Collection · 8 items

How Founders Closed Their Seed

Firsthand accounts of real seed rounds, from first no to wire transfer.

Advice about seed rounds is everywhere. Accounts of actual seed rounds, told with real numbers by the founder who raised them, are rare. This collection is only the latter. Suhail Doshi walks through Mixpanel's 2009 raise: eleven firms said no, two wanted him replaced as CEO, and the round closed a week before the company died. A first-time solo founder explains, step by step, how she raised $5.1M for a biotech company without a network. Rand Fishkin open-sourced the documents behind SparkToro's unusual round. Joel Gascoigne published Buffer's valuation and term sheet while the round was still open.

What these accounts share is specificity. Not "we met great partners" but exactly how many meetings, what the check sizes were, which objections kept coming up, and what finally converted a maybe into a wire. If you are in the middle of your own seed round, this is the closest you can get to sitting across from a founder who just finished theirs and asking: what actually happened? Start with Mixpanel, then read the rest in any order.

Thread

Mixpanel Was a Week From Death: Suhail's Fundraising Story

Suhail Doshi

Suhail Doshi recounts Mixpanel's 2009 raise: $15K from YC, half the batch dying after demo day, 11 firms saying no, two firms wanting to replace him as CEO, and a VC telling him point blank he'd fail, before closing $500K at a $2M pre a week before running out of money. He extracts what actually drove the eventual yes: team and whether the idea is personally interesting to the investor.

Objections & rejectionFundraising psychologySeed

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Article

How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech moonshot

Celine Halioua

Halioua details exactly how she raised $5.1M pre-product for a dog-longevity biotech as a solo, first-time, female founder: building the narrative for a moonshot, sequencing investors, and handling deep-tech skepticism.

Fundraising strategyStorytellingSeed

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Article

SparkToro Raised a Very Unusual Round of Funding & We're Open-Sourcing Our Docs

Rand Fishkin

After his bruising VC experience at Moz, Fishkin raised $1.3M from 35 angels under a novel structure allowing profit-sharing distributions instead of requiring a huge exit, and open-sourced the legal docs so others could copy it.

Alternative capitalTerm sheetsSeed

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Thread

200+ Nos and 12 Wasted Months: Udemy's Seed Mistakes

Gagan Biyani

Gagan Biyani walks through every mistake three first-time founders made raising Udemy's seed: 200+ rejections and 12 months of wasted fundraising before barely pulling through. Each mistake is framed as a lesson for new founders.

Objections & rejectionFundraising strategySeed

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Article

How to Raise Investment

Tom Blomfield

The Monzo and GoCardless founder (later YC partner) condenses raising ~$400M across six years into a practical guide: sequencing angels before VCs, running a tight process, and why business quality dominates fundraising tactics.

Fundraising strategyInvestor meetingsSeed

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Video

How Startup Fundraising Works | Startup School

Y Combinator

YC partner Brad Flora's Startup School talk on how startup fundraising actually works: what investors are looking for, how rounds come together, SAFEs, and how to run a tight process. Draws on YC batch data and his own founder experience.

Fundraising strategyRaise readinessPre-seed

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Article

We're Raising $3.5m in Funding: Here is the Valuation, Term Sheet and Why We're Doing It

Joel Gascoigne

Buffer publishes every detail of its $3.5M Series A: the valuation, the actual term sheet, investor list, ARR ($4.6M), and the unusual structure that let founders and early employees take secondary money. A landmark in fundraising transparency.

Valuation & dilutionTerm sheetsSeries A

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Thread

The Reverse Term Sheet: Compressing a Raise Into Three Weeks

Xavier Helgesen

Helgesen relays a tactic from a mentor who raised $500M+ and went public: never accept a VC's term sheet — send your own, with a hard deadline and only two blanks (price and amount). Week 1 set meetings, week 2 pitch and send the term sheet, week 3 review offers and sign, exploiting the fact that VCs behave completely differently on 'hot' deals.

NegotiationTerm sheetsStage-agnostic

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