First $1M raised

if you have a brilliant idea for a company, here's how you get investors to back it. yesterday I talked about how I raised my first million for my company, specifically where I found each of my investors. meeting investors is only half the battle, then you have to go through the process of actually getting them to say yes. and trust me, you have to go through a lot of no's before you start getting to yes. obviously every market is different, every investor is different, there's no one perfect formula. but here are the things that I think worked for me when it came to raising my first million dollars and being able to build a real business. the first thing is the idea itself and everyone talks about this one all the time. they think if they come up with an amazing idea that they'll be able to raise a bunch of money from investors in order to expand and grow the business. the reality is that the idea itself is probably like 5% of the equation. ideas are a dime a dozen and there's a lot more that goes into getting investor convinced that they're gonna give you their money. one of those things is timeliness. is your idea relevant to the technology in the market and the consumer needs of right now? for example, Uber would have been a pointless idea 20 years ago because smartphones weren't ubiquitous and it also would have been a useless idea one year ago because the market was already really crowded. an idea has to come at the right time. I'm building an AI, so this is obviously a good time to raise money for a business in AI. the next one is founder fit or team fit. you can't just have a really good idea, even if it's the right time and have no experience in that field. I've heard investors say that they'll only invest in founders who have spent over 10,000 hours in the area of expertise that they're trying to build in. for a lot of investors I'd say this is the most important point. they almost don't even care about the idea if the founder isn't proven or unique in some really specific way. the other thing I noticed is that other commitments from investors go a really long way. raising money especially from venture capital is a FOMO game meaning once one fund gets in, a lot of other funds will probably want in. but it's always going to be the hardest to get that first check, even with angel investors. nobody wants to be the one to take that initial risk. they wanna know that you're going to be able to complete around so that their money doesn't go to waste. this is the one that I think made the biggest difference for me. if you are a first time founder, so you don't necessarily have the reputation in the space. if you're a solo founder, if you're a non-technical founder, if you're a female founder or minority founder and you have all the things working against you, if it's a hard market to raise money in which you could argue it is right now, you can combat all of those hurdles with some traction. that doesn't have to be revenue. most pre-seed companies have little to no revenue, but it does have to be some kind of forced traction like social media followers or views or a waitlist or some sort of foot in the door at a place that's not easy to get your foot in the door. you just need something to show that you're on to something and really convince people that this is gonna work with a little money behind it. and finally this one is the most vague, but even with everything above, you have to convince investors that you have some sort of secret sauce behind this business. meaning that other people can't easily recreate what you're doing. think access to a community that most people don't have access to or a go to market strategy that's really unique distribution that other people aren't thinking about in this space. even a recent law that change that you're acting upon. really quickly investors are getting dozens of inbounds a day. so you really just need to find a way to show them that you're the right person with the right idea at the right time and that there's something a little different about you that's gonna get them excited. all easier said than done obviously, but if you want help with how to put all these things in a pitch deck or wanna know anything else related to startups and fundraising, let me know what you wanna see in the comments.