As a startup founder, you know that securing funding is an important step to take when you are ready to grow your business. But navigating the fundraising process can be daunting. We've created these self-paced lessons to provide you with the knowledge you need to accelerate your fundraising process.
Instructors
Juan Scarlett
Managing Director, OneValley Ventures
Alec Wright
Chief Product Officer
Managing Director, OneValley Ventures
Outline of Lessons
Lesson 1: The Fundraising Landscape
In this lesson, we provide an overview of the fundraising landscape and answer questions frequently asked by founders as they start their fundraising journey. We also introduce Rahkeem Morris and his startup HourWork, a venture we'll study throughout this series of lessons.
Lesson 2: The Power of Stories
To raise funds, you’ll need to convert skeptical investors into believers. That means you can’t just convey the bare facts about your business; you need to communicate a compelling vision that connects emotionally and intellectually with your audience. In other words, you need to tell a great story.
Lesson 3: Crafting Your Pitch
Next, we’ll transform our essential pitch components into pitch slides, showing how critical information and supporting visuals can bring these slides to life. You’ll hear from us: what we’ve noticed about these slides through our experience and research, along with what we think comprises the strongest slides. You’ll also see a range of example slides used by real startups in their pitches for both earlier- and later-stage funding.
Lesson 4: Delivering Your Pitch
In this lesson, we'll provide some advice for delivering your pitch that is applicable whether you're presenting at a large pitch event or in a smaller setting. We'll also share some example pitches so you can see how others executed their pitches.
Lesson 5: Polishing Your Pitch
After delivering your pitch, you should analyze the feedback you receive on it. Which feedback seemed like it’s something worth adjusting in your pitch? Which feedback might you set aside? As you continue pitching to obtain the funds you need, analyzing feedback and iterating on your pitch should be an ongoing process.
Lesson 6: Planning Your Process
Finally, we’ll describe a general fundraising process including five major phases you can expect to move through. You’ll hear from Rahkeem Morris of HourWork again, about how he approached his fundraising process. Michael Berolzheimer of Bee Partners also shares some advice about navigating the fundraising process and communicating with investors throughout.