How to RaiseVenture Capital

A guide for founders by Aaron Harris

The premise

In a real sense, every round is basically seed now.

Metrics lost most of their value as an objective standard. Technology stopped working as a differentiator. Strip all of that away and one fixed point remains: the founder.

Yet while the evaluation of companies got fuzzier, the process of raising money didn't. A raise still has mechanics, and those mechanics are learnable. They are largely the same whether you're raising a $15 million SAFE or a $500 million round.

Questions every founder has to answer

When do I raise?How do I actually do it?Should I raise at all?

New chapters are published as they're written.

Front matter

Introduction

Part I

Deciding to Raise

About the author

Aaron Harris

Aaron built Y Combinator's Series A program as a partner at YC, where he co-wrote the program's fundraising guide. He now works with founders on their raises at Magid & Co. Through YC and Magid, he has worked directly with founders raising over $6 billion at these stages.

This book is the lessons from those rounds, adapted and improved, including plenty learned from watching raises fail.

Questions every founder has to answer

Contents

Introduction

Deciding to Raise

Aaron Harris

New chapters, as they're written.