Dallas Price’s Post

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Venture Builder @ Forum Ventures / Co-Founder @ Leo Prestte

🚨 If you’re looking to bring in your first institutional funding - I have great news, Forum Ventures is investing in 30 companies from our accelerator fund over the next 3 months. Last week I posted about how essential it is to fundraise from institutional investors early on in the process. Most people agreed but it’s clear that raising funding from institutional investors, especially in smaller ecosystems isn’t easy. I don’t have a silver bullet for you but here’s how you can improve the odds: Accelerators can be your foot in the door: YC, TechStars & Forum write way more checks than seed funds so it's going to be way easier to get funding from them. This doesn’t guarantee your future fundraise will be easy but the top companies within a batch always end up with a ton of institutional meetings post-accelerator. Traction isn’t optional: We had a second time founder fresh off an exit pitching a Gen AI startup. Every investor came back needing to see traction before they were willing to invest. The ZIRP times are over - without customers on board it's probably not going to happen. Expect it to take 6 months: Most Series A+ founders took 70-120 meetings to raise their seed. It's extremely time-consuming and founders under-estimate how long and how much effort is required to raise those funds. Investors will want to see a track record of hitting goals and to establish that track record it’s going to take a couple of months of investor updates to prove that you can consistently hit your goals. Get out of your smaller ecosystem: Most VCs aren't in smaller ecosystems - even Techstars just pulled out of basically everywhere. Plan trips to SF, Toronto, NY, and Miami to be in closer proximity to circles of funding and build your network there. This is going to take longer than a one-week trip. Consider spending extended periods of time in those locations during your fundraise to build that network.

Georgina Y. Castellano

Scientist | Speaker | 2x founder and builder

9mo

Even being in NY it’s still hard finding funding with the right VC. The entrepreneur journey is definitely a rollercoaster.

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