These posts should come with a disclaimer: If you don't have a) significant traction or b) "elite" connections, then it's unreasonable to expect to raise a seed round in Silicon Valley at all.<p>The author has Yale and YC connections, among the most "elite" there are. It's virtually certain he could not have raised funding without these connections. If you don't have a similar background (i.e. 99.9% of people), then the advice is more harmful than helpful.<p>From the Atrium Scale web site:<p>"The Scale Program is a 1:1 mentorship program that helps founders craft their Series A pitch and <i>get exclusive intros to our network of investors and partners.</i>"<p>The business model of organizations like YC and "Atrium Scale" is to sell access to their "elite" networks.<p>They perpetuate Silicon Valley elitism for profit. They help a lucky few chosen founders and damage the entire ecosystem for everyone else.<p>The best advice for anyone that is not a lucky member of these private clubs is to just build a regular business and ignore Silicon Valley entirely. Once you have significant traction, you can raise money with 100% certainty. Greed is the ultimate motivator for most investors.
> Sometimes an investor who hasn’t invested will offer to intro you to another investor.<p>> Don’t take it!<p>> The signal you are sending is bad; if you were a good investment, the first investor would have invested.<p>I just completed a $750k seed round and this is the only thing I don't agree with. Some investors simply don't want to be in certain spaces, even if it is a good investment. Would you invest in a car when you knew nothing about that car or cars in general?
>With the cost of rolling out an MVP (minimum viable product) lowering every year, many startups think you need a prototype in order to raise a seed round.<p>I might argue that it’s the opposite. We hit peak MVP, there is too much competition, all the Low hanging fruit is gone, and we’re going to have to go back to the days where we raised seed capital off of a business plan because you can build much in today’s market as an MVP. The app days are gone.
> <i>Commitments go both ways: don’t back out from investors — or feel guilty if investors back out from your seed round — after the following 4 steps have been completed</i><p>This sentence does not make sense to me as written. Based on the first clause, I assume it's supposed to mean that neither party can back out. But I just don't see this meaning in the two clauses that follow. Is the first clause ("<i>don't back out from investors</i>") telling investors what to do, or telling the founders what to do?
Hello HN! Atrium CEO Justin Kan here. Happy to answer any questions about the article or help coach you through the process live in our next Atrium Scale program.
Great article. I would just add that using a service like DocSend will give you a great visibility into which slides your investors spend the most time on, hence allowing you to fine-tune your messaging over time.
See also another recent post on process and leverage in fundraising <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17013516" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17013516</a> and another previous experience <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7858317" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7858317</a><p>PS. We are currently raising Series A in China/HK @ <a href="http://8-food.com/" rel="nofollow">http://8-food.com/</a>