- The fundraising panel features three women from the Seattle scene who will share their advice and lessons on fundraising.
- In 2017, only 2% of VC funding went to all-female founding teams and 12% went to mixed gender teams.
- Beth Kolko, co-founder of Shift Labs, has raised $2 million for her medical device company.
- Amy Nelson, founder and CEO of The Riveter, has raised $720,000 in a pre-seed round and is currently in the middle of a seed round.
- Kristen Hamilton, CEO and co-founder of Koru, has raised $15 million in three rounds for her predictive hiring company.
- The panelists discuss their experiences with fundraising, including the sources of their funding and the geographic differences in fundraising approaches.
- They emphasize the importance of networking, making warm connections, and presenting confidence in order to secure investments.

- The speaker made a deck and created a list of VCs to talk to for fundraising.
- They underestimated how much time fundraising would take as a CEO.
- Investors for their company come from various cities across the country.
- Silicon Valley investors are more risk tolerant and do less due diligence compared to investors in other cities.
- Seattle is an emerging city for venture capital funds.
- New York investors are more focused on financial due diligence.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of knowing the numbers and being confident in presenting them during fundraising.
- Perseverance is key, even for those who don't have an existing network for fundraising.
- The first person to invest is usually someone who knows the founder personally.
- The speaker highlights the support and introductions that can be obtained through one's community and network.
- Fundraising is a challenging process with ups and downs, and having a support network is important for coping with the lows.

- The speaker shares a nightmare experience with an investor at a Starbucks on Mercer Island.
- They emphasize the importance of having a supportive network during the lows of fundraising.
- The speaker relies on their co-founder and team for support and processing after pitching.
- They mention the need to have a good attitude and expect to hear "no" often before hearing "yes."
- The speaker advises setting a fundraising plan and not being afraid of the hard aspects of the process.
- They recommend pitching to less impressive VCs first to gain experience and seeking feedback from CEOs who have raised money.
- The goal is to receive feedback from investors and take notes to improve with each round of pitching.

- The fundraising panel features three successful women from the Seattle scene who share their advice and experiences on fundraising.
- In 2017, VC funding for all-female founding teams was only 2%, while mixed gender teams received 12%.
- The panelists, including Beth Kolko, Amy Nelson, and Kristen Hamilton, have collectively raised millions of dollars for their companies.
- They discuss the sources of their funding, geographic differences in fundraising approaches, and the importance of networking and confidence in securing investments.
- They highlight the challenges and ups and downs of fundraising, the importance of having a supportive network, and the need for perseverance.
- The speaker advises setting a fundraising plan, pitching to less impressive VCs first for experience, and seeking feedback from experienced CEOs.

During our Seattle Female Founders Conference Kristen Hamilton (Koru), Beth Kolko (Shift Labs) and Amy Nelson (The Riveter) spoke with YC CFO and Partner Kirsty Nathoo about their fundraising experiences.

Read the transcript here -  https://blog.ycombinator.com/fundraising-advice-from-female-founders

If you'd like to watch more, Kirsty spoke with Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures at a previous Female Founders Conference -
 https://blog.ycombinator.com/aileen-lee-and-kirsty-nathoo-at-the-female-founders-conference/

Next part of the session is going to be a fundraising panel where we have 3 ladies from the Seattle scene who are going to impart some advice on how they've approached fundraising and some of the lessons that they've learned.

I'm the CFO there, so I look after all of the finance for both YC internally and also helping founders with raising money, looking at cap tables, understanding dilution.

So seen a lot and seen a lot of things happen during fundraising.

Just to give you a couple of stats, in 2017, only 2% of VC funding went to all female founding teams, and only 12% went to mixed gender teams.

So there's a lot of work to be done there, and we hope that you ladies in the audience can help to change that trend and really get those numbers up in the future.

So I'm going to pass over to the ladies now.

They'll do a much better job of introducing themselves.

So each of you, if you want to just explain a little bit about your company, who you are, and how much you've raised so far.

So I'm Beth Kolko, and I am the co-founder of Shift Labs, which is a medical device company here in Seattle.

And I started the company after being a professor for many years, including at UW.

And we have raised a total of, well, 1.7 million of dilutive and then a $300,000 grant, so just about $2 million, which, for a medtech company is not a lot, and we have a product that's on the market and approved in the US as well as Europe and a few other places.

So that's what I do, that's what I have been doing, and fundraising is, well I will just say this, When I told my partner what I was doing, he said, you know, don't take this the wrong way, honey, but you've done a lot of things really well, but they do know that fundraising has been the hardest thing for you, right?

I was like, yeah, it has been, so maybe that's why I'm here.

My name is Amy Nelson, and I'm the founder and CEO of The Riveter.

And we're really excited to host the conference today and to have all of you here.

We launched this space, our first space in May, The Riveter is female forward workspaces and community for business and impact.

We launched our second space in September and we have raised a pre-seed last spring of 720,000 and then we're about halfway through a seed round right now.

So in an interesting position to be on this panel, kind of in the middle of everything.

But fundraising is hard, but it's necessary, and it's important to learn how to do it and how to do it well.

And so I'm happy that we can all be up here to tell our stories and that small piece of that.

I just want to say that I've never seen this space look more beautiful than today.

And I've seen it before but it looks amazing.

How many people here are in the process of starting a company or have started a company?

So we're helping employers choose the right talent using machine learning and AI, and ultimately leveling the playing field to provide access to opportunity for people based on things like what they can do instead of where they went to school.

We've raised $15 million in 3 rounds in this company.

There's a story in each round, but I'm guessing we're going to get to that.

1 stat I'd like to share that someone shared with me that was daunting, but interesting.

They said you're more likely to get struck by lightning than to raise, than to get a term sheet from a Silicon Valley venture investor.

Sadie told me that when I was in the process of fundraising.

So I just want to be here to say that it's all possible, despite the odds, and getting more and more possible.

We have a lot of different perspectives here.

So first of all, let's talk a little bit about where the money came from.

Did you raise money from people here in Seattle, or did you have to go further afield?

And if you did go further afield, did you see any real differences in the different geographic locations that made you have to change your approach?

we went through YC in winter 15, and before that we had done a small incubator here in Seattle for a kind of social conscious companies called Fledge.

We did a kind of small, we raised a little bit of money, mostly friends and family kind of stuff before we got into YC.

Most of our money was raised as a result of YC's demo day.

And I'm gonna be completely honest about that.

So MedTech is pretty traditional in terms of investment, at least MedDevices, and our team didn't come from that background.

That was sort of part of our superpower in terms of thinking about the product, but it made fundraising really challenging.

So what worked for us was to tap into people's optimism and desire to change the world.

And so the investors who really came into that first seed round after demo day were people who believed in the vision and also were willing to think not just about the US but globally.

And so most of those investors came from California, came from Silicon Valley, some came from other parts of the world as well, some institutional but a lot of angels.

And so they just, it seemed like they had more appetite for risk and they were surrounded by more risky things and so they were willing to look at us and say, hey, why not?

Future fundraising activities, similar to where you're at, is, you know, now we're in a different position and now we actually are reaching out into that med tech community, which again asks, is not as interested in risk and has different kinds of metrics, and so it's about adapting to that.

So we definitely see differences geographically, as well as based on what people's backgrounds are.

I'll talk about the angel round that we raised, and then how I have approached raising the seed round.

In the angel round that we raised, we raised on a safe.

So an important kind of precursor to going out to raise is deciding the vehicle on which you will raise, which is something I had to learn about.

I was a lawyer for 10 years, So it was brand new to all of this when I started this a year ago.

So we decided on the vehicle we would raise on.

And then I kind of stumbled into my first angel investors by attending events.

So I went to startup week and I raised my hand.

I think you were on the panel I was at, Was it the Mompreneur panel?

And I raised my hand and asked a question and prefaced it by talking about my business.

Because I would say that is the 1 thing you have to talk about what you're doing to everyone.

Because you never know who you're talking to.

So I raised my hand and asked a question about the business.

And afterward, a woman came up to me and asked me some questions about it.

I ended up pitching her and she became my first investor.

My second investor, I was in my daughter's co-op preschool class talking to another mother who I barely knew about what I was doing, and she said, you should talk to my husband, he's a serial entrepreneur.

He became my second investor, and then introduced me to my third and fourth investors.

And so for me, that was really a lesson, and you don't know who does angel investing, and who you're talking to who might be interested in your business.

On the flip side, I then went ahead after those kind of instances, I went ahead and made a list of people in my network or people I wanted to invest, and then for the people I wanted to invest, I found connections to them.

I was super methodical about it, spreadsheet, going on LinkedIn, I wanna connect to person X, who can introduce me?

Asking the people to introduce me and seeking out those really warm connections, which I think is massively helpful in fundraising, which makes sense because it's easier to say yes to taking the time to listen to someone or listen to an idea if you have an introduction from a trusted person.

And then the final piece, I guess, about the angel investing piece that I learned a lot in the pre-seed round is that, that early in a company, and I was raising money when the Riveter was just an idea, that I had a deck and an idea and myself.

And angel investors and early, early investors are largely investing in the founder and what they think if they think you can pull it off and so you have to be really confident that you can and project that and present that every way that you can.

With the VCs and approaching the seed round, at the beginning I don't think I was incredibly organized about how I would go out and do it.

And then I realized what I needed to do was put together a full deck, which I didn't want to do because it's like a high school project.

Like, oh, I have to sit down and write all the slides.

But it's really, really important because it's what people will look at when they're, you know, being introduced to your business and thinking about it.

So I made a deck and then I sat down and I made a long list of VCs that I wanted to talk to and then once again I figured out a way to get warm introductions, which it took a lot of time.

I completely underestimated how much of my time as a CEO would go to fundraising in the early days.

But that's kind of, and then I've gone geographically all over the country both times.

So just in terms of where our investors come from, They come from Seattle, they come from San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, everywhere, which is everywhere the Riveter will be.

Yeah, when we were on the mompreneur panel, I asked when the dadpreneur panel was going to be.

So I've raised money in 7 different rounds of venture.

So scattered geographically everywhere, I would say.

And my learning has been to generalize and stereotype.

Silicon Valley investors are the most risk tolerant and do the least due diligence.

Than most of them, many of them, than other cities.

So that city has just, that environment has just seen so many more iterations.

We did not raise any money from Seattle other than some angels who jumped in after we had a term sheet.

There just haven't been that many venture capital funds in Seattle.

And I think that it has been, initially, maybe more of a follower, but it's really exciting to see what's happening now in Seattle, because there's an increasing number of venture funds and more dollars in Seattle.

And the nature of Seattle's history in tech has been more enterprise and B2B.

So therefore, raising money for a consumer business in Seattle was a little bit harder.

So there's differences and nuances, I think, geographically.

New York investors are financial investors.

And they do a lot of due diligence and they ask me questions I had never been asked before that would make people in Silicon Valley roll their eyes.

But I think the differentiator about the fundraising I've experienced is more relevant from early when you haven't raised money before versus late when you've raised it before.

So a good friend of mine is the CEO of pro.com.

He said that, Kristen, we know who's going to lead our next round.

We don't know who it's going to be, but we know that person.

We have a relationship with the person who's going to raise, who's going to lead our next round.

And it was a really interesting thing that he said, because I thought, yeah, that's right.

It's not, I'm not going to go to a stranger at this point, because we have relationships.

But that first round, that first time, it was like beg, borrow, steal.

And I was also 28 years old, so it was really, really hard.

And so to me, that's just the difference is geographical to some extent, as I described.

But I think it's different strategies depending on where you are yourself in your fundraising evolution and then also obviously where you are in your company of course as well.

So how does in terms of that strategy how does it work even if you're raising you know a seed round or a pre-seed round or whatever you want to call it, everybody calls things differently.

You know, even that early first money, you're talking to a combination of individuals and to institutional investors of 1 form or another.

How do you, do you change your approach, or do you talk differently to each of those sets of people?

I guess I have thoughts on this, being kind of in the middle of it.

So I have a background in political fundraising because I was able to go out and raise money for candidates I believed in, which has been very helpful in this.

And I think the main difference that I've had to learn between raising from individuals and raising from institutions is that it is less of a conversation when you're talking to institutions.

I think when I started, I kind of went in more conversational how I am, you know, just me.

And I realized, I kind of sat back after a first few pitches and thought, you know, I used to be a litigator and I know what going into a meeting like that is and being very professional and talking about a deal.

And I needed to go in and say, this is my business.

This is an opportunity I'm giving to you to join something I am building that will show incredible returns, is a great business, and I'm a really good CEO.

And this is the deal and I'd love for you to join me and that's it.

And I think taking that approach has worked a lot better for me.

It's not how I approach conversations with people every day, but this is a business conversation and to present it as such.

And then also, I have learned, the further I've gotten into this, and I only have 9 months of experience in this, so I am not an expert, but you have to nail the numbers.

You need to know your numbers inside and out.

You need to know the model that you built, why you put those assumptions in, how things can change if you don't, you know, if say there was a downturn, how would it change this or X or Y?

But you really need to know your numbers.

You come across as much more knowledgeable about your business and you do actually know your business better when you know the numbers and I think that's something that we don't talk about enough but that really, really knowing the numbers that you're presenting inside and out is so critical.

Yeah that's definitely a sad fact really when out fundraising that women are held to a higher standard in that.

And really knowing your numbers inside out is absolutely crucial, because as soon as you start wavering, you lose the confidence of the investors.

I'm going to just add something as someone who came to fundraising with very little relevant experience.

I'd been a professor, I knew how to teach a class, but that was pretty much it.

Turns out I did know how to build a medical device.

So I didn't have a list of people to go to.

I'm gonna second this spreadsheet, warm intros, LinkedIn.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I hate social media, but LinkedIn is my best friend.

I spend a tremendous amount of time looking for those, looking for those warm intros that can be made.

But when we first worked on raising, we did it for years, I mean years, talking to everyone.

The first check came from a friend who had a company and gave us their supply closet basically, turned it into an office for us and he just saw us working every day for years on end and saw the terrible things that were happening, you know all the typical stories you hear about investors, they all happened and he just watched us go through it and he saw how dedicated we were and that's That's where the first check came from.

But my co-founder and I, we didn't know anybody with money.

But, you know, so I guess what I want to say is even when you're new at it and you don't have that existing network, perseverance is, that's what you need.

That's really all you need is that perseverance.

I'll just share 1 quick story, 1 quick story.

The first ever check that was written was by the guy I'd worked for for my first job after college So I was a consultant and he was the partner who started this consulting firm for tech companies and I you know killed myself for him.

I was really I worked at sleep under the desk and so forth and he and I was getting I was an immigrant so I got a green card through him.

And actually, that was a huge deal because I was essentially a prisoner in this company.

But I was the person that made his life OK, because he didn't have to sleep under the desk.

And then fast forward I start this company with this guy I went to college with and we're like here's our idea.

And he was and I went to his office with Glenn and we sat there and I'll never forget he hand wrote the check for $25,000 and he slid it across the desk and he said, don't lose my money.

I was like, okay, I was terrified actually.

I have a, I can't, I really am the most responsible with, I can't stand the idea of losing someone's money, it's like Canadian puritanical work ethic thing.

But I would say that the lesson in that is the first person that will write you a check is the person who knows you.

I think to the point of you were in their supply closet or I was sleeping under the desk to make his life better.

So he saw what I was capable of and they'll invest in you as opposed to necessarily your company.

And it's funny, now I do some angel investing and I invest in people, people I know really well and when they're starting something it sort of almost doesn't matter what they're starting, because I know them that well.

So I think a lot of angels actually think about it that way.

1 quick thing to add to this, because we've talked about LinkedIn a lot for warm introductions.

You might kill me for saying this, but like Kristen, Avni, Kieran, who you will hear from later, they have all made introductions for me.

And that's what your community will do for you.

You are a female founder, this tribe will help you.

So I think it's been made fairly clear here that fundraising is pretty hard.

It's a long process and it has ups and downs.

So how have you learned to cope with the lows of it, and what support networks have you been able to leverage through that?

Okay, so I'm gonna tell my nightmare story.

I won't tell the nitty gritty details, but there was a horrible thing that happened.

Just an investor was completely inappropriate, and it was in a Starbucks on Mercer Island so it was really public and I couldn't even get outraged and then and I had to go then I had to take the bus home afterwards and And so I'd kept my composure in front of him and then I got on the bus and I'm sobbing and I'm just texting everyone I know.

And they're all like, no, it's not normal.

And the next day I walked in and my co-founder, I was telling him about it.

And I'd been texting with him and he said, I want you to write it down.

I mean, the people who support you and everything else in your life, they will support you through the lows, because there will be lows.

Everyone, men and women, fundraising is really hard, but it's also crucial.

I'd say other than a lot of red wine, my co-founder, because there's nobody else to party process with in that way.

We go to the party, which was not really a party.

And we wonder about the body language in the room and whatever.

I mean, I'm just in my core, I think I just prefer to co-found things.

And that, for me, has been my saving grace.

There are days I do well at processing and days I don't.

I think, for me, knowing the expectation is really important, that I'm going to hear no All of the time until I hear yes and just accepting that and knowing that it's absolutely not personal even though it can feel like it Changes the bar for me.

I I am on my own pitching largely, which is somewhat different, but I rely on my team a ton to talk through things with me, to prepare me, to bounce things off of.

I talk to my family about it a lot, too, because probably they wish I wouldn't, but I do.

And you know, I just I take time out to exercise which is really important for me and my own mental health because you can let this consume you 24 hours a day and you should give yourself an hour, you should give yourself an hour a day.

I think that's really important and you're going to hear horrible things, you're going to hear things that people wouldn't say to men but it's really equally as hard for men and women in terms of the number of investors you're gonna have to pitch to before you hear yes.

So just a good attitude is really important.

Okay, so we just have a couple of minutes left.

So I guess for each of you, is there anything that you wish you'd known when you were starting That you can you can share with with the audience here so that when they go off to do their fundraising They've got that piece of advice in their mind

So there was a time with my company where I was working to raise, so essentially for MedTech, you know, we raise this money to build a device.

It's really expensive to commercialize devices.

I should have raised more money to commercialize it and I didn't.

And I started and it was hard and I was like, oh, I'd rather just talk to our customers because they love me.

I let myself stop doing the hard thing and then I did the comfortable thing, which was I'll work on sales because I love doing that and that's where I get the positive feedback and it's not where I'm getting the relentless nose.

That would have been better for the future, for the growth trajectory of our company.

I think for me it would be as I was going out to raise the seed, I wish I had said, I am going to start raising the seed on this date, and at that time I will have my deck ready, I will have my list of VCs I want to approach ready, and I will just go and do it.

And I kind of dragged the process out a little bit on the front end of not having everything prepared and starting to talk to people.

And I think every time I go forward, I'll have my list of people I'm reaching out to, the dates I'm going to fundraise.

Like you make a business plan, make a fundraising plan.

I'm going to give you something very tactical that I didn't do before and I started doing in this company which has been incredibly helpful.

So the first few times you pitch you're terrible and sometimes so they say go with the you know That's the right way to say this the VCS that seem like your least favorite maybe or the less, you know impressive I don't know what the you want to have some reps.

So don't have those reps with an investor the only other person so the the Fundraising process is an unfair equation because as entrepreneurs we raise, I've raised 7 rounds of venture, that's a lot in a career.

And venture capitalists are doing many, many more deals than that.

So the only other person who can really give you good feedback other than an investor is a CEO who's raised money.

So what I started to do is I do this like, I don't have a name for it, but all in 1 day, I ask my friends who are founders who have raised money successfully to come for 45 minute chunks and we pitch them.

And we get in a room, and there's no like, you know, pretending it, they're an investor, and we are pitching them.

And we go for 20 minutes or whatever, and then we get feedback for whatever the rest of the time is and they're like relentless You know, which is exactly it's a gift that feedback is a gift So we did that and in 1 day we pitched whatever 4 CEOs Who had raised a ton of money and sold companies to Google and like that value was so incredible So find ways to do that.

I would just highly recommend it and then think about that feedback Once you start actually pitching investors the best you're not going to get a yes on your first pitch, but you are gonna get feedback.

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Fundraising Advice from Female Founders