I’ve talked to so many other startup founders.  And I’ve read about yet hundreds more. One thing that everyone has in common: nobody likes fundraising for their company. Naturally so!  We all want to focus on building a cool product & making customers happy.

And so it goes with us.

Time Commitment

There is little doubt that we spend WAAAYYYY less time and energy on raising money that most founding teams of startups that are taking the venture funding route – a route that is simply required for our business model.

Not meant as a criticism.  Just an objective fact.

This must change.  It certainly will for me. Feels awful to confront that, because I feel like I already have too much to do. But its one of those aspects of moving from the garage that is just plain hard.

Numbers Game

Common wisdom: any one investor requires 7 “contact events” before they submit funds. None of my personal circle who have invested have required that many interactions.  I guess that’s the difference with “Friends and Family” investors.

And if only 10% of candidates invest, that means 63 contact events for every single investment. That’s a huge cost of acquisition! And it’s bound to feel kind of depressing and exhausting.

Check out this short article, that has a few gems of insight.

Overall, I think the takeaway is that Thanos and I need to put our heads together in a more regimented way – following “best practices” for moving on this effort.