Understand how early-stage fundraising works.
A current and comprehensive resource for entrepreneurs, with technical detail, practical knowledge, real-world scenarios, and pitfalls to avoid.
- 310-page online book
- 779+links and references
- Digital access to this title in the Holloway Reader
- Downloadable PDF for personal offline use
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Everyone should have access to expert knowledge.
Venture capital is a powerful tool for entrepreneurshipโone that can help overcome some of the numerous challenges of starting and scaling a new business. But the path of deciding if, when, and how to raise early-stage venture capital is navigated most easily by those with past experience, insider knowledge, and the right connections. Itโs notoriously easy for founders to take wrong turns in their path to successfully finance a company.
The lead author of this Guide, Andy Sparks, raised $17M for his last startupโhaving failed to secure any funding for his first company. Heโd moved to Silicon Valley without a network, and spent the next four years piecing together how fundraising works, from hundreds of conversations, countless hours of internet searches, and multiple $900 sessions with lawyers.
Learning how to fundraise doesnโt have to be so painfulโor so costly. Anyone aspiring to build a company should have access to the experiences and knowledge of those who have gone before. Weโve pulled together 40 expertsโlawyers, founders, and investorsโto build a practical Guide that helps founders approach the process with confidence.
Does this sound like you?
- I just got off the phone with my lawyer about my term sheet, and still feel confused about what participating preferred and full ratchet mean. I wish this stuff were just written down.
- Whatโs the difference between a managing director, partner, venture partner, principal, associate, or an analyst in a VC firm? Who should I be talking to?
- We arenโt in a standard tech hub like Silicon Valley or New York City, and donโt know any investors. Where do we even start?
- Iโve read blog posts about founders deciding against raising venture capital. How do I know whether raising venture capital is a good idea for my business?
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Researched, written, and edited by experts.
Written by practitioners. Edited by professionals.
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Over 120 definitions of key terms
โDefinitionโ Product-market fit (product/market fit or PMF) refers to the notion that there is a point at which a given market responds so positively to a companyโs product that the product โfitsโ the marketโs needs. A precise point at which โfitโ has been achieved does not exist. Instead, product-market fit represents a continuum of traction that ranges from absolute clarity that a company does not have product-market fit to maybe they have product-market fit to experts disagree whether they have product-market fit all the way to itโs beyond all doubt they have product-market fit.
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Pitfalls and confusions highlighted
โdangerโ๏ธ๏ธ Even if youโve negotiated a cap on the portion of your investorsโ legal fees youโre responsible for covering, your counselโs fees can get out of control if you arenโt careful. If your lawyers are arguing about anything meaningful, you should tell them to bring it to you before it goes back and forth between different legal teams more than once.
โconfusionโ Not everyone has embraced the pre-seed term, which some consider overly specific and constraining. Until recently, a companyโs earliest institutional investors were simply called seed stage firms. Some firms that consider themselves seed-stage will invest pre-product, all the way up to the last check before a Series A round.
โcontroversyโ A warm intro from a close friend or colleague never hurts.* But not everyone agrees you need to be close with the person making the intro. So long as the introduction is credible, it can be a good start, even if itโs not necessarily an endorsement.*
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