Approaching Fundraising
A tough-love approach on fundraising.
Insight, first.
If there is absolutely any point to get across in this blog, it is that you should not be raising money just because you are:
1) making money. Or because you are
2) famous.
It has to be because you believe content allows for Creators to have access to insights on humans that can lead to new product creation unlike traditional businesses and brands.
Do not raise venture capital to just have someone slap on some random product and use you and your audience as a distributive channel. You are more than your distribution.
This is the story that will guide you through your pitch deck, your pitch, and your entire companyâs creation.
What have you seen from your audience?
What have you heard that they want or problems they have?
This discovery that there is a new problem is exactly what VCs like to hear from the jump.
A deck is the first piece of content a potential investor is getting exposure to from a Creator as a venture-backable Founder. No pressure. The good news for Creators is that most good decks are story-driven & insight-driven. These will come naturally.
Distribution, second.
With all of that being said, if you want to work on multiple things at the same time (content, products, licensing, rockets, etc.), youâre going to have to show that you can move things.
A lot of the time, with a Distribution-First mentality, some investors think that translates to product. That doesnât always have to be the case. Come to think of it, if all you can do is âmove product: and havenât tried to use your influence to grow your business in any other new way, that wouldnât be very Founder of you. It would be very Media Executive, but again thatâs not why you want to raise venture dollars.
Using distribution as a Founder looks like:
- Crowdsourcing product feedback
- Hiring (this is a big one)
- Establishing big-shot Partnerships
- Advisor outreach
- and, of course, selling Product
Screenshot examples of these and piece together how youâve used your distribution to grow into a true Founder. Bake them into proof that you use distribution beyond just converting.
Storytelling, third.
Being a Creator, regardless of what kind, means that you can translate something to an audience. That something can be your own or belong to others, but regardless they all come down to being great stories. Great stories can move product and also move ideas.
Sometimes, Creators rely too heavily on storytelling abilities as their leg-up in raising money. Not because it isnât interesting and not because those stories havenât been validated by a larger (and probably more important) audience (their audience), but because Creators have a large barrier to prove they can built anything remotely proprietary other than Media and Stories.
With that being said, every deck tells a story. Decks are naturally sequential, like storyboards. For more on how to format a deck, click here.
As always, if you have any particular questions, feel feel to reach out to em@pre-founder.com
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