Texts with Founders

Julian Weisser

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Tested tactics for your startup. textswithfounders.substack.com

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What no one tells you about raising your first round — Lessons from helping launch 1,000+ startups.

I recently hosted a deep dive into fundraising. Presenting it here in podcast form (subscribe on on Apple Podcasts and Spotify) Timestamps with topics and ideas that might be of interest below. I’ve been told the “Expectation vs Reality” segment (starting at approximately 11:34) was especially useful. 0:55 - Why it's called "What no one tells you" 1:26 - Why fundraising advice is generally not good 2:41 - Julian's background and overview of ODF4:10 - You shouldn't be good at fundraising 4:45 - Momentum is the main driver of success 5:29 - Customer momentum is the most important type 6:19 - Other types of momentum are less important than customer momentum 7:06 - Should you even be fundraising? 7:40 - Are you fundable? 8:46 - The funding market DOES NOT MATTER 10:02 - Raise on momentum or the dream 11:18 - If you aren't making progress...what are you waiting around for? 11:34 - Expectations vs Reality segment 11:53 - Expectation: It will take a few weeks to fundraise... Reality: 13:26 - Expectation: I'll nail most of these meetings... Reality: 14:30 - Expectation: Fundraising is a full-time job... Reality: 16:44 - Expectation: "I'm taking enough first meetings" ... Reality: 17:31 - Expectation: That went great — they're going to offer a TS... Reality: 18:42 - Expectation: [Trick] will get investors to move faster... Reality: 19:57 - Rapid Fire segment begins 20:12 - How to determine your startup valuation — it's actually straightforward! 21:00 - Does your valuation match market reality? 22:23 - Start your round raising from angels 22:38 - Top of funnel is essential for a successful fundraise. 23:00 - Get former boss to invest if they work in tech or in your sector 23:54 - Illustration of how angels lead to other investors — Freshpaint example 25:19 - How a $5k investor unlocked half of the round for Freshpaint 25:27 - Reward early backers with tranches 26:45 - RUVs are a way of rolling up small checks to save money and time 27:31 - Weekly Updates — what they are and why they help you build your business and successfully fundraise. 29:20 - AMA: How many investors do you need to speak with for your round? 30:19 - AMA: How do you define a preseed and what traction is necessary? How much runway should I have? 32:22 - Milestones inform how much you want to raise and how much runway you need. 32:41 - Defining a preseed vs seed round 33:43 - AMA: What are some of the key metrics to raise a round? 35:01 - AMA: How do you restart a process after making a bunch of fundraising mistakes? 37:20 - AMA: How do I find angel investors? 37:37 - You should be in SF if you can be if you want to start a company 38:07 - The second best geo to build a company is on the Internet — anyone can be there 38:39 - How Julian met his first investors and customers on X while a music school dropout in Boston 40:29 - Sincere cold outbound on X is surprisingly effective 41:26 - Merge - a club for nondilutive microgrants 41:57 - AMA: Is it risky to give early angels a lower cap? 44:50 - Is it worth giving a lower valuation to someone you really want to work with? 45:58 - AMA: Cold vs warm approaches for investor intros 48:11 - Cold is hard because it's a filtering challenge. 49:10 - If you do cold it must be highly personalized and succinct. 50:17 - AMA: Pros and cons of MFN sideletters 51:12 - Link to MFN document 51:33 - AMA: How do I make the most of ODF (to fundraise and otherwise) 53:20 - AMA: Applying for incubators and accelerators vs raising a more traditional round 55:27 - AMA: Things are not going great but we still have conviction on our idea - what's your advice? 55:39 - If you have conviction on your idea when it's not going well WHY do you have conviction? 56:52 - Customers understand before investors do — and most investors will never understand 57:56 - AMA: What tool do you recommend for RUVs? 58:11 - AMA: How to start super small but demonstrate to investors that the overall TAM could be really large 1:01:35 - ODF23 — the place to go to figure out who you're going to build with, what you might build, and who your initial customers might be. IRL in SF https://joinodf.com P.S. I don’t think you miss much not seeing the slides, but here’s the full session video with slides if want them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Aj1_S7wrhc Follow me on Twitter: https://x.com/julianweisser Subscribe: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BeOnDeck?sub_confirmation=1 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0mfCFqUeW0sLWUefeWgtPK?si=4df2cdc42a004326 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/texts-with-founders/id1725949759 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit textswithfounders.substack.com

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Bonus: Don't fumble your first term sheet.

This is a bonus episode. It's not based on a post—it's actually audio from a short video I recorded about what to do after you've received your first term sheet and you're still talking to other investors. Check out more short videos and subscribe at textswithfounders.com/shorts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit textswithfounders.substack.com

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Avoiding Gossip (Audio Edition)

Welcome to the third week of the brand new Texts with Founders Podcast. The goal of this podcast is simple: make the knowledge being shared on Texts With Founders even more accessible to a wider audience of founders by creating high quality audiobook-like editions of popular posts. Find me at weisser.io and on X at https://x.com/julianweisser Full Written Post: Avoiding Gossip Podcast Archive: - Check size doesn't matter - VCs that Ghost - Handling Investor Inbound Are you exploring starting a company? Apply for ODF. The program has helped over 1,000 companies such as Traba, Levels, and Finch find their co-founders and get started. Learn more at beondeck.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit textswithfounders.substack.com

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Check Size Doesn't Matter (Audio Edition)

Welcome to the third week of the brand new Texts with Founders Podcast. The goal of this podcast is simple: make the knowledge being shared on Texts With Founders even more accessible to a wider audience of founders by creating high quality audiobook-like editions of popular posts. Find me at weisser.io and on X at https://x.com/julianweisser Episode Notes Angels mentioned: - Ashley Mayer - Packy McCormick - Sander Daniels - Patrick McKenzie (and his tweetstorms about RUVs) Founders mentioned - Ryan Delk of Primer Full Written Post: Texts with Founders: Check Size Doesn't Matter Podcast Archive: - VCs that Ghost - Handling Investor Inbound Are you exploring starting a company? Apply for ODF. The program has helped over 1,000 companies such as Traba, Levels, and Finch find their co-founders and get started. Learn more at beondeck.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit textswithfounders.substack.com

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VCs that Ghost (Audio Edition)

Welcome to the second week the brand new Texts with Founders Podcast. The goal of this podcast is simple: make the knowledge being shared on Texts With Founders even more accessible to a wider audience of founders by creating high quality audiobook-like editions of popular posts. Full Written Post: https://textswithfounders.substack.com/p/vcs-that-ghost-twf-meetup-in-sf Find me at weisser.io and on X at https://x.com/julianweisser Are you exploring starting a company? Apply for ODF. The program has helped over 1,000 companies such as Traba, Levels, and Finch find their co-founders and get started. Learn more at beondeck.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit textswithfounders.substack.com

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Handling Investor Inbound (Audio Edition)

Welcome to the debut of the brand new Texts with Founders Podcast. The goal of this podcast is simple: make the knowledge being shared on Texts With Founders even more accessible to a wider audience of founders by creating high quality audiobook-like editions of popular posts. Full Written Post: https://textswithfounders.substack.com/p/texts-with-founders-handling-inbound Find me at weisser.io and on X at @julianweisser Are you exploring starting a company? Apply for ODF. The program has helped over 1,000 companies such as Traba, Levels, and Finch find their co-founders and get started. Learn more at beondeck.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit textswithfounders.substack.com

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High signal to noise for early stage founders

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Andrew.Two.Clarify

Tons of startup advice is written by people that aren’t practitioners, have been out of the game too long, or simply is too abstract. Julian’s advice is some of the most tactical in the game and it’s rooted by someone who’s still doing the work. He’s an angel in our company and his episodes are basically expansions on the things he tells us via text. Other founders are lucky that he’s taking the time to create this.
High signal

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AAmich

Love the quick, tactical approach. Really good for busy people looking for the key insightful punchlines on a specific topic.
Bringing the newsletter to a new level!

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TheJaxonator

Love the written content and so glad that we can go deeper with the pod now
Concise and super helpful

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tonyxiao

Julian draws on his vast knowledge about the founder experience and distill it into easy to digest episode sourced from text messages exchanges for the listener. Short, sweet and packs a punch. Highly recommend!

Tested tactics for your startup. textswithfounders.substack.com

صناع العمل

Julian Weisser
سنوات النشاط

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الحلقات

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التقييم

ملائم
موقع البرنامج على الويب

Texts with Founders

Texts with Founders

الحلقات

What no one tells you about raising your first round — Lessons from helping launch 1,000+ startups.

Bonus: Don't fumble your first term sheet.

Avoiding Gossip (Audio Edition)

Check Size Doesn't Matter (Audio Edition)

VCs that Ghost (Audio Edition)

Handling Investor Inbound (Audio Edition)

High signal to noise for early stage founders

High signal

Bringing the newsletter to a new level!

Concise and super helpful

حول

المعلومات

Texts with Founders

الحلقات

What no one tells you about raising your first round — Lessons from helping launch 1,000+ startups.

Bonus: Don't fumble your first term sheet.

Avoiding Gossip (Audio Edition)

Check Size Doesn't Matter (Audio Edition)

VCs that Ghost (Audio Edition)

Handling Investor Inbound (Audio Edition)

التقييمات والمراجعات

حول

المعلومات