vibes

how to raise on them...

Author

Jorian Hoover
February 17, 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.

I’m feeling giddy with energy after spending 9 days in San Francisco meeting with founders, VCs, & operators. The amount of building & investing in the city is nothing short of incredible. We may be in a bubble, but what a time to be in SF.

If you’re considering raising, or you’re investing in startups, I cannot recommend more highly spending some time in SF on a routine basis. With OpenAI & Anthropic hiring like madmen in the city, and SF-based AI startups raising tremendous amounts of capital, there’s so much to take away from being in the city.

Thank you to all the readers who reached out about grabbing a coffee while I was in town — it was a blast getting to meet many of you, and I’ll be back soon. And apologies for missing last week’s newsletter while I was focused on meeting founders, VCs, & operators IRL.

For today’s newsletter, I’ll talk a bit about running SAFEs by your lawyer, review the last two weeks of Tier 1 VC deals, share my recommended VC newsletters/podcasts, and give a deep dive on fundraising on vibes.

Last, 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: run SAFEs by your lawyer

  2. What funding rounds did Tier 1 VCs lead the last two weeks (Jan 31-Feb 13, 2026)

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

  4. Today’s deep dive on how to fundraise like a pro: raising on vibes

1. Jorian’s 1min take: run SAFEs by your lawyer

One of the questions I often ask Series B thru D founders is “What do you regret about your Pre-Seed thru Series A fundraises?”

For a long time, these founders have told me how they regretted taking on control and economic provisions in their priced Seed or Series A rounds. They wish they could go back and take a slightly lower valuation in exchange for a cleaner term sheet and better control of their companies.

But increasingly, I’m hearing a similar refrain from founders who regret the terms they agreed to when signing a SAFE in their Pre-Seed or Seed. A SAFE is a simple document — it literally stands for “Simple Agreement for Future Equity” — and on its own, it’s relatively harmless (however, dilution can stack up quickly on post-money valuations, so be careful).

However, these SAFEs from VCs are almost always accompanied by side letters, including things such as MFNs, Pro Ratas, Board Observer seats, etc.

So this is my (what feels like once-a-quarter) reminder to please run SAFEs and the accompanying side letters by your startup lawyer before you sign them. If they’re a good lawyer focused on startups, they can tell you what’s “market” vs. what’s not, what you might regret later, and so on.

I know there’s an additional cost to taking this step. But it can be a quick review (and not too costly) by your lawyer, and your future self will seriously thank you.

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

  • Newsletter: “The SaaSacre of 2026” (link) by Janelle Teng Wade, VP at Bessemer. Enjoyed this write up from Janelle Teng Wade on whether SaaS, in its recent downturn, faces cyclical turbulence or rather a structural rewiring of where value accrues in software.

  • Newsletter: “Q4' ‘25 Cloud Update (What’s going on with software?)” (link) by Eric Flanningam, Partner at Felicis. Every quarter, Eric Flanningam gives an in-depth update on what’s happening with the cloud hyperscalers. For this past quarter, he dives into systems of record and the differing dynamics hyperscalers are facing.

  • Newsletter: “The WhatsApp moment for money is here” (link) by Chris Dixon, Partner at a16z. Chris Dixon, who leads up crypto at a16z, argues that stablecoin will do for monetary transactions what WhatsApp did for text messages, dramatically lowering the cost. Just last year stablecoins moved over $12T.

  • Newsletter: "5,127 Layers” (link) by Rex Woodbury, Partner at Daybreak. I appreciated this argument from Rex Woodbury that although AI is developing at breakneck pace, adoption lags far behind and AI’s journey will be a multi-decade one, not one that occurs in just a few years.

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

Last week in SF, a founder asked me “at what point is fundraising no longer about vibes?”

There are a couple answers to this:

  1. if you’re an AI company in the current hype cycle, fundraising is all about vibes. No matter the stage you’re raising at.

  2. for most startups, vibes become less of a big deal at Series A, and starting with Series B, data becomes significantly more important.

No matter how you shake it, vibes are critical to fundraising at the pre-seed and seed stages.

VCs don’t invest off a checklist

You may wonder, how do VCs think about investing into early-stage startups?

The truth is, it’s hardly based off a checklist.

The reason VCs don’t invest off of checklists is because it’s almost impossible to find a rocketship that way. Typically, rocketship startups are spikey in a few areas, and may even come with some baggage.

For example, it might be a brilliant founder who’s spent 12 years navigating this problem, yet doesn’t have revenue or a team built out.

Or it might be two 23-year-olds with no management experience, yet they’ve created a viral product hitting $1.2M ARR in 2 months.

VCs need to take bets (read: risks) on investing in early-stage startups, and if they look for every checkbox to be filled, they’re at risk of taking too safe of a deal (and they might wonder, “why has no one else taken this deal if it all checks out?”).

Say hello to vibes

That’s where vibes come in.

Two of the spikey elements I mentioned above are not things you can manufacture overnight — an expert who’s spent 12 years navigating this problem or two 23-year-olds who’ve hit $1.2M ARR in 2 months.

But there are vibe elements that are in your control in the short term. Here are some examples:

  1. getting some strong angels to back your idea ahead of a VC raise

  2. pushing hard to get PR coverage right ahead of a fundraise

  3. publishing viral social content that VCs and the startup community will see

  4. creating a demo that makes VC partners want to share internally

  5. condensing dozens of VC meetings into a short one or two week period

  6. moving to SF and building connections to VC-backed founders

  7. pulling levers to achieve fast revenue growth immediately before a fundraise

Fundamentals vs. Vibes

I’m not suggesting you drop all of your startup fundamentals and focus only on vibes.

In fact, I’ve met VERY FEW founders who can raise on vibes alone. Typically, you want at least a couple points of strong fundaments on top of which you can layer on vibes.

But raising on fundamentals alone at the earliest stages can sometimes be an uphill battle. It means that you’re not giving VCs additional opportunity to squint and say “I think we have a potential unicorn on our hands”

For the founders I come across who only have fundamentals, I suggest they layer on some vibes.

And for the founders who only have vibes, I encourage them to go back and build out some fundamentals.

The sweet spot is to have a combination of fundamentals and vibes. That way, you hit a couple checkboxes while also allowing VCs to dream with you about your startup’s future.

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I’ve helped 50+ founders run high-quality fundraises and raise over $190M. Check out jorianhoover.com to read founder testimonials and learn more about my approach.