It’s the first Build episode of 2018! In it, we’re going to tackle the first misconception a lot of first-time founders fall prey: thinking they need to reach out to investors the moment they have an idea.
It turns out you actually don’t need to reach out to investors and you can get started by funding your idea on your own. You’ve probably heard this a lot already…
Quite frankly, investors won’t even take meetings if you do reach out. I can count on two hands the number of investors who I had successfully raised from in previous years that wouldn’t even return my emails recently! Why? Because it’s getting really competitive out there and they want to make sure startups have substantial progress before they are willing to take time to meet.
To help us out, I’ve invited Erica Brescia, who is the COO and co-founder of Bitnami. Erica has also recently joined XFactor as an investment partner. XFactor is an early-stage investment firm that’s looking to fund female founders as well as mix-gendered teams.
I choose Erica and her peers to come on the show because they are ALL founders first and investors second. Meaning they have sat on both sides of the table.
As you watch today’s episode you’ll learn:
– Why investment may not be applicable to the type of business you are building and alternate approaches to funding your startup
– The questions investors ask themselves before they will respond to a meeting request or write a startup a check
– When startups are “too early” to fundraise and why the definition of “too early” is inconsistent — who really gets funded early and why
– The work that startup founders and teams must do, if they are keen on attracting investment
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Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer ( and Pivotal Tracker ( San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (
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