What I learned from raising venture capital

This is good. As someone who's watched this process many times, I can tell you he learned pretty much everything there is to learn about raising VC the first time through.

The only thing that could make his advice inaccurate is that he was raising money for such a good startup. And in particular, one with traction. As he points out, traction trumps everything. So this is essentially a report on what it was like to travel through VC land in the express lane. The scary thing is, even then it took 4 months. It might have gone faster if he'd been on the west coast, but it still would have been a big time suck.

I am always extremely impressed by Gabriel Weinberg's honesty and transparency. He's literally not "selling anything" here. This is just a gift to his fellow entrepreneurs.

RE: Congratulations. My wife is a musician, and back in the day,when record labels mattered, many musicians would focus almost entirely on getting the record deal. That was the thing, to get the deal. Sure, there would be stories about artist X or Y who's album had been shelved by the label or the signed artist losing of control over who would be the producer etc. but primarily it was considered a sign that you had made it, you were legit. You just didn't really consider the loss of control that went along with the 'deal'. I think the same is true with funding. Yes, you are making an exchange - money for equity. However, you are also signaling that you are legit, to outsiders and to yourself. Of course, there is a cost to everything, and if entrepreneurs are not treating the funding as a sub-goal, but rather as the goal,then you wind up with organizations that are optimized to get funding rather building customers/long term profits.

I hope you guys are working on a pro-privacy email service

How much did he raise again? He says he didn't get meetings until after the August vacation period. And announced the funding October 13th. Does it really only take 6 weeks to put together a multi-million (?) dollar round?

Hi epi0Bauqu! Congrats!

That being said, is it possible to see the actual six slides deck ?

Thanks!

Thanks for your article, for someone outside of Europe it helps a lot to get insight on the process in the US. Ironically, albeit a super interesting write, it's your link to why it doesn't feel right that got my attention! Good luck for the rest :-) good things come to those who work hard !

IF Gabriel is reading this: How did you meet the VCs/Angels you already knew?

dontbubble.us link is broken - it sends you to donbubble.us

if Gabriel had so much trouble, I can just imagine how tough the process is for everyone else.

Thanks Gabriel, this is great.