Acopia Ventures

Why does everyone say "fundraising is hard?" The image below shows that a VC can source 1000-2000 deals annually, and 10-21 make it to a term sheet, which equals a 1% acceptance rate. Let's intersect that with a Pitchbook investor search we ran for a client raising a seed round from B2B software investors. Search Criteria: AUM under $1bn Enough dry powder to invest in the round Last investment size < startup's seed round amount This surfaced 200 investors that would be considered qualified targets. Conclusion: Founders are dealing with a 1% conversion rate in a target market with around 200 participants, which will be the smallest target market they have ever pursued. Let's intersect all of that with the traditional fundraising workflow: 1️⃣ Prepare a deck and data room using varying quality levels of content cobbled together from different sources and procure investor lists for cold/warm outreach 2️⃣ Talk to a handful of investors and get objections with limited or generic feedback 3️⃣ Adjust pitch materials and continue pitching and hope that a few investors will say "yes" When these data points and workflows are combined, you can see why there is so much uncertainty, frustration, and anxiety around fundraising. Over the last year, we have enabled a new fundraising workflow that has been proven multiple times to decrease investor rejections by 70%+ and reduce fundraising time to under 2.5 months. 🚀 Here's the new fundraising workflow: 1️⃣ Maximize your startup's invest-ability before speaking with investors according to insider VC information 2️⃣ Start or continue speaking with highly targeted investors 3️⃣ Start racking up commitments Working inside 15 venture funds to help select investments, we've come to a solid realization about two things: ➡ Investors have concrete first principles regarding the ideal investment at all fundraising stages. Investment decisions are more of a science than previously thought. ➡ When founders receive investment, 99% of the time, their business just happens to match the investor's internal investment criteria. They were in the right place at the right time. Officially launching today, we have decided to break down the information barrier and provide you with exactly what investors want to see, down to every nuance, so you can fit your startup into that mold before pitching them. This isn't just "content"—it's interactive tools that will help you gain investment through fixing blindspots. Given we are venture capital consultants, we know how 15+ funds think about investing from the inside—not 1 or 2 VC funds. We also aren't founders who have raised a VC round and weren't working inside the VC firm: they don't know exactly why the VC invested. If you're planning to raise a round at some point or are facing investor rejections now, these are the only tools you will need to prepare for, accelerate, and close your fundraising round. ❇ Click the link in the bio for course access! ❇

I'm excited about this one tomorrow, as we've updated our "Reverse Engineering The Investment Decision" talk with real-time fundraising insights and hacks since our FI event last year, which had over 300 attendees. Plus, we're launching something special at the end :)

Rarely do you get a founder who is transparent and detailed about their fundraising campaign. Vimcal’s John Li was humble and courageous enough to do so, resulting in an accurate and actionable effort to help founders in their fundraising efforts. Thank you, John!

A great team, innovative product and a hot market don't always close a venture round. What does? A Startup's "X-Factor" This is vague and ambiguous for most founders, but we break it down here:

Dive in to learn how we helped our friends at Arbol get past investor objections through our one-of-a-kind, proprietary fundraising consulting (that actually works):

"Closing a funding round is like herding cats." Read on for a unique way to give you more control over the fundraising timeline.

Founders, how often have you been asked about your lead investor commitment? Here is a tool to encourage investors to commit when you haven't secured one yet:

Investors are mistaken to be asking about moats at the early stages. Read on to learn how to reframe this question and push past this potential investor rejection.

The art of raising early-stage capital is widely discussed, but the technical science is not. Dive in to learn how to reverse engineer the venture capital investment decision.

Contrary to popular belief, warm intros to venture capitalists won't be the primary reason you secure investment. Read on to find out why.