Be warned: I don't feel qualified to discuss the topic of raising money. We are in the process of trying to raise a small seed amount for Triply and that's pretty much all of the experience I have on the matter. I have never tried to do it before. And even now, we are pretty much in the beginning of the process -- we have received a tentative 'maybe not' from the one and only accelerator we've applied to. So take everything I say here with a grain (or a spoon or maybe a whole bag) of salt. Also, raising money in Sofia, Bulgaria (where we're based) is light years away from the experience in the hot startup-friendly spots in the USA and Western Europe. At the very least, the choice is much more limited and you must be very careful with your applications as every single one of them is precious.
Raising money is hard.
Maybe it is easy somewhere or for someone but for most of the people trying to do it, it's a pain in the ass. First-time entrepreneur? Well, that makes things even worse.
In this and some of my next posts, I'll write about my experience, frustrations, joys and thoughts. It is intended to be more like a personal log of the pains I have with the process and the things I do to alleviate them.
Problem: the entire process of raising seems like quite a distraction -- you spend your days filling in forms, preparing demos and presentations, going to meetings, researching in Google and so on and so forth instead of, you know, working on your product. This might not seem like a big deal, but when you are 2 guys trying to push your project in their spare time it is a big deal.
Solution: Be positive and try not to lose focus. When you spend time preparing for an interview or doing a video, you are actually working on your product. It might be a work that is less visible and more indirect, but is still an effort that will improve your product and your understanding of whatever you are building. When you spend three hours in Xcode, chasing bugs and developing new features (and this is engineers' preferred way of spending time), the result is, more often than not, something tangible. You can see and prove the bug is gone and you can see this new view is now functioning. In contrast, when you fill in an endless form, typing answers to various questions, it may seem to you (especially if you are an engineer) like you are wasting your time. Believe me, you are not. Instead, try to get the most out of every single little piece.
Try thinking out of the box. Change the perspective:
Why are they asking this question? What do they mean am I sure if this is the right team for the job? Is it really advertising the only business model I can think of? How do I say what are we doing in one small paragraph? Do we really need 6 months to get this up and running. Can't we do it in 3 instead?
Once you start doing this, you realize you are actually putting work to improve the product and the way you think about the product. It's not time flush in the toilet, it's time well spent.
It is very easy to lose perspective when you spend your days digging through code and debugging. You get caught in the fine-grained technical details and you can easily spend weeks working on something that could turn out to be not quite important. Use the time spent out of your text editor to step back and look at the bigger picture.
Go a step further. Once you finish an application form (or an email or a pitch presentation), go to the top and start over. Read again every question and answer it without looking at your previous answer.
Iterate.
Refine.
Clean it up.
This is a technique similar to the refactoring we do with our code. As with a piece of non-trivial code, a pitch or an answer to a non-trivial question is hard to make perfect the first time. Think of how you can improve it.
Think of the things you can throw out. Doing this will do you a great favor during the interviews. You will find it much easier to articulate your vision and formulate your answers.
Again, the most important thing is to remember that you are still working on your product and yourself. It is not a distraction. It is an investment.
