Things That Make You Go Hmmm...
There are obvious traps that can derail a fundraise, and then there are things that make investors go "hmmm..." They won't kill your fundraise outright, but they'll make enough VCs pause to meaningfully hurt your process.
Can You Beat My Friends?
Whenever I meet a promising startup, I focus on a single question: can you beat my friends?
High-Velocity Fundraising
High-velocity fundraising is a method of fundraising in which you try move as many investors as possible through your funnel at roughly the same page and as quickly as you reasonably can. This post provides an overview of high-velocity fundraising, how it works and why it's the best approach for most early-stage startups.
How to Setup the Perfect Fundraising CRM
A robust yet lightweight CRM is essential to running an effective fundraising process. Here’s how to setup the perfect CRM for your next fundraising round.
Canada Needs to Stop Competing With Itself
Canadians endlessly chase our tails worried about how we’re doing relative to each other. It drags us all down. I'm over it. And you should be too.
You Keep Using that Word...
I can’t help but hear Mandy Patinkin’s voice in my head when some founders pitch me their startups. Not because of mistakes in language or grammar, but because many founders misunderstand how certain words and phrases are interpreted by investors.
Here are 5 of the of the most common phrases that founders and investors interpret differently.
The Genius of Creative Destruction Lab
If you’re a founder in Canada — or are involved in the Canadian tech scene in any way — then you’re familiar with the letters CDL. The Creative Destruction Lab helped create more than $19 Billion in equity value. And it's completely changed the Canadian tech landscape.
How to Pitch Like an American
Americans are born confident. So much so that the rest of the world often mistakes it for arrogance. But in many aspects of life, American confidence — born of a deeply held belief that success is manifest destiny — is an unfair advantage.
In fundraising, it’s a game-changer.
Wow, Did My Pitch Deck Suck
Long before I was a VC, I cofounded DataHero, the world’s first cloud BI company. I recently came across one of our old fundraising decks and boy, did it suck! Let’s look at all the mistakes we made in that deck.