yeah, definitely. The advice we often got was to either go fundraising full-on or not at all, because it's very hard without that momentum that takes time to build up (as you could see on our chart, in the end we had even more interest that we aimed for, but took time to get there).
I never did fundraising pre-Zoom/covid so can't compare, but the advantage here was the sheer volume of meetings we could do in a single day. I guess that in-person it would be easier to build rapport, but Zoom was definitely an advantage when playing the numbers game.
yeah that's good to hear, I feel like Zoom is just strangely efficient. On the momentum note, did you feel a sense of less interest from the investor-sphere after no's from certain investors? The implicit assumption is that investors are colluding with yes/nos.
Funnily enough, but it actually didn't feel that way at all. Investors definitely communicate and share their dealflow a lot (a lot of vcs told us they heard about us from others and wanted to meet us, although we mostly had no's.), but my impression is they are not discouraged by no's from others, if they like what you are doing.
I assume that is because they understand there a lot of different reasons behind no's (bad timing, wrong stage, not excited about the area, ...) so it doesn't automatically mean something is fundamentally wrong with the company.
On the other hand, getting yes is definitely a big signal for others and makes them move much faster.
To me it all felt like a really fast game with a huge pile of deals on the table where everybody is just digging through and looking for something they like - no is here just a default answer and everybody has their own "filters" and premises they are going after.
This is why it really helped us when we focused really narrowly on finding investors who are a good fit for us, that was probably the biggest factor of all.
ok this is really helpful. And overall def one of the most valuable threads in HN that I partook in. Thank you! Also, glad to see a Haskell (correct?) project in the wild. If you're ever in NY def visit Hack-NY, it's a great place to meet Haskell people.
Wow, so glad you found it helpful! Yes, our compiler is written in Haskell and currently generates React/Node.js code. I will keep Hack-NY in mind, thanks for sharing!
I never did fundraising pre-Zoom/covid so can't compare, but the advantage here was the sheer volume of meetings we could do in a single day. I guess that in-person it would be easier to build rapport, but Zoom was definitely an advantage when playing the numbers game.