Been quietly working on this thru 2020... Excited to finally share @UntappedVC, a new VC firm I started w/ my true friend and role model @jessicajackley!
Some deets (like our portfolio) below👇
1/ We’re a pre-seed/seed fund investing in unexpected founders, found off the beaten path, not well connected to VCs. We’re talking young, underrepresented, small town, immigrant, and so on.
2/ These founders aren’t in our network (almost by definition), so we primarily source through outbound, meaning we reach out to founders.
We look at tens of thousands, track and tag thousands, and reach out to the startups that stand out.
3/ We like to do other things in unexpected ways too.
We’re fully remote, impact minded, and run our firm off a custom No Code CRM (zaps for days ⚡️). #teamairtable
We’re lean, experimental, and collaborative.
4/ More than anything, we’re all about our founders. Very humbled and excited to announce our early portfolio cos, @LocalMilkRun, levelgoals.com, and @obviouslyai!
5/ It’s still early days for us, and we’re excited for what’s to come. I’ll be tweeting our story so follow along as we embark on this journey!
I’m an outbound focused VC, meaning I reach out to most of the founders I talk to, not the other way around.
A lot of people ask me about my process. It’s not a secret. Here it is 👇
1/ I spend a lot of time on AngelList, ProductHunt, and am on many investor lists for accelerators. I have a Google Alert for “startup pitch competition”. Twitter is great too. I look at as many startups as I can find.
2/ I have a custom bookmarking tool to quickly save startups that peak my interest. It drops in my CRM and pings the Crunchbase API. I’ve tracked about 1000 in the last 6 months.
How to raise a seed round. Just one process, adjust accordingly. Missing lots of nuance. 👇
1/ Understand your business, its strengths and weaknesses. Look up metrics for similar business models at your stage to get context. Build your own pro forma, review w others.
2/ Build a list of Angels/VCs: dream/top tier, in your network, local, thematically fit. Prioritize A-C. Use LinkedIn to find potential intro paths. Track connectors in fundraising CRM.