Written for pre-seed and seed founders. The honest version — what actually works, what doesn't, and the numbers we see from thousands of rounds run on the platform.
A funnel from 300 contacts to 12 first meetings to 4 term sheets — and why most founders get this wrong before they start. Plus the calibration math to run on yourself week three of the raise.
Six things every line should be doing. We pulled the 200 highest-reply-rate first-touches from the platform and reverse-engineered what they had in common.
A network of 30 warm intros is the start of a raise, not the whole raise. How to map adjacents, layer cold outreach without diluting the warm channel, and time the two streams.
Tuesday at 8:47 a.m. local. Sort of. The real pattern is more interesting — and it changes by check size and stage.
A real schedule, with the slack between activities marked. Where the dead weeks fell, what we'd do differently, and how the inbox actually filled up.
Why most founders give up after touch two — and why the third and fourth touches are where 38% of our platform's replies actually land. A cadence template included.
A look under the hood at the assessment: the seven dimensions we weight, the two we explicitly downweight, and why “team experience” isn't what most founders think it is.