Our first round of venture capital: 263 meetings, 12 months, $128,700
I kept asking these questions months after starting work on at Alpe Audio. The more I asked, the more I realized it wasn’t only me asking those questions.
So I documented how we did it... Early stage fundraising is the most misunderstood and untold stage of startup life.
I'm talking pre product, pre traction, when you've only got an idea.
What do you need to raise? How many meetings? Who do you talk to? Every week since launch I documented who we met, what they asked, what part of the story worked and what didn't.
The TL:DR is: 1) It took 263 meetings with over 200 prospective investors over 12 months to raise our initial capital that got us going. 2) Story matters more than traction. After those 200+ meetings, I’m convinced that at early stages, traction matters least simply because unless you've got Snapchat like numbers, almost no numbers wow enough. 3) Founder market fit is a critical part of a startups story and allaying investor concerns.
Make sure you tie yourself into reducing risk for VCs.
2 tips:
• Focus on your story and use it to help investors de-risk investing in you. Traction can be a part of that, but don’t bet on traction alone.
• Trust the process. Build the pipeline, run through it. You can get 100 ‘no’s’, but you only need one ‘yes’ to make.
Full blog, charts andd the deck we used is here: https://www.alpeaudio.com/post/how-we-raised-our-first-round-of-venture-capital-263-meetings-12-months-128700/
Comments and thoughts welcome!