The exact process my client used to raise $3,900,000 for his Web3 startup in only 13 weeks

… in a brutal funding climate

[CASE STUDY THREAD🧵]: My client - let’s call him Sahil - runs a Web3 startup

Great product and good traction

Let’s be clear: Solid traction is a must (if you’re operational)

If yours is bad rn…

Hustle first, then raise

Otherwise, it’ll be a f*ing grind

Fundraising is a status game

High-status founders raise big rounds

Here are 20 high-status questions to ask in VC meetings (that will make investors chase you): 1/ Why did you decide to take this meeting?

Spoke to a founder who raised $523,000,000 in venture capital.

When he pitched me, he had...

No deck
No charts
No financial model

But he used 3 simple tools to convince me he was a Billion $ Founder

If you're raising an institutional round +$2M use this system: This is the most powerful weapon to crush investor meetings.

It took me 6 years as a VC and 3 years as a founder to distill.

Steal my system.

If you find it helpful, please RT the first tweet to share the value with other founders.

Now let’s get you funded 👇

Why your fundraising is costing you 6 figures

And how to avoid ruining your startup with @naval 's simple founder hack:

(requires $$ mindset shift) @naval Let’s face it.

You didn’t become a startup founder for the love of raising capital.

Nobody does.

Yet, once you have to raise money, it takes over a huge chunk of your workday.

Hours and hours.

Hours you could spend making money, growing the business.

But...

Here are 9 pitch decks from +$1 billion startups (incl. YouTube Coinbase & Tinder)

… they used when they were just starting out: Coinbase

This is the deck they used to raise a $600k Seed round in 2012

Coinbase went public and is valued at $15.5 billion.
slideshare.net/BrianArmstrong…

Most great storytellers don't share their secrets with us.

So, I studied the most iconic ones.

10 no-BS storytelling tricks used by Steve Jobs, Nike and Breaking Bad (that you can too): 💎 Keep a story log

All of us have storyworthy moments every day.

But 99% of people don't record them. They lose them forever.

Do this:

Every night before bed, take 5 minutes to reflect on your day.

Write down one five-minute story that happened to you.

h/t Matthew Dicks

If you missed out on what went down behind the scenes of Elon’s Twitter takeover…

Here’s the crazy story (incl. spicy tweets and private texts) that led to the $44 billion buy-out 🌶🌶🌶

Get a glass of milk ready just in case… ⤵️ Last week @elonmusk bought Twitter for $44 billion.

But the best part of the story already happened over the last 6 months.

Later released emails, texts and voice memos give us a glimpse behind the curtain.

Here's a quick timeline with the juciest details. 👇

Storytelling is the 2nd most powerful way to hook customers. (the most powerful is illegal)

Mercedes, McDonald’s & Guinness built $ 223 billion in brand value using stories.

If YOU want to hook people with storytelling,

Watch these 5 videos: Heads up:

All of the stories below,

Use the same simple but powerful story structure:

There’s a hero.

🦸 It’s the customer (It’s you)

And the hero receives a magic gift that helps them get what they want.

🪄 That’s the product

Once you know it, you'll see it everywhere:

So… most people think Steve Jobs was a naturally gifted storyteller.

Well, they’re wrong.

Jobs almost lost everything because he underestimated the power of storytelling.

Here’s what went down… (time for a story 🍿) In the early 80s, Apple and Steve Jobs were flying high.

Their second computer, the Apple II, was a smash hit.

(It eventually sold 5-6 million units over 17 years - world record)

Apple’s IPO was the biggest since Ford Motors. It created 300 new millionaires.

So, naturally...

McKinsey asked 18,000 business leaders:

What skills do you need to succeed in the next 10 years?

Top cognitive skill: Storytelling.

Still, most people suck at using storytelling to become successful.

It’s simple if you’re clever like this company: Imagine this:

Let’s say you’re a high-end retailer.

And you’ve figured out a good way to gain a competitive advantage:

→ Outstanding customer service.

It lets you charge high prices AND make your customers happy.

Great.

But you’ve got a problem:

Where Steve Jobs learned storytelling:

PIXAR

The animation studio making $ billions with captivating stories.

In 2011 they shared their ‘22 Rules of Storytelling’. A treasure trove.

Here are their 9 most effective rules - explained.

Let’s start with the least obvious: In 1986 Steve Jobs co-f(o)unded the storytelling giant Pixar.

Among its talented storytellers, he learned to craft the emotional narratives he later used at Apple.

Not all of their storytelling rules apply outside of movies.

But some do. BIG TIME.

Get your pencil ready:

Storytelling is quickly becoming the no. 1 marketing skill.

Nike, Google & Coca-Cola make $ billions using stories.

If you want to tell a story about your business that people will love,

Watch these 5 videos: ☝️ Before we dive in

All of the stories below follow the same structure.

There's a hero.

It's not the product or the brand.

🦸 The customer is the hero

The hero receives a magic gift.

🪄 The product is a "magic gift" that helps the hero achieve their goal

See for yourself:

I always thought storytelling was only for marketers and novelists.

So I never used it with purpose.

Boy did I have that wrong…

I missed out on connections, customers and cash.

Realize in 3 mins what took me 15 years to figure out (buckle up) ⤵️ Going through life with no sense of storytelling limits everything you do.

It certainly did that for me.

It took me ages to realize one thing:

People actually WANT to hear my stories

Or yours!

(as long as they're well told)

5 fundamental truths that opened my eyes:

Storytelling is the most powerful tool to hook people.

Here's how VELCRO will teach you more about storytelling than a $1,599 course: Velcro is a compound of two French words:

• Velours = Velvet

• Crochet = Hook

It's also called a hook-and-loop fastener.

One side of it is covered with thousands of tiny hooks.

The other with thousands of tiny loops.

When you press them together...

Being creative is exhausting.

Here are 16 inspiring creators to fill up your content engine.

At least half of them you don’t know yet: 1/ Creator: @nathanbaugh27

You'll get: Storytelling breakdowns from business to fiction

Thread to boost your creativity:

https://twitter.com/nathanbaugh27/status/1522911673098682368

Tesla, Patagonia, Zuora.

Their biggest asset: A sales story.

Here’s their story framework to 10x your presentation: Did a pitch of yours ever fall flat?

Did you ever feel like you didn't hook a customer?

Have people ever tuned out when you showed them slides?

That's because there was something missing:

A powerful story.

That's now going to change ...

In 2010 Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for figuring out why people are bad at making decisions.

Kahneman's biggest unlock:

How to procrastinate less and become a successful decision-maker by asking yourself 5 simple questions.

Let’s start with the most non-obvious: Before we dive in...

There's only one effective way to answer these questions:

→ Write it down

There's only one effective way to learn from past decisions:

→ Review what you wrote down when you made the decision

That's why you need to keep a DECISION JOURNAL

Let's dig in:

Storytelling is an empathy machine.

But 98% of people tell their stories wrong.

Here’s one simple trick to craft moving stories (and the reason why Jurassic Park wasn't about dinosaurs): Most stories go like this:

"Interesting stuff happened to me. Let me tell you about it."

These stories might make for entertaining anecdotes.

But they don’t move their audience emotionally.

They don’t have a lasting effect on people.

They don’t resonate.

Why is that?

Want to grow your account to 10.000 followers quickly?

Everything you need to know about writing on Twitter is right here.

8 threads to supercharge your growth: 🔹 Write hooks (1)

Your hook is the most important part of your thread.

If it sucks nobody will see the rest.

@alexgarcia_atx does a great job at breaking down what makes a hook work:

https://twitter.com/alexgarcia_atx/status/1390118223706836992

Most people suck at managing their time.

Here's a simple framework (used by athletes) to make you highly effective in work and life: What you'll learn by reading this:

1. How not to run out of energy
2. How to preserve your resources for your most important work
3. How to think like an athlete
4. A plan to structure your week leveraging your energy cycle
5. A free weekly energy planner 🎁

Let's dive in ↓

Most people are not focused.

Warren Buffett says it's what made him a billionaire.

Here is his 3-step technique for achieving next-level focus: Here's what you'll learn by reading this:

1. Why focus beats talent
2. How to make difficult tradeoffs
3. A more effective way to think about your time
4. How to focus your energy on what really matters
5. A free template that'll help you become more focused

Let's dive in ↓