

The Art of Raising Seed: You’re Either Hot, Or You Make Your Own Heat - dariusmonsef
http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/28/the-art-of-raising-seed-youre-either-hot-or-you-make-your-own-heat/

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allantyoung
Darius and I were in the same batch at YC and he was one of those guys you
just thought would outshine everyone else.

My takeaway from this excellent post was that once you start fundraising, you
need to be on the hunt 100% of the time. I see too many co-founders sharing
fundraising duties and product development duties at the same time. The idea
is that you should have already spent enough time building a product that is
at least partially compelling and showing some traction. Once you set out to
raise funding, you can't effectively skip between building product and talking
to investors.

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dariusmonsef
Too kind. Too kind.

And yes. Full focus is key.

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turoczy
I've been lucky enough to follow Darius' career for a number of years. And I
can't say that I've seen a more masterful use of AngelList to round out a
who's who of investors. This post shares some great insights on how he managed
to make that happen.

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dariusmonsef
And you were there supporting me when I couldn't even get any kind of coverage
on a blog like TC... So thanks for everything.

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dave1619
Thanks for the helpful post. We're considering raising funds but aren't from
Silicon Valley. How would you suggest getting our initial list of investors to
contact and people to intro for us?

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dariusmonsef
Where are you located? I think when you're fundraising you have to go where
the money is. Plan to spend a few weeks in the Valley driving up and down the
280 (avoid the 101 it sucks).

You can use technology and services like Angel.co to make the connections and
schedule the meetings... then you have to go out.

I raised this last round from my home in Hawaii. I spent the first few weeks
doing phone meetings and then was in SF & NYC for another couple weeks doing
partner meetings and wrapping things up.

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dave1619
I'm located near San Diego. Thanks for the suggestions. Any special advice on
how to use angel.co?

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dariusmonsef
Everything I said in the post. Get prepared... then create your profile on
Angel.co and then work it.

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wamatt
Good article.

