Thread by @dunkhippo33

Sometimes it’s fun to look back at what I wrote about the fundraising landscape of just a couple yrs ago and see what has changed.

A reflection on the fundraising landscape in the past 3 yrs >>

1) I wrote about ICOs, SAFEs, and crowdfunding in 2018 and my hopes for how it would evolve and change:

elizabethyin.com/2018/01/24/wha…

2) At the time ICOs were hot! Super easy for companies to raise.

I think today’s “regular SAFE” fundraising is like the ICO market of early 2018.

3) Crypto is of course still hot (NFTs, defi startups etc) but I think there’s still real opportunity to streamline transactions - not only in sending - but in audits, legal, and accounting.

Gas aside, sending crypto is easy. Accountability-infrastructure is hard.

4) Certainly BTC and ETH have taken off this year but also a number of other tokens are legit starting to take off including Origin and Celo.

Celo is even investing in intl startups to propagate their token globally & we share at least 2 portfolio cos w them

5) When I wrote about Crowdfunding in 2018 it was not really top of mind for anyone. This year, it’s taken center stage.

My wish for startups to be able to easily raise from customers is coming true with new SEC regs paving the way. I’m optimistic we are just in the first inning

6) In particular, I think crowdfunding will become quite common for a # of companies.

In fact this is already happening in other ways. For tech products we’ve invested in, it’s now common for startups to have raised some angel money from their early customers on SAFEs.

7) Now Angellist has made it easy to roll all those angels together in an SPV.

The only diff between crowdfunding and what is already happening is accreditation.

This train is already moving.

8) A common theme across all of these mechanisms is how easy it’s gotten to be able to invest. Eg infra is still hard in crypto. Angellist and Republic have made it super easy for small check writers. Etc

The more progress that is made in bringing down overhead, the better

9) You see this in intl investing. The overhead is still way too high. It’s not worth it to write a $25k check via @HustleFundVC into many intl entities if it costs $5k-10k in legal fees + accounting + audit.

infrastructure costs impede progress.

10) If you are looking to push progress in startup fundraising, I think the best opportunities are in solving infrastructure. What do I mean by that?

-can you make it easy for investors to write a small check w low cost in legal, accounting, audits?

11) -can you find ways to pool small checks together?

-can you bring more funders into the startup ecosystem?

-can you streamline the transaction process? (From sending money to receiving k1s etc)

12) I think many ppl think that there are not a lot of funders w $$ & that’s why it’s hard to raise $$ for a co.

I’d argue the world is full of money - that’s not the issue. I think if it’s really hard to invest, that limits the # of funders.

13) We’ve seen so much progress in all of these methods of funding just in 3 yrs & I’d argue it’s because of infrastructure progress.

The easier it becomes, the better the fundraising landscape becomes for startups.