The 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 StageThe 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 DeckStorytellingSeedTAM 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 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 Stage