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30 Mar, 23 tweets, 6 min read
Over the years, I have tried to share learnings from my startups and seed investing.

Decided to combine my startup tweets+tweetstorms into a tweethurricane.

Here are my learnings + advice, from pitching investors to getting through the journey:
🧵 Identify the nucleus of your startup story

🐦 How to do cold outreach to investors

🐦 Thoughts on startup distribution

🐦 How entrepreneurs are probably accredited investors

🧵 What potential investors want to know (part 1)

🧵What potential investors want to know (part 2)

🐦 Enjoy the journey (part 1)

🧵 Enjoy the journey (part 2)

🧵How to do investor updates (part 1)

🧵How to do investor updates (part 2)

🐦 Don't give up

🧵 What to do after you raise a seed round: hire

🐦 What to do after you raise a seed round: don't overspend

🧵 Handle tricky fundraising questions with informed confidence

🧵 What to optimize for when fundraising

🧵 How to deal with investor rejection

🐦 Perfect your product, not the look of your pitch deck

🧵 Keep investors updated through the hard times

🐦 How to think about investors

🧵 Ask questions

🐦 The 2 types of Startups

🧵 On creating genuine FOMO

• • •

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More from @immad

immad Profile picture
16 Mar
1/ Fundraising is a bit of a chicken and egg process, where once you get momentum it's easy and before that it's almost impossible.

Closing a funding round requires momentum, and there is an art to "creating" FOMO in a genuine way.

Here are some do's and don'ts:
2/
Don't: try to create pressure before the investor is excited about your startup.

Sometimes entrepreneurs will say things like "the round is almost closed", "we need a decision this week" etc, before they have met the investor.

You need to first get buy in from the investor.
3/

Don't: exaggerate your fundraising state.

Investors have a pretty tuned BS sensor and saying things like: "We are expecting term sheets next week", "we just talked to 10 funds next week" often backfire.

In those situations the investors might be tempted to just wait.
Read 7 tweets
immad Profile picture
27 Feb
1/ Before writing a startup deck or pitching investors you should identify the nucleus of your story and how it could be a $1b+ company.

This should be a two sentence story that you then build the rest of your pitch around.

And you should truly believe in your story.
2/ When I started @BankMercury in 2017 our story was:

"Business banking is a $300b+ market, but banks aren't technology companies. Tech companies will disrupt all of banking as seen in consumer. Serving startups 1st allows us to grow with them and they care most about product"
3/ The best stories show:

- How big the market is
- Why now is the right time for your startup idea
- Why yours' is the right approach
- why you are the right founder to do it

You have to pick the elements that are most relevant+important for your story.
Read 6 tweets
immad Profile picture
18 Jan
1/

The first “Future of Fintech” Clubhouse is going to cover challenger banks with:

@pitdesi at BTV
@arampell at @a16z
@patrickmro_ at @pointapp
@maiab at @Chime
@immad at @BankMercury

Tuesday, Jan 26 at 6:00 PM PST.

Save the date here: joinclubhouse.com/event/gPvj4KRP
2/
We are going to try to make this a fast paced convo that skips the basics and goes deep on the subject.

Some subjects:

- why did European challenger banks fail on their US expansion
- will the big banks be able to keep market caps as fintech continues to grow exponentially
3/
- will more challenger banks get bank charters
- what’s the future of partner banks and BaaS
- will embedded banking disrupt challenger banks

Any other subjects people would like to see?
Read 4 tweets
immad Profile picture
13 Jan
1/ As an investor you are often making very quick decisions about startups.

Here are some questions I think about:

Team:
- have they built something impressive before
- have they thought about the problems deeply
- have they shown perseverance
- do they care about the problem
2/
Market:
- could this be a $10b company if things went right
- if in a pre-existing large market a) are the incumbents old/un-innovative, b) do founders understand customers enough to find a wedge
- if new market a) how big can this grow in optimistic case, b) why now
3/
Future:
- is it inevitable that this will exist in 10 years time
- are there likely to be lots of competitors
- is there strong network effect at scale?
- will it improve the world 🌎
Read 5 tweets
immad Profile picture
6 Dec 20
1/ On enjoying the journey:

In winter 2009 Paul Buchheit (@paultoo) gave a talk to our YC batch.

He said if you want money you should go work at Google/Facebook instead of doing a startup and you should do a startup if you enjoy the journey.

I thought he was crazy at the time.
2/ I thought:

A) I wanted the end result and didn’t care much about they journey
B) Startup founders seemed to have such great exits
C) It seemed like doing a startup was pretty hard
D) I didn’t think people got paid that much at big cos
3/ Between 2009 and 2015, Paul was proven extremely right.

All my friends who had taken jobs at those big companies or other high growth startups had done very well.

Whereas I was still struggling at my startup.
Read 4 tweets
immad Profile picture
15 Sep 20
1/ My fav "how to sell" book is "Never Split the Difference" by @VossNegotiation

One particular technique in it has come in super useful as an entrepreneur. It basically talks about never accepting the first "No" you get and ask 4 times in different ways

amazon.com/Never-Split-Di…
2/ As an entrepreneur you hear "No" a lot. From sales, investors, potential recruits. You have to come up with good mental models on how to handle it.

This technique is helpful because it helps you think of "No" as a point of learning and gives you concrete steps to take.
3/ The way I utilize it is to try to understand why we are hitting a particular roadblock and how to get across it. An example interaction:

potential client: sorry we aren't interested
me: why not?
potential client: we are busy
me: Its really easy, we could set it up for you
Read 5 tweets

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