Mixpanel Was a Week From Death: Suhail's Fundraising Story
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 PsychologySeed200+ Nos and 12 Wasted Months: Udemy's Seed Mistakes
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 StrategySeedCloudflare's Worst VC Stories: The Sequoia Pass and the Andreessen Ambush
Cloudflare's CEO shares two of the company's worst fundraising stories: a Sequoia partner who passed because he didn't think a woman (co-founder Michelle Zatlyn) could lead a security infrastructure company, and an unprepared meet-and-greet with Marc Andreessen that turned out to be a full pitch. Posted during the June 2026 viral VC horror-story wave.
Objections & RejectionFundraising EthicsSeedFundraising for First-Time Founders: A First-Principles Guide ($70M Raised from 1,500 Investors)
A first-principles walkthrough of how early fundraising actually works, synthesized from Biyani's experience raising roughly $70M from about 1,500 investors across three companies. Covers how to think about investor incentives, sequencing, and running a process.
Fundraising StrategyRaise ReadinessPre-SeedThe Khosla Dinner: 'Fire Your Co-Founders and Take Their Stock'
Prince's follow-up horror story: after Khosla Ventures issued a Series C term sheet, Vinod Khosla allegedly leaned over at dinner, while Prince's co-founders were away from the table, and suggested Prince fire them and take their equity. Cloudflare didn't take the money.
Fundraising EthicsTerm SheetsSeries B+The GP Who Slept Through a $15M Series A Pitch
Isenberg describes pitching a $15M Series A at a top-3 VC firm while one of the general partners slept for 30+ minutes and everyone pretended not to notice. The post kicked off the June 2026 viral wave of founders sharing VC horror stories, drawing replies from Mark Pincus, Travis Kalanick, Matthew Prince, and others.
Investor MeetingsFundraising PsychologySeries AWhat Investors Will Ask You, and Why: Decoding the Fundraising Process
A former founder turned pre-seed VC (20,000+ pitches reviewed) explains the questions investors actually ask, and the underlying reason behind each one, so founders are never blindsided in meetings.
Investor MeetingsRaise ReadinessPre-SeedThe 10 Most Common Fundraising Mistakes (From Helping Founders Raise $5B)
Breslow frames fundraising as a game with learnable rules and lists the ten most common founder mistakes, including building investor relationships too late, over-long decks (VCs spend ~3 minutes on a deck), and taking rejection personally.
Fundraising StrategyPitch DeckAny Stage12 Questions Founders Should Ask VCs Before Taking Their Money
A Founder Collective GP flips the diligence table: twelve specific questions founders should ask potential investors (fund size, reserves, decision process, references) instead of only optimizing for getting to yes.
Investor ResearchInvestor MeetingsSeedTerm Sheets! Are! Confusing! Common Terms Decoded for New Founders
A plain-English glossary thread decoding term sheet vocabulary (liquidation preferences, pro rata, anti-dilution and more) for first-time founders and new VCs, written before Doherty founded Behind Genius Ventures.
Term SheetsValuation & DilutionPre-SeedWhat I Learned Raising My First Seed Round (and Turning Down 30% Dilution)
A first-time founder of virtual-workspace startup Branch narrates his first seed raise: struggling with traditional VC, generating ~$4M in commitments largely through online friends, and learning that 'money is expensive', taking every offer would have cost over 30% of the company at seed.
Valuation & DilutionClosing the RoundSeedVenture Is Binary: Why VC Math Breaks Good Businesses
Wilkinson, who built Tiny to hundreds of millions in revenue without VC, explains the structural problem with venture money: in the VC's portfolio math you're either a zero or a billion-dollar company, which forces risky bets on companies that could have been excellent linear businesses.
Alternative CapitalFundraising StrategyAny StageThe Reverse Term Sheet: Compressing a Raise Into Three Weeks
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 SheetsAny StageArchivedPitching Zynga to a Sleeping Partner: 'Weekend at Bernie's Meets Silicon Valley'
Pincus recalls pitching Zynga in 2007, when no firm wanted to back the company, to a partner who fell asleep mid-pitch. Zynga went on to a multi-billion-dollar IPO.
Investor MeetingsObjections & RejectionSeedPitching a VC in His Parked Lexus: Kalanick's 2001 Hustle Story
Kalanick describes intercepting a VC who was fleeing his own office to avoid their 2001 meeting, then pitching him from the passenger seat of the investor's parked Lexus during the dot-com winter.
Investor MeetingsCold OutreachSeedHow to Raise a Seed Round: One Complete Process
A step-by-step seed fundraising process from a pre-seed VC: build a tiered investor list, gather external feedback on materials, and run the raise as a structured pipeline rather than ad-hoc meetings.
Fundraising StrategyTarget ListPre-SeedThink Like a VC: Erik Torenberg's Favorite Seed-Raising Tips
A compilation of seed-raising heuristics anchored on a Paul Graham paraphrase: pretend you're the VC, adopt their incentives, and convince yourself you'd invest, then that you could convince your partners too.
Fundraising StrategyFundraising PsychologySeedThe Team Slide Is Under-Theorized: Fixing the Most Generic Slide in Your Deck
Founder Collective's content lead tears down the pitch deck team slide, the slide that looks most identical across all startups, and shows concrete ways to make individual achievements legible to investors.
Pitch DeckStorytellingSeedThe Accidental Mistake of Asking for Too Much Money
Lemkin dissects a real cold email he received: an interesting startup near $2M ARR with no funding that killed its own chances by asking for an oversized round. He explains how ask size instantly reprices the deal in an investor's head.
Fundraising StrategyValuation & DilutionSeries AFront Raises Its Series D in a Brutal Market
Collin announces Front's $65M Series D (Salesforce Ventures, Battery) at the bottom of the 2022 downturn, linking her written reflections. She is the rare founder who has published her actual Series A, B, and C decks publicly, with commentary; her Series B was famously 11 investor pitches over five days yielding 10 offers.
Closing the RoundFundraising StrategySeries B+Who Writes $1K Angel Checks, and Why Founders Take Them
Yin unpacks the rise of tiny angel checks: who writes $1K checks, why they aren't a waste of cap table space, and how operators-turned-micro-angels change early round construction.
Alternative CapitalClosing the RoundPre-SeedTAM Is Overrated, Go-To-Market Pull Is Underrated
Yin argues investors over-index on TAM slides while founders under-argue market pull and go-to-market, and explains what she actually wants to see instead of a top-down market-size number.
StorytellingPitch DeckPre-SeedThe Biggest Hurdle After Your Seed Raise
A short thread on what actually gets hard after the seed closes: shifting from founder heroics to team-building, and setting up the metrics trajectory the Series A will be judged on.
Raise ReadinessFundraising StrategySeedOpen a SAFE on a Higher Cap: Post-Round Momentum Tactics
Iskold advises founders who recently closed sub-$2M rounds with momentum to open a SAFE at a higher cap and keep taking money, explaining the runway-as-leverage logic in a down market.
Term SheetsValuation & DilutionPre-SeedSleeping Partner, Scowling Partner, Term Sheet Anyway
Wessel, now a First Round partner, recalls a 2015 Series A pitch where one famous partner slept and another scowled throughout, then the firm sent a term sheet two hours after IC and was shocked she declined.
Investor MeetingsTerm SheetsSeries AHow VCs Should Behave in Pitches: Put Founders at Ease
A seed VC lists concrete behaviors investors should adopt in pitch meetings, pitch yourself first, show vulnerability, don't check your phone, acknowledging how stressful pitching is for founders.
Investor MeetingsFundraising PsychologyPre-Seed25 Traits of the Ideal Early-Stage VC
A crowdsourced-and-curated list of 25 best-practice traits for early-stage VCs, cc'ing prominent investors who debated it in replies; a useful rubric for founders scoring prospective investors.
Investor ResearchInvestor MeetingsPre-SeedThe Pitch Deck Is a Vehicle for Emotions, Not Facts
Chen's much-quoted maxim: the #1 fundraising mistake is treating the pitch deck as a delivery vehicle for facts when it is actually a delivery vehicle for emotions. It anchored his broader public work on narrative-driven deck design at Runway.
Pitch DeckStorytellingAny StageArchivedFree Pitch Feedback for Black Founders: Closing the Candor Gap
The closing post of Chen's June 2020 thread offering Black founders direct, live pitch feedback, the kind VCs are typically uncomfortable giving, naming the candor gap as a concrete fundraising disadvantage.
Fundraising EthicsPitch DeckAny StageHow to Raise a Crowdfunding Round, by the Founder Who Raised $5M in 12 Hours
Lavingia's post pointing to his 'How to Raise A Crowdfunding Round' guide, drawn from Gumroad's landmark March 2021 Reg CF raise: $5M in 12 hours from 7,303 investors (5,800+ first-time angels) at the newly raised legal cap.
Alternative CapitalFundraising StrategyAny Stage20 High-Status Questions to Ask in VC Meetings
Frames fundraising as a status game and provides 20 specific questions founders can ask in VC meetings to signal selectivity and flip the chase dynamic.
Investor MeetingsMomentum & SignalingSeedHow to Run Board Meetings That Don't Waste Your Investors
From years of sitting in board rooms, an investor shares how first-time founders can run board meetings well: preparation, pre-reads, and engaging members strategically instead of presenting at them.
Investor UpdatesInvestor MeetingsSeedFunding Secured: Lambda School's $14M Series A Announcement
Allred announces Lambda School's $14M GV-led Series A with a two-word nod to Elon Musk's infamous 'funding secured' tweet. An artifact of the ISA-education hype cycle whose later unraveling gives it a cautionary second reading.
Closing the RoundMomentum & SignalingSeries ASC Emerging Managers: Chamath Funds New Investors from Nontraditional Backgrounds
Chamath announces Social Capital's Emerging Managers program: money, training, and community for aspiring investors from diverse, nontraditional backgrounds, the other side of the fundraising table, on who gets to allocate capital.
Alternative CapitalFundraising EthicsAny StageHow and Why We Raised a $6M Seed for Conviction Markets
A recent example of the raise-announcement-as-explainer genre: XO Market breaks down what it raised in its $6M seed, what problem the round funds, and what comes next.
Closing the RoundFundraising StrategySeedDefault Alive in the Downturn: Surviving the 2022 Reset
Written at the start of the 2022 correction, the Skillshare founder predicts an unprecedented wave of shutdowns, layoffs, and down rounds over the following 18 months and lays out how founders should get to default alive before the fundraising window closes.
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