money on it. It's like a couple hundred bucks that i'd throw together after a few this VC would sponsor them, so they'd throw down three four hundred bucks on these dinners right and be at my place or you know, I didn't spend a lot of money and so I
was building network. So first step is build network if people have interconnectivity to investors and play the long game. Build a relationship with these folks casually, make sure all these people in your network are impressed by you, right casually, and then at some point you can make the asks or you can say, hey, I know this person invests in your company. I think they have this relevant experience
what I'm doing. Do you mind making the intro? And so you do that with you know, all founder friends. People will raise money before you're trying to build this network to cultivate and then eventually make the ask for the introductions and uh, you know you're just doing this on repeat as much as possible.
So you said something also where it's like you always want to avoid try and get it know.
Yes, you don't. You never want to get to know.
This is a little bit of the opposite advice that some would give you.
Oh you want to get to know quickly. Yeah, that's that's what I've heard.
I need not know because I come from sales, So that's what I heard all the time. Was like a no is always one step quicker to a yes, or get to the know early or stuff like. But so that's an interesting.
It even it feels contradictory.
It's like because you're going this is trial, right, Like you're saying this because you've got nos.
Yeah exactly nos uh spread. So you know, investor community or the community you're raising within is small, and so you don't want somebody to go to someone you just
pitched and that person say be like I passed, right you. Now, if you follow this strategy, you may have had a meeting with that person, it may not have went well, so they may not have invested, but you were never pitching them, so they don't have the ability to say I passed because you never went to them officially asking them for money.
No, it's actually makes a lot of sense psychologically, because, like you said, it becomes a virus once one person says no and then another person acts. This person even if they want to say yes, it's like, well why'd you say no?
Right?
And then it's like I don't want to be the person that says yes and be an idiot when my friend who I'm I have a high level of respect for said no, so more likely to lean towards the know because that's just where the crowd is going exactly.
And so what you're trying to create is a crowd momentum behind you. The hardest one to get the fall is the first one. And you have to get this person to fall just through your character and your pitch and this strategy that I'm outlining, and then that one will hopefully turn to two or three once you have like three people is the magic number where three people have now casually without you saying you're fundraising, have told
you they want to get behind you. Now you can start a fundraising round with the wind at you're back. Because you could say, the way I like to sequence it generally is even when these people say I want to back you, I won't say, okay, how much, here's the docs you want to then take a step back once again and say, okay, I'm honored. I'd love to work with you. Let's do another meeting. I'd love to get your advice on these other things. I'd love to
learn how you work with founders. I like to, you know, have this discussion on what working together will look like. I asked for references say hey, can I speak to a couple other founders you've worked with? So, uh, you know, when someone expresses interest, you don't.
Just automatically jump and say hey, yeah, I'm ready.
Yeah exactly.
Yeah. I think that probably feels like the biggest mistake that most people make because you're in so much desperate not desperate need, but you're in need of the funds. And so once you feel it inklink of somebody who's interested, it's like, I gotta jump, you got it.
Desperate, you can't. You can't show the desperation, even if you are. I've been desperate many times in my career, even beyond us our seed round, But you can never show it because this is what investors are. Just their job is to sniff desperation, right. They're experts at this, so they can get the best deal possible, So.
They can get the best deal possible. Exactly.
So, no matter what desperate situation you're in, I mean, you've got to come in with confidence. It's as simple as that. I mean, most people won't give this advice, but I mean it's just the truth.
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