Turn Investors Into Your Cheerleaders. Join me! luma.com/9fqk33as via @LumaHQ

“Stay small until you figured out what's working.” — @naval

As a part of our Angel Conference, we run workshops that help folks get perspective. Beyond the slides: Deliver Pitches That Keep Investors Engaged youtu.be/tBiS7k5-qH4?si=vAlp… via @Seattle_Angel

When did we lose consciousness? seths.blog/2024/09/when-did-…

When did we lose consciousness? seths.blog/2024/09/when-did-…

Worth noting that "ability to make people believe" means more than "strong communication skills." In other words, founders need to speak with CONVICTION. If you sound bored or uncertain delivering your pitch, no one is going believe you.

The missing file seths.blog/2024/08/the-missi… This is an important issue for Angel investors and their projections about the greatness of a startup.

At the core of a startup, there should be a financial model. Something that helps the founder drive the business. And... for the investor to understand how the founder thinks about the business Financial Due Diligence with Andrew Klein youtu.be/nh2cGT3dGoI?si=cp1h… via @Seattle_Angel

From the "Meet the Founders" Workshop we have @bcrimmins from @StartupHaven : The Longevity of Startup Haven Supporting Entrepreneurs for Over 18 Years youtu.be/6uAMHacyd0Q?si=jGLL… via @seattle_angel

An overview of Angel Investing by our SPV organizers for Seattle Angel Conference 26 Angel Investing 101 meetup.com/seattle-angel/eve… via @Seattle_Angel

Are you a tech worker making more than $200K, you are likely able to Angel Invest. Learn more about how that works: Angel Investing 101 meetup.com/seattle-angel/eve… #Meetup via @Seattle_Angel

Calling my angel investors out there: Leave your answer to the following questions in the comments below 👇 I’m testing something. Outside of returns, why do you invest?

Perfection doesn't exist with startups. This is your reminder to ship fast and early.

i loved @ycombinator's recent video on @paulg's famous "do things that don’t scale" essay. i was looking for a repo of examples and couldn’t find one, so I put one together! here’s almost 100 instances of startups doing things that didn’t scale. ➡️ comment below and I’ll dm you the full sheet. ➡️ reach out to @useinari and i’ll personally figure out how to improve your product. 1. provide a personalized and “insanely” delightful experience 💕 provide "insanely" high-touch, personalized service by manually onboarding users and giving extremely quick support and product velocity (ex: stripe, algolia, warp, liquifi) have an exact person in mind you’re building for and make your product experience perfect for them (ex: substack) create a low-volume of exactly personalized demos (ex: commandbar, behance) send handwritten thank-you notes to early users (ex: wufoo, reddit) 2. go directly to wherever your customers are ✈️ share and refine your product by physically going to places your customers exist and onboard activate them there (ex: airbnb, tinder, pinterest, hipcamp, uber, blue Moon, rent the runway) earnestly engage and embed yourself within communities and events where your users exist (ex: pinterest, behance, etsy, github, netflix) 3. validate the problem manually and punt scale for later 🛠️ manually fulfill orders yourself or hack an existing product before building something scalable (ex: doordash, instacart, lugg, vanta, airbnb, groupon, zappos, starbucks, producthunt) manually assemble your initial product instead of being blocked on external partners (ex: cruise, pebble, meraki) choose a scrappy tech stack that works for the stage you’re at instead of building everything scalable (ex: gmail, facebook, levels) manually label or curate data to deeply understand a workflow and product requirements (ex: pandora, andrej karpathy) 4. start a deliberately contained fire 🔥 deliberately constrain the initial user base geographically or demographically (ex: facebook, tinder, farcaster, buildspace) focus intensely on a tiny niche and iterate on product until there’s fit (ex: tbh, bitcoin) 5. be relentlessly resourceful and creative 💡 surprise users by doing unscalable and unexpected campaigns (ex: airbnb, antimetal, brex) find workarounds and temporary hacks for tech limitations (ex: facebook, twitch) 6. consult while building the product 🤝 provide consulting services in the domain you’re building to deeply understand customer needs then build product (ex: looker, vanta) use your product on your customer’s behalf to speed up product development and onboarding (ex: viaweb) 7. ask for help and referrals 🙏🏼 beg friends, ex-colleagues, and your network for initial users and incentivize them to refer others (ex: linkedIn, quora, yelp, facebook, producthunt) ask for intros and referrals from investors, other founders, and related communities (ex: lyft, substack)

Having raised money on both sides of the table, I think the #1 reason that startups AND fund managers struggle to raise money is they don't pitch off-the-beaten-path. Some Fri thoughts on how to successfully raise that goes against what everyone tells you to do... More >>

Be specific with who you sell to because if you try to please everyone with your startup's product or service, you'll usually end up pleasing no one. You need to identify your ideal customer persona and be laser focused on their needs and pain points. You need to tailor your product or service to solve their specific problems better than anyone else. As Seth Godin said, "Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers." Zero in on a specific niche and develop features that perfectly match their needs. Narrowing your ideal customer persona doesn't limit your growth - it builds strong customer relationships and loyalty. Being clear with your ideal customer persona leads to a more compelling value proposition and a stronger brand.

Friday musings on how to write a great fundraising blurb. A blurb is a synopsis about your company that puts your best foot forward. More >>