In 2015, I went out to fundraise as a first-time founder. I was recently graduated and had been working on my startup for a year full time.

Here& #39;s everything I did wrong:
First - I was pitching a product and not a vision.

Really hard to see it at the time, but I was so excited by what we were building that I was always pitching what we had built and not our vision of what the world should be.
Investors take bets on the future and ours wasn& #39;t all that compelling - we knew where we wanted to be in 2 years but not 10
With that, I got way too caught up in the implementation details and didn& #39;t tell enough of a story.

I don& #39;t think anyone really cared about the exact way we were going to acquire customers, they just needed to find a point of conviction that we could maybe do it at scale
Almost milestones also don& #39;t count. No one cares that you& #39;re in the final round interview at an accelerator. No one cares that you *almost* are there on a key partnership.

I look back at some of my emails and cringe. Implementation details :)
I also gave away everything before meeting with investors. My pitch deck left me no room to & #39;surprise and delight& #39;.

Investor meetings felt like sales pitches and not conversations about the business. IMO going through a deck during a meeting is a bad way to pitch
I also didn& #39;t have a good answer for "why me." And I think many (young) first time founders struggle with this as well.

I didn& #39;t have a track record, an ivy league degree, or worked previously at a large tech co..
I still don& #39;t have a good answer for why someone should have taken a bet on me as a 22-year-old kid.

In retrospect, I relied way too much on the product we had built to drive conviction (look what we can do) versus figuring out a way to pitch myself
To any first time founders reading this, my biggest recommendation is to build, argue, and learn in public via something like Twitter.

It& #39;s such a great way to build your brand (and meet people) when you& #39;ve got a limited background and network
The other thing I did was meet with the wrong investors.

I think we had targeted a $1m seed round at the time (ya, ya it was 2015) but met with investors who were writing $3m+ checks. The economics for writing small checks just don& #39;t make sense for super large funds
I should have met with more angel investors and micro funds, full stop.

Our largest investor ended up being an angel fund, hi @RebeccaDanta https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🤗" title="Umarmendes Gesicht" aria-label="Emoji: Umarmendes Gesicht">!
I didn& #39;t have concrete answers to how I was going to deploy capital.

Even if an investor doesn& #39;t agree, have concrete answers and stand by them. At the end of the day, you& #39;re building the business, not them, and they& #39;re making a bet on you.
I also didn& #39;t realize how important having traction was for getting enough momentum to get the round done.

Find some angels who don& #39;t mind being the first committed check and leverage the hell out of that to get more checks in. It& #39;s a snowball effect
Last thing I wish I would have done more of: sending targeted cold emails and DMs. I can& #39;t say this enough but I fucking love Twitter for this reason.

With the right cold outreach, people respond.
Finally, fundraising is really, really hard. The media makes it look so easy but it& #39;s not.

I had >150 meetings and got >149 no& #39;s. It& #39;s a lonely process - finding great mentors and friends that you can lean on is so important.

And try to avoid the make the same mistakes I made!
You can follow @anothercohen.
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