Manuel Roca

Several of my portfolio companies just closed rounds in this tough market. Not because they got lucky. Because they understood how fundraising actually works. Here's the fundraising playbook nobody tells you: The Fatal Numbers: • Seed stage: ~10% get promoted to partner meeting • Of those: ~10% get a term sheet • Your odds per pitch: 1% To get one term sheet, you need 100 conversations. Maybe more if you're outside the typical pattern. Most founders pitch 10 investors and wonder why they can't raise. The ones who close? They pitch 100. But here's what kills most founders: They treat every investor equally. The 3rd Meeting Test: If you're on meeting #3 and they're still "sizing the market" - it's dead. They're being polite. Move on. VCs rarely will say "no." I watched a founder waste 3 months on an investor who kept asking for "just one more data point." Meanwhile, another fund that was excited from day one was ready to wire. The Truth About Data Rooms: No investor finds conviction in a spreadsheet. Data rooms are for confirming what they already believe. Not for convincing skeptics. One of my founders shared this: "The investors who funded us barely looked at the data room. The ones who spent weeks in it all passed." The Winning Playbook: Week 1: Cast wide. 50+ intros queued. Week 2-3: First meetings. Quick yes/no filter. Week 4-6: Double down on believers only. Week 7-8: Drive to term sheets. Track everything: • Response rates • Meeting conversion • Speed of follow-up • Quality of questions Fast no > slow maybe. The Position of Strength: My companies that raised successfully all had one thing in common: They didn't need the money yet. They raised with 6-12 months runway, not 2-3. They had leverage. They could walk away. Desperation is visible in every pitch. Confidence comes from options. The Simple Framework: Think of fundraising like dating. Wide funnel, quick qualification, then depth with the right matches. The investor who's excited after meeting one? That's your champion. The one who needs 5 meetings to "get comfortable"? They're just not that into you. My advice to every founder: Start with 100 names. Expect 10 first meetings. Fight for 1-2 term sheets. Those aren't depressing odds. That's reality. Plan accordingly. Of course, it also helps having your existing investors champion you! #Fundraising #Startups #VentureCapital #FounderAdvice #SeedFunding

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Me: What’s the hardest part of raising capital? Vitor Asseituno 宋伟明: You don’t just raise money from VCs — you build a pipeline and convert it like sales. Most founders approach fundraising backwards. They blast pitch decks to hundreds of VCs, hoping someone will bite. This spray-and-pray approach fails because it ignores a fundamental truth: fundraising IS sales. Just like you wouldn't sell to unqualified leads, don't pitch VCs who don't invest in your stage, sector, or geography. Study their portfolio companies, recent investments, and thesis. A VC who just backed a competing startup isn't your prospect. Start conversations 6-12 months before fundraising. Share updates, ask for advice, get introductions to their portfolio CEOs. When fundraising time comes, you're not a cold email—you're a known quantity. Handle Objections Like a Pro. When a VC says "it's too early" or "the market isn't ready," don't just accept it. Dig deeper. Understand their real concerns and address them with data, analogies to successful companies, or strategic partnerships that de-risk the investment. Follow up systematically. Track every interaction, follow up on commitments, and keep momentum alive. VCs see hundreds of deals—staying top of mind requires intentional effort. The founders who master this raise faster, at better terms, and from investors who truly understand their vision. Stop hoping for luck. Start building your conversion funnel. 👉 Swipe through for more of insights from my conversation with Vitor Asseituno 宋伟明, founder at Sami 🎧 Search The J Curve podcast with Olga Maslikhova on Spotify or YouTube for the full story. 🗞️ Read the most tactical and practical insights from this interview in this week's Insider (link in comment)

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What's going on in the venture capital market? While we see very large, highly valued rounds for AI companies, many founders struggle to secure funding at all. 😳 I see 4 founder profiles in the market: 1️⃣ Serial founders or scale-up executives → They raise big rounds (+20m valuations) led by Tier1 VCs. 2️⃣ Founders with traction (100-200k ARR) → They usually find a pre-seed lead after multiple VC talks and then fill rounds quickly on average valuations. Only works for VC Cases. 3️⃣ Founders with little traction but competitive markets → They struggle with endless VC conversations that often lead nowhere. Better off raising angel rounds or bootstrapping. 4️⃣ Software founders bootstrapping → They build MVPs, start selling, and skip early rounds altogether—or wait for better momentum. What are pre-seed investors looking for in 2025? 👉 Proprietary data sources 👉 Strong domain knowledge (vertical SaaS is a win!) 👉 Real customer traction 👉 Deep-tech with a clear edge Fundraising strategy matters more than ever. Here’s what works: • Cluster VCs - don’t pitch your dream fund first. • Use early NOs as free feedback to improve your story. • One term sheet creates momentum - then the round fills up fast. What has been your experience raising in this market❓ #fundraising #venturecapital #investments 📸 Fabian Klima

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Don't ship your fundraising pitch deck to your homepage. Your pitch deck is for VCs. Your homepage is for prospects. When you reuse your pitch deck deck, you end up with a site that: ❌ Talks about big vision, not the pain your prospects feel today ❌ Focuses on your entire total addressable market, not a niche ICP ❌ Leaves prospects confused about what exactly you do A great homepage should answer, in seconds, in the hero: ✅ Who the product is for ✅ What it does ✅ Why it’s better than alternatives 📰 I wrote about how to translate your story from a fundraising pitch deck slide by slide to your website in First Round Capital Review this week 1️⃣ (It's a natural fit, we both have 1s in our name) Like everything in marketing know your audience, know what they care about, and don't copy and paste from one audience, format, or channel to the next.

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You don’t need VC funding to build a great startup. It’s easy to think raising venture capital = success. But the truth is, plenty of great startups never take a dollar of VC. Some are bootstrapped, angel-backed, leverage grants, or scale through revenue and smart operations. VC is right if: → You’re chasing a massive, fast-moving market → You need upfront capital to build a product or capture demand → You’re aligned with aggressive growth and dilution But it’s not a fit if: → You value control and independence → You want optionality around exit or timelines → You’re building a slower-burn, cash-efficient company At DFX, we help founders get real clarity on the tradeoffs — and make sure they’re raising because it fits their vision, not just because it’s what Twitter told them to do. #angelinvestor #familyoffices #DFX #capitalraising #tips #education #investor #VC #venturecapital

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One of the most important venture trends I’d like to explore more deeply is team size. According to Carta, in 2022 the average SaaS company raising a Series A had 22 employees. By 2024, that number had dropped to 15. By the end of 2025, I’d wager it will be closer to 12. Everyone understands that AI is removing jobs, but it’s worth being clear about which jobs are disappearing: manual, repetitive, and support functions. On the surface, this is a positive shift - it frees people to focus on more strategic, creative, and product-driven work. But it’s important to recognize that those supporting roles were often the ones CLOSEST to the friction points. They were the people uncovering nuances in process, surfacing customer pain, and flagging issues that needed attention to improve product and customer experience. It’s also important to recognize the tradeoffs. A study in The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology found that when doctors used AI to spot pre-cancerous growths in the colon, their detection rates improved. But when the AI was removed, their ability to find tumors fell by roughly 20% compared to before the tool was introduced. In other words, AI boosted performance in the short term but chipped away at core skills in just a few months. That’s the real tension with AI: the efficiency gains are obvious, but we don’t yet know what happens when human judgment and skills start to atrophy. I’m a big believer in leveraging technology to drive efficiency and scale. But I also believe that frontline workers and customer support teams consistently generate some of the most valuable insights into what a company should fix, what new features might be needed, and where the trajectory of the business could shift. Startups should absolutely automate repetitive, manual, and low-leverage tasks. At the same time, they should remain intentional about maintaining direct lines of communication with customers and leads because no algorithm can replace the raw, unfiltered feedback that ultimately drives better products and stronger growth.

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