magic?

does magic exist in fundraising?

Author

Jorian Hoover
January 13, 2026

Hey friends, it’s Jorian—welcome to Into the Ring. I’m a startup fundraising coach and have worked with 50+ founders who’ve raised over $190M.

What’s your take on if we can still say Happy New Year now that it’s January 13th? Larry David seems to think not, but I’d say we have until January 15th :)

For today’s newsletter, I’ll give my quick take on spamming VC, review the latest fundraising rounds Tier 1 VCs led last week, share my recommended VC essays & podcast episodes, and give a deep dive on magic when fundraising.

And thank you for being part of this Into the Ring tribe of 1.8K+ 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!

In today’s issue:

  1. Jorian’s 1min take: spamming VCs

  2. What funding rounds did Tier 1 VCs lead last week (Jan 3-9, 2026)

  3. This week’s recommended VC essays & podcast episodes

  4. Today’s deep dive on how to fundraise like a pro: magic when fundraising

1. Jorian’s 1min take: spamming VCs

Is anyone else getting hit with crazy amounts of AI email spam these days?

AI has made it even easier to send “personalized” (I put that in quotations for a reason) to hundreds or thousands of prospects.

And unfortunately, this has made its way into the realm of fundraising — using AI automation tools to reach out to tons of VCs all at once.

My quick message for today: beware of spamming VCs with AI outreach for your fundraising approach. It’s unlikely these messages will stand out and you’ll likely appear desperate. I’d much rather you take the time to curate warm intros, even if that means reaching out to fewer VCs.

If you do go for cold outreach, take the time to research the firm & who you’re reaching out to. Personalize your message in a way that doesn’t feel like it was written by AI, and keep it short & sweet. Send the messages one-by-one, rather than blasting hundreds at a time.

Oh, and don’t be cringe like this.

3. This week’s recommended VC essays & podcast episodes

  • Podcast: “Ben Horowitz on Raising a New Fund and How Venture Firms Scale” (link) by Jack Altman, interviewing Ben Horowitz, co-founder of a16z. Horowitz walks through much of a16z’s iconic creation as a VC firm and also talk through conviction-driven investing. a16z has completely changed venture, and their background is worth learning about.

  • Podcast: “NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang on Reasoning Models, Robotics, and Refuting the ‘AI Bubble’ Narrative” (link) by Elad Gil & Sarah Guo, interviewing Jensen Huang. To understand NVIDIA is to understand the center of today’s AI movement, so I recommend this wide-ranging conversation between two preeimenent AI investors and Jensen.

  • Newsletter: “Investing in the second-order effects of AI” (link) by Yoni Rechtman, Partner at Slow Ventures. I found Yoni’s analysis of the second-order effects of AI really interesting, and enjoyed learning how Slow is investing in companies taking advantage of those second-order effects.

  • Newsletter: “Everything is TV and Nothing is TV” (link) by Rex Woodbury, Partner at Daybreak. Rex opines on Derek Thompson’s 2025 essay on how everything has become TV, and he ties this into how he’s thinking about investing in 2026. If you’re not subscribed, he has great takes on VC almost every week.

4. Today's Deep Dive on How to Fundraise Like a Pro: magic when fundraising

If you’ve been around here long enough, you know I rail against the “check-the-box” approach to early-stage VC investing. What I mean is that if you’re a VC and you have some kind of scorecard by which you’re grading startups at the earliest stages, you’re going to miss a lot of great opportunities.

The problem is: the more certainty (aka a better scorecard) you look for at the earliest stages, the less alpha you’ll have relative to other VCs. And so creating alpha requires having a POV that you can’t just get through a generic scorecard.

HOWEVER, because founders rightfully realize they can’t just check several boxes to receive VC funding (unless you hit $4M ARR with crazy growth in under a year), some folks make the mistake of thinking fundraising comes all down to magic.

What do I mean by magic?

By magic, I mean this sense that the only thing that matters is how convincing you sound to VCs. That none of the fundamentals really matter.

Why do founders believe in magic when fundraising?

I think believing in magic comes from two places:

  1. hanging around founder/vc X & LinkedIn

  2. hanging around SF founder/vc events

In both of these places, you’ll hear stories of founders who raised in 4 days after meeting with 62 VCs, or ones who raised an $8M pre-seed with no pitch deck.

I’m not here to tell you these stories are false. In fact, several founders I’ve met or worked with have raised in quite short windows.

But often founders share these stories without crucial context that explains why these fundraising feats were possible:

  • the co-founding team all went to Stanford and had dozens of VC buddies

  • the startup was part of Y Combinator and had strong traction

  • the CTO had previously sold her startup to Meta

  • etc. etc.

And then founders who are raising hear these fundraising feat stories, without getting the background context, and believe all they need is magic for their fundraising round.

…if only they could just convince that VC the right way, then they’d get an $8M pre-seed at a $40M post…

The right amount of magic in your fundraise

And so fully believing in magic can harm your fundraise. Yes, it happens to the founder who hasn’t built a product, doesn’t have traction, and doesn’t have a strong background.

But I’ve also seen it happen to really strong founders. They start fully believing in magic and stop doing the preparation that helps them fundraise. And so they end up slogging through fundraising, rather than running a tight process with 50+ VCs.

Where do I come down on this issue?

Of course, you want to do your fundraise prep and have your ducks in a row ahead of a fundraise process. But I don’t believe in checking all the boxes — and so I think believing in a little bit of magic, or should I call it storytelling, is important for a fundraise.

Afterall, VCs are looking for a little sparkle in your eye. Not just that you can execute in the next few years.

…but that you have the drive to build a billion-dollar-plus business.

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