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Brought to you by Verissimo Ventures, The Very True Podcast features candid startup insights and conversations with early-stage founders, operators, and investors shaping the future of tech. From behind-the-scenes startup stories to hard-earned lessons on fundraising, scaling, and staying resilient, each episode offers a window into what it really takes to build something bold.
Alex (00:00)
Raising money in venture capital is super hard right now, even though there's more money than ever in the industry. But if you can figure out the mechanics and play the game properly, you won't just raise more money. You'll actually feel better about the whole process and come away with exactly what you need. Today, I'm going to discuss some of those frameworks and strategies that can help you as a founder successfully raise capital for your startups. I'm also going to walk through some of my theory of why fundraising is so difficult today and why the markets are behaving so idiosyncratically.
So I'll start with the most important thing is to always remember that it's a sales process. Just like any other sales process in your business, you just do it a lot less often as a founder. job as an early stage investor is often to help my companies with this process in addition to running it myself when I invest in new companies. I take how I behave, I see how other investors behave, and I transfer that to my founders so that they better understand
how to read the signals, how to play the game, and how to run an efficient process. Because let's be real, for early stage companies, a lot of the decision process is emotional. People get excited about companies, the numbers don't really matter, and people are often suspending belief and generating excitement to get deals done. I've personally spent time at large funds, at corporate funds, and at family offices, and I've seen a wide array of how decisions are made. So I'm happy here today to share
some of the knowledge that I've gained and some of the things that I share with my portfolio companies as they enter their fundraising process.
There's three different types of conversations that you can have with venture capitalists. And the mode of those conversations and your attitude towards them should be different based on these three types. So those types are A, people who don't make decisions, B, people who do make decisions, and C, the people who started the fund. And what you find is that the conversations with these three types of people are very, different emotionally.
what they're looking for, how they're trying to get excited, what they're negative on, where's the empathy. These types of conversations are fundamentally different. And so every time you step into a conversation with a VC, you should know that they can all be very, very useful. I'm a big fan of junior folks in venture capital who may not make decisions, but they can be your biggest advocate. And I'll talk about that more in a minute. But understand what you're actually stepping into before you step into it.
You can prioritize them accordingly, but you can also understand how each of those can actually help you in your fundraising process.
Like I mentioned earlier, founders jobs is ultimately to sell their product, also to sell their company and to hire people. But the thing that they do the least often is actually raising capital. Even though they meet with tons of VCs, those processes are intense and dark or they're super, super fast and they're kind of magical, but they're not the main reason that you start a company. so you learn this skill of financing your business,
Because this isn't the founder's key job and key differentiator and why they started their company, it's important to take a step back, strategize. Don't just listen to, you know, whatever you hear on a podcast like this one, but really think about what's going to work for you and what your goals are rather than these snippets. You could argue that this sales process is much, much more important than any individual sales process you're running with your customers. And so you've got to focus on how do I build the right outcome and what do I want that to actually look like?
I've shared previously on other podcasts how to think about financing your business for success, not raising too much, not raising too little, how to think about dilution, how to think about building a model that drives a budget and can help you figure out how much to raise and what's market. You can find that as a resource on our website, verissimo.vc in the founder resources section. But a big part of my job as that often first advisor to a company that's just getting started,
is helping them navigate that financing process. I used to work at NEA, amazing experience, really, really deep pockets. Now I've got my own fund, Verisimo Ventures, and we can't finance a company through the life cycle of the business. And so a big part of my job is I meet a founder, I believe in the founder and their vision, but I've got to help them get financed. And that's a key skill that I have and that I can bring to that team and help them be successful in realizing their vision.
One of the most important things to recognize is that you've got a few different types of VCs in the market. Now, again, there's corporate VCs, there's family's office, there's funds, there's that whole thing, but I'm just going to talk about the decision process inside those entities rather than those different flavors. Obviously, there's a ton of details here that I'm going to glaze over. Every situation is different, but I'm going to try to hit a few of the key points that I think will be helpful as you go through this sales process that is called fundraising.
So the first thing to remember is that sales process. And just like selling into companies have different motions, selling into funds also has different motions. So one of the things we often hear, right, you've got companies that sell to consumers, companies that sell to SMBs, and companies that sell to enterprises.
this maps actually really well to how VCs operate. So a consumer, for example, would be anything from like an angel to a solo GP where the decisions can get made in the moment by themselves. They don't have a whole process. They have to jump through and they can sometimes be irrational. They're almost aware of how emotionally led they are and you can use that to your advantage and they can use that to their advantage.
The second one is that SMB world, and these would be the funds that are, let's say, you know, 100 to maybe up to $500 million. And these funds often have kind of two groups of people. There'll be one or two founders of that fund, maybe three. Then there'll be some partners that can make decisions. And that's kind of it. There's sometimes junior folks, but those funds often all sit in one office. They are together all the time.
And so the stakeholder that you're working with is often also the decision maker, just like in an SMB. And then the third kind is the enterprise. And enterprise sales are notoriously difficult because there are so many stakeholders involved. And obviously these would be the large global multi-stage funds. And navigating these is similar to the challenge of navigating an enterprise sale. So...
You know, funny enough, if you're good at navigating, selling a large developer tools or security solutions into large enterprises, you may be well suited for this, but you've got to look at it the same way. So we'll start with the kind of angel solo GP route. And again, there's large solo GPS. A great example would be Oren Zeev who's done extremely well and he makes all the decisions himself. He does it very, very quickly and efficiently. And you could argue that his decision process, and again, I haven't spoken to him and learned about it in his head, but
⁓ Just by nature of the fact that he does run his business solo, behaves somewhat similarly to how an angel investor might behave. Now again, angels behave in very, very different ways. Sometimes they just look at who else is investing and then they'll invest. Sometimes they just judge on whether they like the person. Sometimes they have rules for themselves where they always, do a certain type of deal if that's what comes up and the price is right. Either way, it's a simpler process. And it's good to be aware of that, you know,
coming into them, sharing bit by bit, trying to figure out what's the right angle. I think often in these cases, it's better just to hit it head on. Like, you're building a relationship with the person who is going to be your person. Things are not gonna get passed from one person to another. There's not like a whole process that they have to go through. If there is, you should know about it, and that kind of takes them out of this category. But these are the easiest ones. And this is going back to that first case is the people who started the firm.
And the empathy is high in the large global firms, the people who started the firm, sometimes they're not even there anymore. But in this case, it is that same person and the empathy is high and the decision making processes can be very efficient. That doesn't mean that they necessarily will be. Oftentimes people love to run it through a whole gauntlet of reference checks and things and, you know, to each their own, whether that increases the fidelity of their investment process or not.
That's not what we're here to discuss. It's really just what they run. And frankly, again, it comes back to that empathy point. The empathy goes both ways. You can learn a lot about a GP and how they're going to behave once they're invested in you. Same with an angel by how they run their process. Is it extremely overly methodical? Do they shove you into a funnel? You know, how do they, how do they do that? Or is it very spur of the moment, social vibes?
Like, and what do you like? What's, what's more natural to you? So that is something to focus on. And again, that's very consumer style technology type of business. The second is the midsize fund. And these are probably the toughest to categorize because some of them are just one or two people making all the decisions. Some of them have a very senior person and then an army of junior folks. Some of them have
one or two or three very senior people who started it and then a handful of like really empowered principals or junior partners who can really lead things and make decisions on their own. And this is where it probably helps the most to ask about the process and understand you may not know actually if the person you're talking to is a decision maker or not a decision maker and figuring out a polite way to suss that out can be very, very helpful.
Again, it's hard to generalize the mid-size kind of SMB style, which is also why selling to SMBs as a technology company is very, very difficult because it's just hard to generalize. these are the ones where asking a lot of questions, again, politely, can be really, really helpful. One of the great benefits of working with these mid-size funds is that economically,
you're probably going to matter. Right? If it's a $200 million fund and they're writing a five or six million dollar check, they're expecting that to be able to return their whole fund. And there is this nice part of economic alignment there, especially with, you know, potentially, let's say, $10 million of follow on capital to allocate in some cases. They usually run, you know, midway concentrated strategies, let's say 25 companies in a portfolio. There's a couple of GPs or partners who are taking board seats.
So there's a ton of benefits from working with one of these funds. It's usually easier to identify who's the right person in that fund to lead your deal. And again, it might be a little bit more work, but it's often really, really worth it. These funds, because there's a lot of them, and they're frankly often competing with each other and with the larger funds and with the solo GPs, they're usually really good at explaining what they do, what they're interested in, how they do it. And so read up, do your homework.
Ask Gemini or ChatGPT. Figure out what they've said publicly, how they work. You can look at who they're invested in. Usually it's not like a mountain of companies that they're invested in and you can really get a sense for what they might like.
Now there's the next one, which is the big funds, the big multi-stage global funds, multiple offices, multiple layers of people operating. They often have entire armies of people helping with portfolio management and portfolio assistance.
There's a way to navigate these processes. I think that is actually maybe a little bit even more consistent. Again, it's more involved, but it's often more consistent than either of the previous two that we talked about. And I think that's why you find, in the market, you'll see four or five of these large, large funds giving term sheets to the same companies. And part of it is just the sales process, that those founders have figured out how to navigate that. There's a certain flavor that they're looking for.
You know, I talked in the second case about economic alignment. This is something to be super, super aware of. I've had companies where I'm looking at doing a pre-seed where they're looking to raise, $2 million and they're getting people flying in from all over the world to try to talk to them. And they're five, six meetings deep and wondering if, they have a real strategy on how to be a $10 billion company? And the founder's like, Hey, I'm just figuring out which country to incorporate in right now.
You know, like I have a big vision, but I haven't invested all my efforts in the $10 billion story. I'm more focused on what do I need to do in the next 12 months to realize my vision? And so sometimes there's just a mismatch there. The economic alignment part, say what you want. This isn't a personal attack on anyone at any big fund, but writing a $3 million check or a $5 million check from a $4 billion fund, it just can't matter.
And what you have to recognize is that when they're doing that, they are making an option bet. And you can say, I'm fine being an option. And that's fine as long as you go into it eyes wide open. You may be swinging for the fences as well. But there's another more personal aspect to it that you've got to be sensitive to, which is when a $4 billion fund, writes a $5 million check into a company,
What they really want to be able to do is write another 50 or 100 or 250 million dollars into that company. And they want to get a 10x on that. turning five million dollars into 2.5 billion dollars. I don't know if it's ever happened. Maybe it has. Maybe there's something on, you know, the Uber deal or the Airbnb deal or where that happened, but much more likely that they're going to be able to pile in.
seed series A, series B, series C, and ultimately have a quarter of a billion dollar position in this company, which in a four billion dollar fund is fairly reasonable in a company that has already demonstrated massive success. They accumulate a large position. And if you can return a few billion dollars from that, which is a 10 X overall, you've returned the lion's share of your fund and you've probably got, 50, 60, a hundred companies in that fund. So that is the math usually.
and it's just important to be aware of that's what's going on. there's something I always talk about. I'm gonna use a couple of ⁓ Hebrew terms here to explain, which is when I invest in a company at an early stage, the method I'm looking for is a collaborative optimism. I've gotta have a healthy dose of awareness, but not quite cynicism to suss out what might actually work and what might actually not work.
But the term that we use in Hebrew is ayin tova, which means good eye. And the best way to explain it is the exact same way it's used in baseball, which is when you take a pitch and it's a ball, they say good eye. And as an investor, that's also kind of what you got to do, especially early. It's an opt in game. You know, it's not, it's not an auction. It's very much an opt in game. It's very subjective and very personal. People ask me, what do you like to invest in? say, and I'm a solo GP now, you know, it's
It's like I invest strictly in, exclusively in whatever I'm excited about and whatever I'm interested in. And I think other people have boxed themselves into corners and what they can and can't do. I've kept it fairly open in that way. That's my style. Different people have different styles. But again, it's that ayin tova. It's looking for something to get excited about, which requires a healthy dose of optimism and a minimal amount of cynicism just to balance things out.
You've also got to avoid the trap, this is just my own learnings, you've got to avoid the trap of, invested in this 10 years ago and it didn't work and I feel like that market's impossible and I just don't want to touch it anymore. And by the way, as a founder, something to be really aware of, if a fund or an investor has been burned in a market before, they might just not want to play in it again. There might be too much scar tissue there. Even though they learned a lot, they may not want to use those learnings and that's just tough and there's...
almost nothing you can do or say and you're kind of just barking up the wrong tree. So now my method is once I invest, I switch over from what I call ayin tova to Lev tov and Lev tov translates to good heart, which is kind of the cheerleader mode, the coach mode, whatever you want to call it. It's more like the assistant coach really, where it's like, we're in it together, ride or die, we're on the same team. I'm going to do whatever I can.
to help this company succeed. Sometimes that means writing another check. Sometimes that means giving the founder tough feedback after the relationship has been appropriately built up. Often it means hustling, making intros, trying to make sales, doing exactly what we're talking about today, going out and doing business development with downstream venture capital funds to try to help them continue to finance the business, making hires, all these different things, giving feedback on their product, on their pitch, on all these different things.
It's really just about giving and viewing yourself as a member of the team. There's another concept, which is the ayin ra which is the evil eye, which you would say is just complete cynicism. It's the what's wrong with this mentality. And this is more of like the private equity style view is like there's an asset. There's a bunch of, CIMs that go out, which is a confidential information or memorandum to try to sell this company.
They send it to 25 private equity funds, the associates and the VPs at the private equity fund go through all the data and figure out again, they're looking for what's wrong. This is why they hire McKinsey and Bain to just rifle through the entire history of the company and figure out what's wrong and then try to put a value on it. And later stage investing, this often is the case, right? It's a known company. It's a known entity. Again, venture is different from private equity. There's still got to be...
a healthy excitement about the opportunity and how do you generate a 10 X from here. But it's much more about, can't afford to have any blind spots. We can't afford any like whiffs, swings and misses. Like we need to be perfect. And so we've got to have almost this negative view on things. And really, if you compare that to my view on early stage investing where it's, you know, let's say 95 %
good eye optimism, 5 % healthy cynicism. This is 95%. Maybe that's a little bit too aggressive. Let's say 80 % healthy cynicism and 20 % optimism. And again, often, you know, a GP from a large fund might be looking at this. What are you talking about? I'm all about optimism. I want this to be a hundred acts even from, you know, a billion dollar valuation. That's true, but there's a lot of what we call CYA and you might not do that diligence yourself.
But you probably have a team of people who will. You're talking about audits, you're talking about legal diligence, IP diligence, and these are things that when you're writing a $50 million check, you often outsource or you have people on the team that just do this full time. going back to this large, small check from a large fund early in the company's life cycle, being an option bet, this is one of those hidden things where
Again, even let's say this is a partner that usually does series Bs, but their advice is still really good for seed stage companies. But again, economically, what they really want to do is write that $50 million or that $250 million check into this company once it's really on fire. And so there's always going to be an element of them continuing to diligence the company once they're inside. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but I think that economically that
is really how people are motivated. And again, there's exceptions to this. There might be a lot of exceptions to this, but this is a lot of what I've seen in my experience. I've also seen counter examples plenty of times, but it's just something to be aware of. So going back to the big fun thing, now let's say at series A, we've kind of gotten past that, hey, we're just an option bet. The conviction might be too low, whatever it may be. Now we're in series A, maybe even series B territory with a large fund. And so the best way to think about these enterprises is that
They're actually fairly consistent like a lot of enterprises that enterprise software companies sell into. So you typically have, we'll call it three layers. So the first layer is the junior folks. This is the non-decision makers. And this doesn't map exactly to what I talked about before. You'll see how it's similar though. We'll call them the non-decision makers. This is what I was at NEA. I was an associate. I worked predominantly for a few of the different partners and they'd bring me along to meetings and...
that's persona number one at a large fund. Persona number two is anywhere kind of in that principal partner, venture partner zone where they do have the ability to lead deals. And that is their job. Their job is to go source deals. Their job is to bring in hot companies. This is what they get paid for. This is their KPI. Now, often their job is to be relatively sector specific. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Sometimes they have a thesis in an area
Great, but they're often only gonna do one or two deals a year. And that's important to recognize that you've got to try to be their one. Then the layer above that is kind of what we'll call the investment committee layer. Whether that's the founders of the fund, whether that's what's called the investment committee, whether it's the managing partners, you know, and again, not like the vanity title managing partners, but really the people who own the fund and own that the management.
company of that fund and the lion's share of the GP. And those are really the final decision makers that everything gets brought to them. Sometimes those people end up being the ones that take the board seats. They get really excited about something, but most of the people doing that legwork are in that middle layer. And these people vary from people in their mid twenties who are just really, really impressive to people who are in their forties and maybe even fifties and are in that zone.
We'll start now walking through how to get the most out of kind of each of these layers. The junior folks, and again, I was this person, a lot of my job, again, my job at NEA had zero sourcing responsibilities. I'll get to this kind of point later. It's important to recognize what kind of junior person this is. Are they just called an analyst or is their job to do analysis? Are they called an associate? Are they called a principal? These are all, there's no real industry standard here, but it's important to...
sort of try to understand what their personality is. Often from talking to them, you can suss it out. If they've been emailing you over and over and over again, chances are that a lot of their job is sourcing and there's nothing wrong with that. If they're emailing you over and over again, there's something they've seen about your company that they're excited about and they want to learn. And what I would say about most of my interactions with these folks, whether it was when I was that age and they were my peers and they're on the sourcing side,
or now when I see them, you know, and I'm 15 years older than they are, is that they are really smart. A lot of these folks are really smart. They're really driven. And I've been very impressed by a lot of them. The training that they get, the things that are screened for hiring them is often very, very impressive. So don't write them off, even if they're doing like tons and tons of outbound. The role that I came in at, which I think is the other side of this, which was almost like the chief of staff associate role.
where I would accompany that GP to that meeting. And honestly, that associate's job is almost to be like an internal banker for that deal. Sometimes they only work with those people at the investment committee level. Sometimes they only, they work with people at that mid kind of partner level, but that person can really be your best friend. By the way, in the first case, their role as sourcing often leads into this second role. So
they can still be your best friend, but it's kind of a prereq sometimes for them, but they also gotta bring in the deal. So, but when I was at NEA my job was not to bring in the deal, my job was to help diligence and execute that deal. And what executing that deal meant was helping win the deal and build the relationship with the founder, even though that was mostly the GP's job, but it was also, again, running the diligence and presenting an
the investment memo and really the crystallized thesis and what my GP saw in that company to the rest of the partnership and the investment committees so that they could get appropriately excited about that company and be excited about investing in that business. And so that's why that junior person really can be your best friend. They are your biggest advocate. And by the way, what that junior person is,
motivated by is usually just doing as many deals as possible. Again, not in like a crazy way. They obviously want to invest in good things, but if you get into a deal driven business, you want to do deals. That's what you came to do. That's what you worked your, know, worked your, us off in college and in your investment banking or consulting or in a startup, whatever it may be to get these jobs that so many people want is to do deals. It's a deal driven business, right? That's what we do. Obviously exits are more exciting deals than entrances, but
when you're early in your career, usually only have those entrances to really rely on. know that that person really probably wants to get the job done. Their job is to figure out how to navigate that partner layer and that investment committee layer. So they can really be your best friend. I'm not saying trust them with all your company secrets before they've invested, but they've got a lot of market intelligence. They've got a lot of internal company intelligence and you can use that to your advantage. I highly recommend not writing these folks off.
Don't think they're wasting their time. At the very least, you can view it as, I'm giving the younger generation some education on business or whatever it may be. I would say, and again, I was one of these folks, respect the junior person because they can be really, really helpful.
The other thing to know about the junior people is, especially if they're on the sourcing side, even if they're not, they're friends with a lot of other junior people at VC. And they talk. I remember my boss, Harry, at NEA, would send me in and be like, you talk to these people because I can't. Because if I show up and I'm the GP, it's like, everyone's mouth is shut, everyone's on eggshells and on their best behavior. You can get the raw version, whether that was inside a company or just, hey, what are the other junior VCs talking about?
And again, that could be really valuable to a founder, even just in the investment process. So now let's talk about what that investment process might look like. Usually, like I said, it's most likely your deal is going to be championed by that deal leader layer inside the big fund. Maybe that person's got a principal title, maybe a partner title, maybe a venture partner title, maybe even a GP title. And they've got to get excitement around it both for themselves.
but really they're doing that in the context of what can they get their investment committee excited about. Now, a great investor will do that completely in a vacuum and then take it to step two and say, okay, now I've got to translate this into this sort of institutional investment thesis expression that my firm is used to hearing. But oftentimes it's a back and forth. And again, there's nothing wrong with that, but it is a healthy back and forth between
Hey, what is the investment committee like? What are they interested in right now? What is my coverage area? What am I responsible for doing? Kind of have I hit my quota? Is this gonna look good? Is this a X-firm type of deal? Are these the type of founders that we've typically backed? This is all kind of what's going through their head. And they may not express it all explicitly to you. That junior person might though. They might explain what that partner
is going through in their head to try to get this deal across the line. So,
you've got to recognize that it's not them making the whole decision. And it's them trying to figure out, is it the right time to bring a deal like this? We did a deal in this sector three years ago and it just raised a bunch of money and then crashed and burned. And even though it was really just a crazy CEO that we shouldn't have invested in, the partner who did it already left us. Do people want to hear about a company in this space again? And again, that's not something you can really know. Maybe you can know it though.
funds usually publicize their portfolio. I'm not saying, go do spend hours and hours researching it, but with the power of a lot of these AI tools, you can say, hey, have there been any blowups in this funds portfolio in the last year in this space or whatever it may be, and that can really, really help you navigate this issue because you might be fighting an uphill battle by none of your own doing.
Now you're on the same team as that partner. You understand, hey, I've got to make it easy for them to get excited enough that they can then transfer that excitement about what I'm doing to their investment committee. And I always say the ultimate goal is they bring that deal to their investment committee. They say, hey, we want to write a $15 million Series A check into this company. We're really excited about it. The founder's amazing. Traction's fantastic. Product's differentiated.
you know, not a red ocean. Great, great, great, great, great. And again, what I just described, this is part of it. Everything I just said is super, super vague. And you could say about dozens of companies that get deals done and dozens of companies that don't get deals done. And it kind of proves the point that it really is about timing and luck and navigating the personalities and figuring out where the right fit is. Yes, it is a sales process, but I always say it's more like dating than applying to college. And when I say dating, I mean dating for marriage where you're really just trying to get the one.
You're not about going around and collecting acceptances. Although some people like doing that too. I won't get into the weird where that analogy gets weird. But I say the ultimate goal is that that partner brings this deal to the investment committee. You've already presented to them. They, know, oftentimes that my job as a junior person at NEA was to prepare the founders to present and coach them through and help them. Hey, this is the deck that you need to present to the investment committee because
I already know the things that they have pushed back on. This is actually one of my proudest moments at NEA was I was helping lead a deal in a company that was in a sector that NEA had lost money in a few years prior. And we had the CTO of the company in our office in DC and the CEO was in the office in Menlo Park and I flew out to Menlo Park with him and it was a whole dance because
I don't know. This is just what you do. And right before the presentation started, I remember I said, you know what guys switch the order of slides four and five. And this is where the investment banker and the investment banking training I got at Morgan Stanley really came in. I said, you know what, switch the order of slides four and five. And they were like, why? was like, I don't know. I just have a feeling. Just switch it. It was like a magical moment. They switched it. They're presenting founders got great energy and he's going through and one of the partners
really smart, really savvy partner asks a very good question while he's on slide four. And the founder looks over to me like, like, how did you know? And it turned out that then he just hits the button on the keyboard and boom, like the answer to the question was the next slide. And when you talk about building momentum in that investment committee, those are the moments that matter so much.
that there's a flow that it's clear and you don't know. Like when you're the founder walking into that, like you don't, you could just be really good and like, great, by the time I did that at NEA, I had already seen like, a hundred companies come and present to the partnership and get questioned and whatever it may be and get to investment decisions. So I kind of knew the behavior of the people in the room and what they care about. And that's really, really valuable to the founders. So.
Again, that junior advocate can be super helpful, but then that partner, what they want, they want that excitement. They're already excited. They're sold. Now it's almost like, wow, I hope they pick me. Again, then usually by the time you're at that point, there's a certain level of confidence in getting a deal done. In this market, again, things get really hot. It's all becomes about selling for the right to buy and winning. I think right now, because of how the market's shifting, a lot of that mid-tier of kind of deal leader types.
are looking outside, we'll call it like that hot deal. They're looking for like the diamond in the rough more often because things are just getting so expensive and so competitive that they're more motivated to go find those things. And so I realized I've left this as a cliffhanger, but that what's the ultimate goal? What's the best possible outcome that pitch ends you, the founder, leave the room and they're in their closed session discussing the investment. And that discussion goes so well that the feedback from the investment committee is why are we only putting $15 million into this?
why don't we just put $50 million in this company? And that is the best possible outcome you can have. Now again, maybe you don't want $50 million, again, another subject for another time, but like when I was at NEA, Harry would get the conviction and he'd be like, this company came to raise a $10 million series A and he would be like, yeah, we're in for 50 million. Now again, we didn't put the 50 million in at that moment, but a year later, let's say minimal,
kind of objective progress on a quantitative basis in the company. And he'd be like, I like what I see. I see where this is going. I'm putting in another 20 million now. And he had the authority to do that, you know, inside the firm, which is rare. But now you're seeing, again, there's such a pressure to deploy in the market that they might just want to do the 50. And again, you got to figure out what financing makes sense. It might work for you. You say, I'm trying to do a series A, but if I can do a series A and a series B and maybe a series C all at the same time and save myself a lot of headaches, great.
you know, more advice about that if you raise way more than you thought you were going to about how to not get too bloated too quickly for another episode soon. But that is really, you know, what we're going for. And so to kind of sum up, I'll do like a quick, quick review, which is that raising money is really hard right now. Even though there's a lot of money in the market, there's a lot of idiosyncrasy in the market and it's hard to navigate.
It moves and waves really hard to stay on top of it. And frankly, it's not your whole job as a founder. So lean on your early stage investors when you're in that series A, series B stage, because this is what we do all day. It's one of the main ways I add value to my companies is I've got a ear to the ground in Silicon Valley and New York and Tel Aviv and trying to figure out what people are excited about and what's word on the street, as they say. This is literally what it comes from.
And again, the goal is to raise the right amount from the right people for your company. Yes, it becomes an ego game often. it's the higher valuation and it's the fancier firm and the wining and the dining and the this and the that, but you're stuck with these people for like a long time. You want people on your team who are on your team and you might say, board members don't make a difference. Truth is that they're kind of like lawyers, meaning there's satisfactory.
and everything below that is totally unacceptable and terrible. Now, I don't believe that. think that board members can make a huge difference. I have had the opportunity in my career to work with some of those people who've made those huge differences, but even if you don't believe that, know that they can definitely cause damage, even if you don't believe that they can be really, really helpful.
And then again, the framework is that it's a sales process. You gotta understand when you're talking to a consumer, like a solo GP or an angel, when you're talking to an SMB, which is like a smaller mid-size fund, and when you're talking to an enterprise, which is like a global multi-stage fund. And then those three types of conversations with the non-decision maker, the decision maker, and then the person who started the firm. Really important to just be aware of when you step into those meetings of who you're talking to.
I hope this was interesting.
Always happy to answer any questions and remember to stay true.