This was the year everything changed. I went from consulting and side projects to full-time startup founder. Raised over half a million in pre-seed funding, launched a product, and closed off all consulting work to focus entirely on the company.
The startup idea
Our exploration was mostly in the blockchain space. Given that I've been working here since 2015, I'm just extremely interested in making a dApp actually work.
I decided against protocol development. I'm more interested in use-cases than building more infrastructure in an already massive landscape of infra projects.
The main concept: a bounty marketplace integrated with GitHub. Create an issue, add a bounty via smart contract, escrow the money, devs create a PR, and as soon as the PR is merged, the developer gets access to the escrow and gets paid. Simple in theory. Hard in practice.
Raising the pre-seed
For fundraising, what really helped the most was intros. Not surprising. But here's the key insight: getting a lead investor is everything. Don't focus on anything else until you have that lead.
Once you have a lead investor—which takes the most time—don't feel exhausted and "ready" to finally close. Now is actually the best time to find even better investors, make a better deal, get more money. The momentum compounds.
I got a term sheet at the end of 2021. Was told I had 24 hours to sign it. On Christmas. I liked the conditions so I signed, but if I didn't like them I absolutely shouldn't have felt pressured.
Here's a play that worked for me: have term sheets unsigned, go to other investors, tell them you're about to sign, pressure them to make a commitment fast. Usually VCs have weekly IC meetings and it's hard to get prioritized earlier. With term sheets you become the time wizard. It gives you hard power over how much time they have. Get a better deal from them, then go back to your original investor and negotiate an even better term sheet. I did this and it worked—my dilution ended up lower than the original offer.
The term sheet that fell through
The first term sheet I signed was with Global Founders Capital. I knew their reputation wasn't great—Oliver Samwer had been heavily criticized for how he treated founders. But a good friend who made the intro knew the lead investor personally, even as family, and assured me Samwer had changed. First-time founder logic kicked in: let's just get started, learn from it, and if it doesn't work out I can always try again with someone else.
The term sheet was countersigned. But a couple months later, while I was getting more investors in and finding my eventual lead investors—Speedinvest and Kraken Ventures—and trying to negotiate the final parts of the round, Global Founders Capital bailed. Even though I had a signed term sheet.
Looking back, I was happy they bailed. I didn't try to get them out of the round, but I didn't like how they played and thought they made the least intelligent comments around our product and vision.
But here's the thing: VCs bailing on signed term sheets is rare. I didn't think it could actually happen. Now I'll forever use this as a negotiating tactic. You can't trust VCs until money is in the bank account. Use that pressure in the right spots.
Fundraising tactics that worked
Set your goal lower than it really is. Once you have a lead and all investors want to follow, oversubscribe to the actual amount you want.
Cold outbound works. While intros were my main go-to after getting the lead, LinkedIn cold outreach is easier than people think. Building up my Twitter profile helped for DMing investors there too, but LinkedIn is still the stronger channel. That said, the real best approach: meet founders who've raised money, become their friends, get intros from them to VCs. Chasing investors or chasing founders takes the same amount of time, but the founder intro is worth more.
On pitch decks. These are imo the most important things from all my meetings and calls with investors: problem slide, solution slide, and "why now." Keep it short—three problems, a solution to each. The "why now" is what most people miss. Why hasn't this been built before? Look at competitors that failed and figure out what you're doing differently. If you could have done it differently during their time, it's not a strong story. You need an event that makes this compelling now.
Financials matter too, but here's the thing: if you're pitching top-down financials, you're doing it wrong. Every investor knows the "1% of a big existing market" formula is a stupid way to look at an opportunity. You're actually a good founder if you call that out as BS. Bottom-up financials are the way—focus on what you can actually build and capture, not fantasy TAM math.
Having a story in your pitch is what everyone advises but nobody explains how to do. I struggled with it. Eventually I found a way to add the story in my investor meetings rather than having it in the deck itself.
The co-founder lesson I learned the hard way
I had a pretty bad experience with co-founder fit.
I met two guys at a hackathon. I wanted to co-found with both. One turned out to be a horrible candidate. But I tried to see the good in him. Huge red flag process.
Here's what I learned: you need to always think about the worst outcome. Find the bad qualities. Whatever way you do it—meet their friends, whatever—don't tell yourself you'll be able to deal with their issues or make them better. A co-founder needs to fit like a glove. Don't bullshit yourself into getting a size bigger or smaller and thinking you can deal with it. There are no compromises.
This was especially hard because we teamed up during Covid when nobody could meet in person.
I eventually met my lasting co-founder Andrew in person before we funded the company and went to the notary. Had a great feeling. But I also introduced him to my mentor to see what he thought. Get outside opinions on people you're about to spend years with.
The bad co-founder situation cost me an angel check. That hurt. But I learned a lot from it, and I won't make the same mistake again.
Early stage product testing
We took the product as a very early MVP to hackathons first to get a feeling for what judges think about it. Hackathons are a really good way to get early understanding of what people think about your product and the market. Tons of feedback. We participated in a few hackathons with the same product just to fine tune it. Also used them as a motivational boost—building throughout day and night.
Conferences and hackathons were also great for talking to people who might actually want to use the product. We eventually found two startups that wanted to use it. They made some early bets, placing bounties and trying to get developers paid via our platform. They were very excited and I felt highly encouraged getting them on board and seeing them find value in it.
Investors specifically cared about this. If we didn't have any company interest that would have been a huge red flag. Finding early companies that vouch for your product and actually use it was the biggest factor in closing the round imo.
Looking back, I probably should have built an even earlier stage MVP instead of building for a few months then bringing it to customers. Not sure what the best way is to do that in web3 though—you need to audit smart contracts, make sure financial transactions are safe, make sure the frontend doesn't have attack vectors. Fintech products are just different. You need to invest time to make them safe before customers can use them.
I could have gotten letters of intent and partnerships before they actually used it for more feedback. I held back on that because I thought I needed a working product first to see if they actually use it. My feeling was that signups or LOIs are very low signal for actual conversion. Still figuring out the right balance here.
Looking ahead
2022 was the year I became a real founder. Raised money, built a team, launched a product, got great feedback. Now it's all about finding product-market fit.
The consulting income is gone. The safety net is gone. It's just the startup now.
Let's see what 2023 brings.
Next: 2023