When a founder is raising money, he/she should expect that any serious investor will conduct some level of due diligence before getting to yes.  This could look somewhat different depending on the maturity of the business. Seed stage companies will […]

In a few months, we are likely to see the annual Forbes Midas list of top performing early stage VC investors. There is always some debate about the methodology and accuracy of the list, but I think it’s a pretty […]

During the course of a fundraise, founders are likely to encounter a few questions from VC’s that seem awkward or even a bit unfair. These are questions that usually don’t have anything to do with the business itself, but center […]

One of the often neglected parts of fundraising is the process of doing due diligence on potential investors. Raising money is super hard. But assuming success, a moment will come when a founder will have multiple funding options.  Partnering with […]

One of the fun books I read last year was “Paper Tiger” by Tom Coyne. I love to play golf, and Tom did what many golfers dream about – he devoted 100% of his life for 2 years to get […]

One of my more popular posts in recent years was a long write-up on how VC’s get measured. It occurred to me that about 2 years has transpired since that original post and I thought I’d write a follow-up.  At […]

Recently, Stu Landesberg, the CEO of Grove Collaborative shared the story of the struggle he faced in raising his series A round. You don’t often hear a founder speak so candidly about this (especially before the final chapter is written) […]

I sent a tweet out last week that elicited quite a few responses from both founders and investors:   seed funds that don’t invest pre-traction = 🤔 — Rob Go (@robgo) November 4, 2019   I could hear the internet […]

One of the biggest rookie mistakes I see among founders pursuing seed rounds is that they’ve spent too much time building something vs. proving something. Increasingly, seed rounds occur after some sort of pre-seed or at least some period of […]

As seed rounds have atomized, it’s not uncommon for founders to raise 3 or even 4 rounds prior to a series A.  These include angel rounds, pre-seeds, institutional seeds, second seeds, pre-A, etc. The reality is that if a founder […]