Hustle Fund co-founder Elizabeth Yin’s Fundraising Tips for Startups

Elizabeth Yin​ is the co-founder of ​Hustle Fund​, a seed-stage venture fund that focuses on early-stage startups. She has helped many founders raise capital and grow their startups, in addition to co-founding LaunchBit, an ad-tech company.

Here are some quotes of Yin with advice on raising capital, taken from her ​blog​ and interviews:

• Fundraising is a Full-Time Job: “If you’re going to fundraise well, you’re definitely going to need to spend 100% of your time on it as the CEO. So that means that before you start fundraising, you’ll need to look at all the projects on your plate and: Dump them altogether, train and hand them off to teammates, exchange them for outsourced help, or automate them.” (​Source​)
• Create a bidding war to command valuation: “...you need to approach a LOT of investors to essentially create a bidding war for your deal. This is like an auction. Let’s say you’re raising $500k, and you have 20 investors who want in at $50k per person; then you have twice as much interest than what your round can accommodate, so your valuation will increase until investors start dropping out because the price is too high.” (​Source​)
• Raise in Tranches: “Being able to raise in tranches is actually a good option to have because it gives entrepreneurs more flexibility in how they raise. Gone are the days where you need to sit around for a lead to decide in 2 months if they want to put $500k into your company.” (​Source​)
• Ask for Referrals: “We started by approaching friends and acquaintances and asked everyone if they were interested in investing or knew 1-2 people who might be interested in chatting with us about potentially investing Hustle Fund…just by asking for just 1-2 solid intros, you can actually find some interesting contacts.” (​Source​)