Michael Pilegaard’s Post

Got a s**t term sheet but you're running out of runway? Should you negotiate that fkd up deal? Background: I've raised $7M in angel and VC by pitching to over 150 investors. I've faced this exact situation. Answer: Yes. You MUST negotiate. But... you think... I'll lose the investor. You are equally likely to lose the investor if you don't negotiate good terms. He/she needs to see that you can protect the company's interests in future rounds. So negotiate... ...for things that really matter. - Liquidation preference - Warrants - Control & board structure - Veto rights - Anti-dilution provisions If you don't know these terms 👆 Hang tight... I’ll be sending a deep dive out this Sunday. To get that deep dive, use the link below to get my fundraising guide. TL;DR Always negotiate deal terms, you never know what you can get. I went through 167 investors pitches and raised $7M. I turned that experience into a scalable fundraising system. You can get my fundraising system ☝ for free and skip all the rejections, just click here: https://lnkd.in/e_Fm5zRs 500+ smart founders are using my fundraising guide to cut their fundraising time from years to months. +Follow me here for practical advice and frameworks to accelerate your startup from idea to $2M ARR. If you learned something useful from this post, be sure to give it a like and repost it to share it with your fellow founders!

Founders - 30 investor meetings and no deal? Here’s how one founder kept going—and won. I recently worked with a founder who launched their raise with 30 investor meetings right out of the gate. The initial response was positive—but not enough to close a deal. Instead of slowing down, this founder doubled down. Over weeks three to five, they added 20 more meetings, pushing their total to 50. And then... it happened. A term sheet came through from one of those later conversations—a deal that might never have surfaced if they’d stopped after the first wave. The takeaway? Persistence pays off. The founders who close rounds are often the ones who face the most rejection—but keep going anyway. Keep the momentum alive. Don’t stop after the first round.

This is such a true post but I want to add another angle. When founders are seeking Venture Capital and in the process of pitching funds, they should ask those funds these questions: 1. Are you actively making investments in new companies or are you only supporting current portfolio companies with follow-on investment. 2. Have you closed your Fundraise (VC's are always actively raising from LPs, just like founders are raising from VC's) or are you still seeking to close your fund target. 3. If the fund is fully capitalized, always ask where they are in their deployment cycle. If X fund is a $10M fund, have only deployed $1M and they write $100K-$500K checks, that is a much better spot than the same fund that has already deployed $6M or $7M. Its a competition game at this point. All of these questions can be answered in a 15 min call vs going through 2-3 pitch meetings. Many funds meet founders when they have no capital to deploy which is fine. But value your time when it comes to fundraising efforts. It is a game changer. #venturecapital #entrepreneurship

Have to seriously echo the first point. This is the first thing I share with most start ups that come to me for advice on fundraising. 2 & 3 are usually where I go after as well. Anthony Obi solid advice. All gems here. #venturecapital

There is a secret language in VC that founders are expected to know. BUT Underrepresented founders often don't speak this language and I've been in a ton of situations where that has killed the pitch. Investors are really turned off when you don't know these answers To break it down, I'm going to write a list of pitch-killing questions that you need to know off the top of your head. So far I've got - About the raise: What's your pre-money/post-money valuation? How much are you raising? What % of the company will investors own? Do you have SEIS/EIS advanced assurance? How much have you raised? Financials: What's your ARR? What year do you expect to be profitable? What revenue do you need to break even? What's your burn rate? How much runway will the raise give you? What other pitch killers would you add?

vital VC/founder translations from Jem Stein #foundeds save these to prepare for your next pitch!

Dear Founders, A handshake isn’t the deal-sealer, it used to be ,also just because you’ve signed a term sheet doesn’t mean that the VC will invest or that you can compell them to invest. A credit alert is the best way the deal is sealed in today’s market. Always remember you cannot stop fundraising just because you’ve signed a term sheet. I’ve seen investors back out of a deal trying to renegotiate terms after signing term sheets. By continuing to talk to other investors and fielding offers, you can put pressure on the investor to close the deal quickly and ensure they don’t change terms on you.

Caught up with one of the top growth funds this week and asked how they answer the classic "how do you win deals?" question from LPs. Their response? "We are nice people." Crazy to think that cash has become a commodity, but kindness and genuine relationships still set the best funds apart. It’s a reminder that success in this space isn’t just about the money—you need the right people too. #VentureCapital #InvestorRelations #StartupAdvice #GrowthFunds 

Yesterday we launched our 35th issue of Deal Sheet. It's a curated list of private market SPVs being run by the best syndicate leads (60+) in the ecosystem... and comes with discounted carried interest. We send it out every Monday and yesterday was our 35th issue, which included 7 deals. 7 deals is high for us as we typically share 3-5 deals per week. When we launched Deal Sheet, Zachary and I were committing to curating/sourcing high quality deals every single week. By committing to this, we're committing to not taking a single week off. We haven't yet. We've now proven we can do it for 35 weeks in a row (and for a growing customer base of angel investors/LPs). The aim is to grow the SPV partner ecosystem, which will allow for better and better access going forward, providing the best access to private market deals (pre-seed through pre-IPO). If you are a syndicate lead, we'd love to work with you!