Hey friends, it’s Jorian—welcome to Into the Ring. I’m a startup fundraising coach and have worked with 60+ founders who’ve raised over $270M.

Who else has evenings fully hijacked by the World Cup now that we’re in the knockout stages? Or should I call it the Euros now that 6 of the remaining 8 teams are European (and 7, if you count Morocco - 18 of its 26 players were born in Europe)?

For today’s newsletter, I’ll share a 1min take on making a second lap with VCs, provide a rundown of the Tier 1 VC deals from the past week, share my recommended VC essays & podcasts, and do a deep dive on the one-week fundraise.

As always, thank you for being part of this Into the Ring tribe of 2.0K+ 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!

Earlier this week I spoke with a founder who talked with 40 VCs in the spring, had a few go to diligence, but nobody ended up investing. So they paused their fundraise.

It’s not the end of the road for this founder — they’re going to get back to bootstrap mode, build up some more traction, and return to fundraising in the fall.

I’ve seen several founders in similar positions, where their initial fundraising attempt didn’t pan out, but they ended up successfully fundraising 6-12 months later.

Sometimes, the right (but tough) call is admitting your round isn’t coming together and pausing the fundraise. Then you find some way to keep on building, whether that’s through bootstrapping or a few angel checks.

And some of those VCs who passed on you the first time may even get converted to a yes later on.

So founders - have you gone back to VCs who said no the first time around? I’d love to hear about your experience.

Let’s face it. If you’re a founder and you’re considering raising from VCs, you’ve likely heard an anecdote from another founder who raised in just one week.

Naturally you wonder, “how can I raise in one week?”

I’m not here to tell you raising in one week is a false story. In fact, I know plenty of founders who’ve raised “in just one week.”

But dear founder, I am here to tell you that this one-week fundraise story is often lying to you.

Let me start with the most important myth. Often when you hear about a one-week fundraise, the “one week” refers to the stretch where you are actively in meetings chasing a term sheet.

This is like looking at an iceberg and seeing only the 10% that sits above the water. When we focus on the “one week,” we are way oversimplifying what’s actually going on with fundraising.

Let’s take a step back and think about the ingredients usually required for a strong fundraise. I’ll list a few:

This is in addition to the work of knowing how much you want to raise, what the “story” of your raise will be, being ready for legal due diligence, etc.

Typically, the real timeline of a very fast fundraise involves a month or two of prep around the items above, followed by an extremely compressed period of VC conversations, so that interest builds at the same time and term sheets can land together.

Okay, I have to admit something: I’m usually not a fan of compressing all your fundraising conversations & term sheet decisions into a one-week period. I would much rather founders who want to do an accelerated raise give themselves 2-4 weeks for this period. The reason is that deciding to move forward with a VC is an important enough endeavor that rushing the decision can often backfire.

You don’t want to be stuck with someone you don’t want on your cap table for 5-10+ years! So let me share what an accelerated fundraise looks like when a founder compressed all their VC meetings into a two-week period, and then received term sheets in the following week.

One founder I worked with, who was building in enterprise AI, came to me 2 months before she wanted to fundraise. As her hands-on fundraising coach, I worked with her on a plan: create a compelling VC-backable narrative, crisp materials, and a list of 130 quality VCs she sought intros to.

Over a couple months, this founder spent 30% of her time dedicated to fundraising prep - the rest to building her startup.

When all the prep was complete, I had her hold 5 “sneak peek” meetings with VCs - real meetings where she could gauge her readiness to make a big VC push. She felt strong “pull” from the VCs in those meetings, and so we greenlit the accelerated fundraise.

In a two-week period, she met with 65 VCs who could lead her round. 45 of those progressed to the data room, 20 to third meetings, and then she received 4 term sheets.

End-to-end, from her first VC meeting (of the 65) to receiving the term sheets was just 3.5 weeks.

You may be yelling at the screen, “but Jorian, I know a founder who didn’t do all that prep and still raised in just a couple weeks!”

Yes, those founders exist. In fact, Rob Snyder, who I co-hosted the Accelerated Fundraising webinar with, said that for his past startup, he raised a few million dollars after almost no prep and speaking with just 5 VCs over a couple weeks. But when he reflected on his process in the webinar, he called it “incompetent and lucky, not a process.”

There are many founders who’ve done almost no prep and raised successfully. But that doesn’t mean that they followed the best process. Heck, I would argue that some of them left money on the table or could have ended up with a better VC had they prepared properly.

Or, in a different world with a different flip of the coin, perhaps they wouldn’t have raised successfully at all.

So founders, don’t just copy-paste the one-week fundraise and pray for the best.

Put in the month or two of work to prepare properly, and then the accelerated fundraise will take care of itself.

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I’ve helped 60+ founders run high-quality fundraises and raise over $270M. Check out jorianhoover.com to read founder testimonials and learn more about my approach.