- The video features a discussion among four female founders about their fundraising experiences.
- The founders include Jamie Wong, CEO of Viable, Danielle Morrill, CEO of Mattermark, Anne Johnson, CEO of Interana, and Michelle Crosby, CEO of Weverse.
- They discuss lessons learned during the fundraising process, such as the importance of finding angel investors before approaching big VC firms.
- They also emphasize the need to focus on talking to customers rather than spending too much time with potential investors.
- The founders share their experiences with different types of investors and the benefits of asking questions and building rapport during meetings.
- They highlight the importance of targeting investors who have expertise in their industry and understand their business model.
- Overall, the discussion emphasizes the importance of strategic fundraising and building long-term relationships with investors.

- The speaker emphasizes the importance of building rapport with investors and maintaining a long-term relationship with them.
- They suggest dividing meetings into three parts: a conversation to build rapport, a pitch with engaging highlights every two minutes, and a closing with a next step.
- The speaker shares their experience of feeling unprepared for fundraising but realizing that waiting for readiness is not productive.
- They discuss the difficulties of the fundraising process, including time commitment, rejection, and juggling various tasks.
- The speaker mentions the challenge of conveying their passion and vision through a pitch deck and feeling frustrated when investors don't understand.
- The panelists discuss their experiences as female founders and mention slight differences in treatment by investors, with female VCs and angels being easier to relate to.

- The speaker shares their experience of being treated differently as a woman in fundraising
- They advise asking the person to clarify their statements when faced with inappropriate comments
- The speaker also mentions being stereotyped as the "girl Friday" and facing questions about being married to a co-founder
- They highlight the importance of focusing on the business and market during pitches
- Another speaker advises to be efficient and schedule multiple meetings in a day to speed up the fundraising process.

- The speaker discusses their experience with fundraising and meeting with investors
- They emphasize the importance of being strategic and selective in choosing investors
- They suggest finding a respected person in your field to vouch for your business plan
- The speaker advises sticking to your plan and vision, and not making drastic changes based on a few difficult meetings
- They recommend approaching investors with confidence and asking for advice rather than directly asking for money
- The speaker concludes by thanking the audience for their time and candor.

- The video features a discussion among four female founders about their fundraising experiences.
- They discuss lessons learned, such as finding angel investors before approaching big VC firms and focusing on talking to customers.
- The importance of targeting investors with industry expertise and building rapport is highlighted.
- The challenges of fundraising, including time commitment and rejection, are discussed.
- The experiences of female founders and the need to address inappropriate comments are mentioned.
- Efficient scheduling of meetings and being strategic in choosing investors are advised.
- Sticking to the business plan and approaching investors with confidence are recommended.

On the panel (from left to right): 
Jamie Wong (Vayable)
Danielle Morrill (Mattermark)
Ann Johnson (Interana)
Michelle Crosby (Wevorce)

Moderated by YC partner and CFO Kirsty Nathoo

Okay, everyone, we're going to now have a slightly different format for the next 30 minutes.

We're going to have a discussion amongst these 4 YC female founders about their fundraising experiences.

So hopefully there will be lots of lots of interesting stories for you all to listen to.

How many of you have been involved in the fundraising for your companies?

Okay so you will identify probably with a lot of what's going on.

And for the others who are going to be starting to fundraise, well, to be forewarned is to be forearmed.

Okay, so first of all, I'll introduce myself and then ask each 1 of these lovely ladies to introduce themselves as well.

I'm a partner at YC and I'm also the CFO there.

So I look after all the finance side of things and work with all the companies to help them get to the point where they can then start fundraising from other investors.

We are a marketplace for travel experiences.

After, we'd raised a little bit of money before YC, got the YC funding, and then after demo day, raised 1.7, so a total of $2.1 million in angel and small VCs.

I'm the CEO and co-founder of Mattermark.

I was in Jamie's batch, actually it's a completely different company called Referly.

We raised about a million dollars then, and then when we relaunched the company as something new, raised another 500,000.

And we're building tools to let people source deals.

So if you think about a sale that you want to close or an investment you want to make or a company you want to partner with or maybe buy.

Right now, the way people do that is they use Google and a spreadsheet.

So we want to organize the world's business information so people can do those deals much more efficiently.

We raised an angel round and a series A, and we were in Y Combinator last winter.

I'm the CEO and founder of Weverse, and we are transforming divorce through a high-tech and high-touch approach.

And 76% of divorces are filed by females, so I've left a stack of cards out there for this side of the room.

And we were part of the winter batch last year at YC, and we raised an angel VC round of about $2 million in about 2 weeks.

So what did you learn during the fundraising process that you really wish you'd known at the start instead of the end?

So I think PG actually told me all these really smart things and I didn't really listen at first.

And so it was funny because 1 of the things that I relearned, I would say, was, you know, they said, don't worry about taking money from these big VC firms when you're starting out.

Go find angel investors, people who have their own wealth or they've had their own experiences and let them be the first to invest in you, if you go and you try to reach out to VCs right away, it's probably going to be a waste of your time because you're just so small and that's not really what they focus on.

And so I was so enamored by finally being a founder and getting to talk to all these people that I was like, whatever, I'm going to go be different and I'm going to just raise from them anyway.

And so it turned out that it was a huge waste of time.

I mean, long-term it was great because we had these relationships, but that's not really the point.

The point is all that time that I spent talking to them, I could have spent talking to customers.

It kind of came back around in a funny way though.

So I finally had realized this wasn't working and I wasn't raising an associate from a really large firm I'd actually never heard of reached out.

So I was like, and he didn't say he wanted to talk about the company.

He said he just moved here and could we help him like get to know people.

And I moved here from somewhere else, so I have a lot of empathy for that.

So I went out to lunch with him and he was like, yeah, you know, this firm, it's NEA, it's Shield Tile.

I was like, no, you don't work for 1 of the biggest VC firms.

And then a couple weeks later he emailed me and I looked him up at this point and realized it was pretty stupid.

And he was like, can we come to the house?

And I was like, PG said not to talk to these people.

I keep breaking this rule and it's not working.

We'll come to the house, it will be 20 minutes, we'll make a decision in 24 hours.

And I'm like, you're coming to the house?

And eventually I capitulated and they came to the house and they actually did invest, but it was a lot of time spent, and ultimately we work with VCs now, but early on the investors that helped us the most were definitely the angels.

So a big lesson learned there, and the dance was funny, but at the same time I probably could have been talking to customers.

To her point, the reason why it sucks when you waste time doing something that doesn't work out is because when it's just a few founders, you can't work on your product while you're fundraising.

And it just stops, and you go out, and you go out and talk to all the VCs, and you're telling them how awesome your product is and how fast you can move and you're not actually doing anything and it feels bad.

But the thing that I found that I did wrong at first was we're a big data startup and there's a lot of big data startups.

And so we were kind of, we had this broad vision and everyone seemed like a competitor.

And we're like, okay, well we won't talk to any VCs who are invested in any of these competitors.

We won't talk to any firms that are invested in these competitors.

And so we went and we talked to people who weren't invested in big data.

And those people didn't care about big data.

They had no way of validating if what we were doing was interesting.

They were just like, yeah, it wasn't working.

And so we're like, okay, let's change strategy.

And we started talking to people who were the biggest investors in big data.

Those people, you know, they knew the landscape.

They understood what we were doing and why it was cool and why it was different.

They were able to call references on us of people who actually knew what they were talking about, and their contacts were the same as ours, and it was just wonderful.

So I'm a very open person, and So when I meet VCs, my first instinct is to tell them everything about my company.

And I think that was 1 of my reasons for not wanting to talk to people who are investing in competitors, because I can't keep secrets very well.

But what I found was that investors actually really like it when you ask questions.

And they don't actually want to sit there and listen to you blabber on.

And they're very proud of what they believe makes them differentiated as a VC.

They all have different specialties, and they all have different points of view and investing philosophies.

And 1 of the cool things that you get to do at Y Combinator is they set up meetings with you, with investors.

And SV Angel was in the office that day, and we were talking to the representative from SV Angel, and he had just gone and gotten a piece of pizza, And he was expecting to sit and eat his lunch quietly while he heard us talk about ourselves.

I asked him, I'm like, so tell me about us, the angel.

Tell me about what you guys are doing and why you invest in these companies.

And what we get if we choose you as an angel investor, what can you give back to the company other than just money?

And he kept eating the piece of pizza, but he talked while he did it.

And so now he's forever like the pizza guy, because he's actually really good at talking with his mouth full.

And so he just told us all about SV Angel.

In the end, we didn't have very much time to talk about our company.

But I got an email from him the next day saying he wanted to invest.

And he actually called out the fact, he's like, you guys are the only ones who asked us a whole bunch of questions.

And the thing, and the also thing about competitive, being concerned about competition, is that they don't care as much about you as you care about them.

They've got their business plan, and they're going through with it, and hearing what some unfunded startup is saying, they really just don't care.

And if you think, even I believe that our idea was like the best.

And if they just heard my idea that they would all of a sudden, you know, pivot and do my idea.

And so, you know, in the second or third meeting with the VC, when you do have to really open up, it's not as dangerous as you might think.

So on foreshadowing a lot of what's already been said, I think 1 of the surprising factors was you get so excited and so focused to just start talking about your company that you forget to build rapport with people and forget that you actually are going to be building a long-time relationship with these investors.

So by the time I got into it and started recognizing the patterns and even my I needed the confidence and so what I did was come up with a three-part structure and I divided no matter how long the investors would give me to talk to them, every meeting went into 3 parts.

99% of the investors you meet with will be male.

Get them talking about themselves because you want to like them at the end of the day.

And that really helps get the conversation going back and forth.

It gives you a little time to catch your breath, take the nerves off.

The second part was moving into your pitch.

The 1 fun fact I did know is that every 2 minutes, our brains automatically turn off.

So you have to do something to reengage them.

So try and build in those highlights every 2 minutes.

Otherwise, you get that glazed over effect.

And challenge them, ask them a question, and they'll start reengaging.

Don't ever leave a meeting without a next step.

You're already holding a lot of nervous energy, So when you're fundraising, always close it with something.

How do you see fitting in with our company?

If they don't have an answer, you know that's probably an indirect no.

If they have an answer and they want to think about it, put a hard stop on it.

OK, I'll hold the spot for you till Tuesday.

That way you have a next step for yourself.

So the most surprising thing for me, I think, was we raised money right after Y Combinator, right after Demo Day, so we sort of had this externally imposed structure and timeline.

I wasn't gonna come here and pitch and then not talk to investors, or do YC and not talk to investors.

Had I waited till I felt ready to fundraise or ready to meet with investors, I still would not be funded today.

Because you never feel ready, you never want to.

It's kind of a shitty experience because it's exhausting.

You're always repeating the same story over and over.

You have to keep track of a million things in spreadsheets, you're away from product, you're away from customers.

I don't really think it's fun or enjoyable or something you would seek out.

So Realizing I wasn't the only 1 who felt that way, and seeing friends go out for a series ABC, all the way through talking with banks and IPO, no 1 ever really feels ready or legitimized yet.

It's a complete cart before the horse situation.

That's why you're taking this step of fundraising.

And so just embracing that and not waiting for that feeling of like, This is it.

Today is the day I want to go out and fundraise.

You're just not going to have that feeling.

And really realizing, no, today is the day I'm going to go out and take 1 for the team, for my company, so that we can grow this and build out this vision.

So, realizing that a little bit after the fact, I think, was really empowering and kind of gave me a structure to use moving forward when I don't have YC telling me, you better raise money right now.

Great, So following on from that, I guess, what did you find the most difficult about the fundraising process?

And also, what did you find easy about the process?

But weirdly enough, the hardest part for us, we used the strategy of setting a date to take term sheets.

the trick about setting a date is you have to get a whole bunch of people at their peak excitement right at that date.

And so we did groundwork for a couple weeks.

And then 2 weeks we spent on Sand Hill Road and driving back and forth, taking meetings with everyone, trying to keep everyone excited.

In the end, there were people we wanted to talk to that we didn't get a chance to talk to.

We're like, okay, these people seem excited.

And it worked out well for us, but it was definitely a juggling act.

And now as I consider raising, as I'm considering raising again, it's the same thing over and over again.

Don't get them too excited until I'm ready for them to be excited.

Let's see, I think the hardest part was the time commitment.

And that's why I recommend just keeping that time period short.

If you're fundraising, focus on fundraising and get it over with quickly.

The other hardest part is not everyone is going to get what you do.

You always get good questions as you go through.

But those early no's, hit those early no's early and get them out of the way.

You don't want someone sitting on the fence that becomes a big investor.

You want them really believing in what you do.

And that also leads to what becomes easier, is the more you get out there and talk to people, the more you quickly learn who to spend time with and who to move quickly past.

I think the hardest part was realizing it's a lot more work than it maybe seems from the outside or it's kind of like when you're cleaning out your closet or trying to pack up to move and you feel like, okay, I'm gonna need maybe 20 boxes and it turns out you really need like 200 because there's so much more crap than you ever thought you owned and fundraising is a little bit like that where you think it'll be about this amount of time, it's gonna take you know me away for this long, it's gonna take this much effort, it's gonna take this many hours and meetings and it's always just a lot more because someone's lawyer is out of town or there's 1 little thing to nitpick.

There's just always things, and I think that part was challenging, just juggling all of that while you're stepping away from your product and customers so hard, and just embracing full on, okay, I'm committed.

I kind of got to roll with it until it's wrapped up.

Yeah, I would add that I feel like, I think Diane mentioned earlier that you don't actually know exactly what you're doing and it's kind of evolving as you're discovering things about your business and about your customers.

So, You're going into this office, I've always had a huge problem with the deck.

Because to them it's just a deck, and their job stays relatively the same every day, but my job is changing and I still don't actually, I think it's identity crisis, basically, early on when we were reforming what we were doing.

So I think that 1 of the hard things is that in that meeting, it's almost like you're having a therapy session a little bit.

They're giving you feedback and you're finding out things about what doesn't make sense or how you're not communicating the idea.

And on the inside, you're thinking, if I could just like turn myself inside out and show these people what I can see in the future, then of course they would invest, kind of to your point.

And so this deck is this, it's supposed to be this embodiment of this idea that you're so passionate about.

So I think when the meetings don't go well, it's really painful not just because you're not getting the money, although that's frustrating, but also because you're seriously feeling like, how come you can't see this?

And I think that I'm saying you can't see me because it's early on very much connected to who you are.

So I felt like that was hard, and then you can't necessarily bring that back and be like, hey co-founders, like come give me hugs for a while until I feel better.

So you're kind of just like holding on to that on your own until you finish the process.

And so I think, and I don't think people talk about that.

I did discover like further down the path that, oh, I could talk to other founders who've already raised and they'll actually know what that's about.

So that was really hard until I started to realize that was normal to not actually know exactly what we were.

Big question, do you think that you were treated differently for being a female founder by the investors, either positively or negatively?

So most of the investors we met with were male.

I remember meeting with 1 female VC, and I thought it was the coolest thing because she got a text and it was her nanny and she, you know, that hadn't happened.

You didn't see the human side of a lot of the investors.

So I found the female VCs and angels a little bit easier to relate to.

And, you know, fundraising, I always say ambition is gender neutral.

We achieved all of our metrics that we were after.

So it always surprised me when the press would say female founder questions.

So it took me a while to find my rhythm with answering those questions.

I had the blessing and surprise of discovering I was pregnant shortly after closing our round.

So I didn't really notice the difference, the gender difference, until after I was visibly pregnant and an investor said, oh if I would have known you were going to get pregnant, I wouldn't have invested in you.

And I remember at that point going, what do you do in this particular moment?

So if you do find yourself in that situation, ask the question back, you know, and say, well, what do you mean by that?

Or just pause it back and throw that, you just feel like you take a punch and it takes you off guard.

So remember to throw it back in a neutral way.

And then he all of a sudden went, oh, that was kind of an asshole thing to say.

So he instantly turned bright red and I was no longer the 1 holding the weight of that ridiculous statement.

So That's my little bit of advice or experience out there.

Well, you know, I have to say I've had the fortune as anyone who's gone out fundraising to meet with many, many more people in the process than you end up working with on your team as investors.

And so it's a little bit self-selecting because,

those who treat you differently, for example, walking into a pitch and being like, wow, I thought you were going to be a man.

Actually my mother named me that on purpose because she never wanted me to not get the interview.

So she felt like I deserved to have a chance to at least get in the door and then it's up to me to prove myself.

So I've kind of seen that come back in some of these situations.

Not that I wouldn't have necessarily gotten in the door, but at least the gender stereotype doesn't get activated until the moment I do.

At which point I have been told, 1 time I came in, sat down, was told I'm incredibly good looking as the first thing as I was trying to prepare and open up my deck.

So that was awkward in 1 of those moments.

I just kind of shrunk in my chair and was like, maybe I shouldn't have put on makeup today.

And you know, we laugh, but I think everyone has some kind of version of a similar type of experience in some kind of scenario.

And these things have happened, and I'm surfacing them here.

I don't think, I know for a fact I'm not the only person who's experienced these things, but I want to contextualize this.

Those were the extreme outlier situations.

And I have 15 amazing, amazing investors, 2 of whom are women, the rest of whom are men.

I never felt those awkward feelings, and I'm quite familiar with them.

And it just was all about the traction we had, the fact that we were profitable when we raised, a graph that went like this, their belief in me and my vision and the conversation we had about the market and where this can go and that's all it was ever about.

So yeah, of course, I think those I have been treated different for for being a woman and other people saying things like why would anyone invest in a female-founded company?

I mean, I guess it could go both ways, right?

Like A guy can walk in and be married to their cofounder.

But I think there's another thing going on.

So I feel like 1 of the big things is I'm immediately stereotyped as the girl Friday, just get everything else done so that he can code person.

And I think that that definitely came up.

See all Y Combinator transcripts on Youtube

Fundraising Panel at Female Founders Conference 2014