I often hear founders telling me they plan on raising $50,000 to then can hire a X to do Y to get them to the next milestone. Unfortunately, if you tell a VC this, they will pass 10/10 times. Here's why you shouldn't raise too little money.

A thread

To preface, this thread is if you're looking to raise a seed round from a venture capitalist. If you re pitching an angel, friends & family, or an alternative funding source, this is less applicable. But if you're trying to pour fuel on the fire, keep reading

A VCs job is actually pretty hard. Sure, it sounds glamorous, listening to founder pitches all day, but tbh, 99.9% of the pitches don't matter in the long run. Or twitter fame. Or nice the offices. None of of it. At the end of the day, a VCs job is to move money.

They have LPs who have given them money to manage, and they expect a return on their investment. LPs are trusting the VCs to not only pick the right companies, but actually own enough of those companies to make a financial difference to the fund. https://twitter.com/chadbyers/status/1293294437708095489?s=20

So when a VC listens to a pitch, they are listening to a ton of different signals. There's the main ones you've heard of, like team, market, product, etc. But some of the less common ones are "can I get to my target ownership % in this company" or "Can i get a pro rata"?