Rounds close on momentum. Learn how founders manufacture urgency honestly, how investors read signals, and why a tight process beats a long one.
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.
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.
23 min
A female founder and her investor jointly recount going from seed to Series A during the pandemic: both sides of the same deal, including what the VC saw internally.
8 min
Benchmark's Bill Gurley with Bloomberg on the VC landscape, staying private too long, and lessons from Uber's capital raising for founders and boards.
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 11m
Freestyle's Jenny Lefcourt on making non-consensus bets, avoiding hype-driven investing, and what founders misread about how seed VCs form conviction.
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.
YC's Aaron Harris on how to get meetings with investors and run them: intro paths, meeting stagecraft, reading interest honestly, and converting interest into checks.
Dalton and Michael respond to criticisms of Y Combinator and explain how YC actually affects fundraising outcomes, including honest discussion of demo day dynamics.
58 min
Aaron Harris's deep guide to raising a Series A: metrics thresholds, building investor relationships pre-raise, running the process, and partner-meeting dynamics.
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.
Jason Lemkin's fundraising workshop on what it takes to get funded now: real conversion rates from pitch to check, and what SaaS metrics clear the bar.
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.
SaaStr session on six things no one tells you about raising a seed round: the emotional arc, ghosting, party-round pitfalls, and closing dynamics.
24 min
Kruze Consulting's Scott Orn on writing investor updates that work: cadence, structure, the ask section, and how updates set up the next round.
1 min
Mark Suster's 'Always Be Raising' doctrine in brief: relationship-building between rounds so the round itself is a formality.
9 min
NFX on why VCs now expect founders to move dramatically faster, and how speed itself became the core fundraising signal in the AI era.
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.
21 min
Web Summit hyper-growth panel on fundraising at scale: raising ahead of need, mega-round dynamics, and the costs of blitzscaling capital.