Asking VCs for Money

*******We're preparing an advice episode and we want your questions!Have questions about how to meet investors, assemble a perfect pitch deck, and land an ideal term sheet? Send them in to raise@magidandco.com or tweet to @harris and I'll answer them in a future episode. *******Alex Bouaziz, CEO of Deel, believes that founders should be cautious about raising too much money. Bouaziz sees fundraising as a process of founders selling off parts of their company to investors who want to buy, and stresses that your company is too valuable to sell off with too much dilution. In this episode, Bouaziz also discusses how the company transformed its presentation through rounds of iteration between fundraises, and why Andreessen Horowitz was ultimately the right match for Deel. 

Raphael Ouzan shares how he went from being just "a kid trying to do startups" around France, to "a kid trying to do startups" with a $55 million Series A under his belt. Raphael's philosophy with A.Team is that a good team is everything, and that philosophy extends to how he approaches fundraising. Raphael shares how he sees the most important aspect of fundraising is the team you're bringing into your company. Plus Raphael describes the mindset he brings when enlisting the likes of leadership expert Adam Grant and Jay-Z's Roc Nation VC to care about, and ultimately invest in his business. 

We're taking the week off for Thanksgiving, but we're preparing an advice episode and we want your questions!Have questions about how to meet investors, assemble a perfect pitch deck, and land an ideal term sheet? Send them in to raise@magidandco.com and I'll answer them in a future episode. Happy Thanksgiving!

Lattice is now a multi-product "People Success Platform," but when Jack Altman was just starting the company, some of the early fundraises were a struggle. Jack discusses the details of his $15 million Series B fundraise, including some of his biggest regrets and lessons that came through the process.Aaron Harris runs Magid & Company, working with founders to scale their startups and navigate fundraising.

Christina Cacioppo raised a $50 million Series A for Vanta from Sequoia Capitol. Christina shares why she initially held off on raising Vanta's Series A, the framework she used to find the right investor, and how splurging for a designer to shape up her pitch deck ultimately paid off. Aaron Harris runs Magid & Company, working with founders to scale their startups and navigate fundraising.

On today's episode of Asking VCs for Money, I talked to Eric Wei and Will Kim, cofounders of Karat. They raised an $26m Series A - combining equity and debt - led by Union Square Ventures. Eric and Will share how their company evolved to become "the new black card for creators", tell the story of how a few informal meetings quickly became a fundraising round, and delve into their process for honing their pitches.Aaron Harris runs Magid & Company, working with founders to scale their startups and navigate fundraising.

Hello world - welcome to Asking VCs for Money - I'm Aaron Harris. I was a partner at Y Combinator for 7.5 years and now run Magid and Company. For the last decade, I've been obsessed with one question: how do founders fundraise?On Asking VCs for Money, I'll be talking to founders about…well…asking VCs for money. We'll talk about what they actually did - the tactics and strategies that led to success - how they met investors, how they prepared their pitches, and how theynegotiated term sheets. I'm going to focus on process and particulars here, not grand pronouncements or hacks. I hope you learn something that helps you the next time you fundraise.Starting on October 31st 2022, we'll be releasing new episodes each Monday featuring a different founder talking about a different fundraise. We hope you'll tune in!