How should you actually run a raise? These talks and interviews cover the end-to-end playbook: when to raise, how much, from whom, and how to sequence the whole process so you close instead of drift.
28 min
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.
1h 26m
Long-form conversation with Upfront Ventures' Mark Suster on how to pitch VCs, why he dislikes demo days, what separates the best founders, and how Series A decisions really get made inside a firm.
22 min
Rella co-founder Natalie Barbu documents exactly how she closed a $1M pre-seed round as a first-time founder: her investor pipeline, the number of meetings, how she handled passes, and the close.
An Australian health-tech founder walks through raising a $5M seed round led by Blackbird: how the process ran, what materials mattered, and what surprised them.
21 min
A young founder gives a step-by-step retrospective of raising $5M: sourcing investors, sequencing meetings, creating urgency, and closing, with real artifacts from the raise.
47 min
Ex-YC founder Diego Rojas (Shieldbase AI) shares fundraising lessons across YC and post-YC rounds, including what worked in investor conversations for an AI startup and what he'd do differently.
1h 31m
Base44 founder Maor Shlomo explains building solo to an $80M exit in six months without raising venture capital, including why he turned down VC interest and how that shaped the Wix acquisition.
21 min
Front CEO Mathilde Collin discusses her famously fast Series A and B processes, including the transparent metrics emails she sent investors and how she created competitive dynamics.
1h 7m
Zapier CEO Wade Foster explains why the company raised only a tiny seed round and never went back to the well, plus contrarian takes on growth and hiring that follow from profitability.
25 min
ICEYE co-founder Rafal Modrzewski on raising for a satellite company in Europe: convincing investors to fund hardware with long timelines, and how each round's story evolved.
1h 11m
A longevity startup founder explains to TWiST why they raised in Japan instead of Silicon Valley: investor appetite differences, valuation trade-offs, and cross-border round mechanics.
53 min
Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson in a long-form TWiST conversation on how USV picks investments, his views on founder-investor relationships, and stories from Twitter/Tumblr-era deals.
1 min
Reid Hoffman on setting fundraising goals and choosing investors as fundamental partners rather than money sources.
1h 3m
Hustle Fund's Elizabeth Yin on her high-volume portfolio strategy, how tiny first checks change the founder-VC dynamic, and her outlook on seed fundraising.
10 min
Elizabeth Yin's three concrete tips for raising a Silicon Valley seed round as an outsider, from her experience as both a funded founder and a fund GP.
1h 7m
Mark Suster returns to TWiST on the ANGEL podcast: alignment between founders and investors, setting reality with your board, and raising in down markets.
11 min
Sheel Mohnot tells the story of raising his first VC fund — the LP rejections, weird meetings, and scrappy tactics — a mirror image of founder fundraising.
1h 4m
Mercury CEO Immad Akhund on launching a $26M fund, what he learned angel investing in 350+ startups, and what founder behaviors predict successful raises.
1h 34m
20VC roundtable arguing why the venture market today is structurally worse than the 2021 peak: pricing, AI concentration, and exit math — and what founders should do about it.
1h 20m
VenCap's David Clark shares 32 years of fund-of-funds data: how few companies drive all venture returns, and what that power law means for how VCs must behave with founders.
1h 7m
NextView's Rob Go gives the ultimate guide to raising a venture fund: LP targeting, momentum, first closes — directly analogous to a startup round and full of transferable tactics.
52 min
Former YC president Geoff Ralston's fundraising fundamentals lecture: round mechanics, dilution math, SAFEs, investor psychology, and process design for a first raise.
7 min
YC founders confess their actual fundraising mistakes: optimizing for valuation, taking bad money, serial meetings, and misreading investor interest.
3 min
Michael Seibel explains why fundraising works differently in Silicon Valley than everywhere else: risk appetite, check-writing speed, and what that means for founders elsewhere.
14 min
Dalton and Michael debate when a startup should bootstrap versus raise venture capital, including honest talk about which businesses are venture-shaped at all.
Dalton and Michael respond to criticisms of Y Combinator and explain how YC actually affects fundraising outcomes, including honest discussion of demo day dynamics.
Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel at TechCrunch on YC do's and don'ts, including how founders should think about applying, demo day, and post-batch fundraising.
46 min
Aaron Harris on fundraising in the AI era: how AI company valuations diverge from SaaS norms, what investors currently over- and under-weight, and process implications.
57 min
Jason Calacanis answers founder questions about raising a seed round in 2026: current check sizes, AI-market dynamics, accelerator math, and what he funds today.
24 min
Jason Lemkin and Founders Fund's Sam Blond on raising in the late-2022 downturn: what changed in diligence, pricing, and which companies could still raise.
19 min
TK Kader's structured walkthrough of preparing for a Series A after seed: milestone planning, narrative building, and process timing.
A walkthrough of raising startup funding as a first-time founder, from someone who raised angel through Series B as a solo founder in Silicon Valley.
56 min
Startup Boston bootcamp on raising a seed round: process design, materials, investor targeting, and Q&A with local founders and investors.
53 min
Stanford CS183F Startup School session on how to raise money and succeed long-term, connecting fundraising decisions to company outcomes years later.
1 min
Mark Suster's 'Always Be Raising' doctrine in brief: relationship-building between rounds so the round itself is a formality.
30 min
Stanford's Grit & Growth episode on fundraising as a marathon, following emerging-market founders through multi-year capital journeys across grants, angels, and VC.
24 min
Slush session on raising rounds above $10M in Europe: which funds can lead, transatlantic dynamics, and how European growth rounds differ from US ones.
23 min
Seedcamp's Carlos Espinal teaches raising capital at Slush's founder school, drawing on his book 'Fundraising Field Guide' and hundreds of Seedcamp deals.
26 min
Dash0 founder Mirko Novakovic (previously Instana) on raising a Series A as a repeat founder: how his second-time process differed and what investors preloaded.
28 min
Flagship's David Berry on fundraising for deep tech: milestone-based financing, syndicate construction, and communicating scientific risk to generalist investors.
21 min
Edith Yeung on fundraising globally: how investor expectations differ across the US, China, and Southeast Asia, and how founders should adapt the pitch per market.
21 min
Web Summit hyper-growth panel on fundraising at scale: raising ahead of need, mega-round dynamics, and the costs of blitzscaling capital.
1h 7m
Startup Grind panel on managing a downturn and fundraising through it: runway math, investor communication, and which rounds are possible in a frozen market.
58 min
Startup Grind London panel on the snakes and ladders of fundraising: founders trade stories of near-misses, lucky breaks, and process disasters with investor commentary.
26 min
Startup Grind breakout on fundraising and valuation for AI startups: how AI valuations are being set in the current market and what justifies premium pricing.
Harry Stebbings interviewed about his own raises: building 20VC's funds from a bedroom podcast, being underestimated, and what pitching LPs taught him about pitching generally.
1h 30m
Long-form biography interview with Harry Stebbings on raising $800M in funds starting at 18: LP rejections, the grind, and specific fund-raise mechanics.