Founders at YC's Female Founders Conference compare fundraising experiences: rejection patterns, investor bias, and tactics that worked, with disagreement between panelists on the right approach.
Multiple firsthand raise accounts in one session, including the Muse's famous 148-rejection story.
This video was created by Y Combinator and features Kathryn Minshew, Adora Cheung, others. We summarize and link with attribution; all rights belong to the creator.
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1h 6m
Canva co-founder Melanie Perkins recounts pitching for three years and being rejected by more than 100 investors before closing Canva's first round, including how she reworked the pitch around each objection. She details the kitesurfing-with-investors period in Silicon Valley and how rejection shaped the company's strategy.
7 min
YC founders confess their actual fundraising mistakes: optimizing for valuation, taking bad money, serial meetings, and misreading investor interest.
1h 9m
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky talks with Jason Calacanis about the company's early days: living off credit cards, the cereal-box hustle, and the wave of investor rejections at a $1.5M valuation before YC and Sequoia came in. Strong sections on what rejection taught him about conviction.