Hey friends, it’s Jorian—welcome to Into the Ring. I’m a startup fundraising coach for top founders and have worked with 60+ founders who’ve raised over $270M. (Want to work with me? Check out more details at jorianhoover.com.)

Holy cow. It's fundraising season, ladies and gentlemen. Running a solo coaching business, I often think I'm immune from seasonality. But every early January and late August, I'm reminded that's not true. In just the past five days, I've had over a dozen founders reach out to work with me and several new folks sign on for monthly coaching packages. I'm excited to work with each of you on your fundraise and get you ready for the fall fundraising season.

(and yes, if you've been around here long enough, you'll know that I believe founders shouldn't always wait until September or January to fundraise, but alas)

In today’s newsletter, I’ll give you my 1 minute take on taking VC rejections lightly, walk you through last week’s Tier 1 funding rounds, give you my recommended VC essays & podcasts, and share a deep dive on the pitfalls co-founders face when presenting their working relationship to VCs.

As always, thank you for being part of this Into the Ring tribe of 2,000+ startup founders and operators/investors from OpenAI, Anthropic, a16z, Lightspeed, etc. If you think someone else might like this newsletter, they can sign up here.

Now onto today’s newsletter!

I would categorize written VC rejections into three buckets:

Most VC passes will land in buckets 2 & 3 — they’ll include some feedback.

The problem?

Founders often think they’re getting bucket 3 feedback when in reality they’re getting bucket 2 feedback.

The vast majority of VC passes will give you generic feedback. They’ll say things like “we’re looking for just a bit more traction” or “we want to see how the market develops” or “we couldn’t get enough conviction in the GTM plan.”

This leaves founders thinking if only they just fix that one thing, they can come back to papa and get funded. Wrong. These VCs are often just saying stuff, and trying to have it come across gently so they stay on good terms with the founder and don’t do the hard work of giving context-specific feedback.

Founders, it’s really important you take this generic feedback lightly and don’t get sent into a tailspin. Try to assess if the feedback you’re getting is truly context-specific, whether you build a strong relationship with the VC, and that it’s not using language that sounds like “if only you had a little more of X, then we’d invest.”

Only then might you want to take the feedback seriously, and even then, it’s your job as a founder to choose which feedback to act on and which to ignore. There’ll be many haters along the way, even if you build the next decacorn.

Recently I was listening to a recording of a founder’s call with a VC, and an answer they gave made the VC’s eyes light up.

Buried in the back half of the call, the VC asked “so wait, how do you know your co-founder?” to which the founder said “oh, we’ve been working together the past 11 years across two companies.”

This was music to the VC’s ears.

See, this founder completely missed that she was sitting on a big asset. Her 11-year working relationship with her co-founder not only assuaged one of the VC’s biggest fears, but also validated a big green flag.

Put yourself in the shoes of a VC. Your aim is to strike gold, to get a chance at riding a rocket ship that becomes a generational company.

On this journey, you’re okay if many of the rockets you back end up falling. After all, building a business that’s massively successful is hard.

But as the VC, there’s one thing you don’t want. And that’s unnecessary blow ups too early on in a startup’s journey. In order to succeed, a startup needs several years of acceleration, and if things fail in years 1 or 2 then that’s a problem.

One of the biggest reasons early-stage startups fail so early on is co-founder relationship blow ups. These often serve as a death knell for startups.

I see it all the time in the founders I speak with. The co-founder relationship sours to the point where one departs — and that person may have been the secret sauce in terms of technology, operations, and/or leadership.

Sometimes startups do survive co-founder blow ups (in fact, many iconic companies such as Meta went through some), but often these companies are left with scars (such as lots of dead equity) and a departed co-founder who’s a thorn in the side of the startup.

As that VC, you want to avoid these co-founder blow ups to the extent possible, and so you want to ensure the co-founders have been adequately stress-tested.

This is why in the founder/VC call I listened to, the VC’s eyes lit up when they heard about the 11 year working relationship between the co-founders. That relationship means that the co-founders have a more enduring bond than whatever they happen to be working on together. And they’ve been through highs and lows together, and figured out if they can work well as a team.

On the other hand, it’s become pretty popular for co-founders to meet via YC’s Co-Founder Matching Tool. To be clear, I am not here to bash YC’s matching platform! I have met many founders who have built a great partnership with co-founders they’ve met on there.

But what I am saying is that VCs are skeptical of co-founders who recently met in the past year and haven’t been through thick and thin together. How will the VC know if you’ll have the teamwork & grit to make it through the tough times you’ll face as co-founders together?

If this hits too close to home, and you’ve recently met your co-founder, don’t worry, I’ve got some tips for how you can best approach this ahead of fundraising.

First, be careful not to dive into all-or-nothing thinking. Worried founders like to ask questions like “Will I ever get funded if I’m a solo founder?” or “The market is tough now, is there any chance we can raise now?” or in this case “I just met my co-founder, will anyone want to fund us?”

This is dangerous thinking.

It departs from reality (there are solo founders who get funded, startups are getting funded in this tough market, and co-founders who’ve recently met have gotten funded) and also removes agency from yourself to find the best path forward.

So if we’ve moved beyond that, here are my recommendations on how to best approach fundraising if you recently met your co-founder:

All you can do in fundraising is take what you’ve got and put your best foot forward. Having known your co-founder for a short time is an obstacle to be solved, not an ultimatum that you won’t be able to raise.

Back to the founder who had worked closely with her co-founder for 11 years. I meet many founders who have had similarly strong working relationships with their co-founders, and many completely forget to leverage this when fundraising.

At the earliest stages of raising, and heck, even into Series A / B and beyond, VCs care tremendously about the quality of the team and how well you’ll work together.

Founders often don’t realize this relationship is a big strength, and don’t bring it up proactively as part of their fundraising story. This means VCs often only hear about it through follow-up questions, and founders miss the opportunity to share a key pillar of why they’re investable.

Let’s face it — who you choose to co-found a startup with is an important decision. And whether you’ve only recently met your co-founder or have known each other since childhood, make sure you do the work to put your co-founder story in the best light to VCs.

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