Startup fundraising advice: what has held and what changed

What founders ask

We sorted 52,235 comments from three founder YouTube channels into the 22 founder problems. 108 of the 3,016 founder questions were about fundraising (3.6%), rank 11 of 22. 92 came from Alex Hormozi's audience.

Time-tested

Said by at least two experts, at least once before 2024 and again in 2025 or later. The first one has the most experts behind it. The others follow in the same order. Each shows an early and a recent quote, from two different people where the data allows.

1. Early investors bet on the founder, so show your drive, depth and full commitment.

   10 experts · 14 quotes · 2017 to 2026

   20142026

   “I think most investors like to see a clean break, because they want to know that you're all in.”

   “which is when you have special people um you should back them almost you know basically almost without consideration of other factors”

   Quoted: Alex Rampell, Alfred Lin, Amjad Masad, Andrew Chen, Jason Calacanis, Jason Lemkin, Lulu Cheng Meservey, Marc Andreessen, Rahul Vohra, and Uri Levine.

2. Do not raise more money, or at a higher price, than the business can grow into.

   8 experts · 11 quotes · 2020 to 2026

   20142026

   “there's not a time to be Precious about the amount of money you can raise the valuation again you just want to survive”

   “every round sets a, you know, sets sets a post. It sets sets a threshold, a hurdle,”

   Quoted: Alex Rampell, Alfred Lin, Jason Calacanis, Jason Fried, Jason Lemkin, Marc Andreessen, Rory O'Driscoll, and Tom Blomfield.

3. Get retention and growth strong before you raise; investors judge recent numbers.

   5 experts · 9 quotes · 2022 to 2026

   20142026

   “we want to see retention rates at least on one side of the network of you know over 50 annually”

   “For private companies, they're growing at insane rates or they're unfundable. And for public companies, they're accelerating and not decelerating.”

   Quoted: Alex Rampell, Andrew Chen, Ben Horowitz, Jason Lemkin, and Michael Seibel.

4. Pick investors and board members as long-term partners, not for the best valuation.

   5 experts · 8 quotes · 2014 to 2026

   20142026

   “the right thing is to pick the Venture Capital firm that's going to coach you to life bring you to life”

   “most important thing is to create selection bias. So, So want investors and board members who are choosing to be with you”

   Quoted: Ben Horowitz, Bill Campbell, Eric Ries, Jason Lemkin, and Jeff Jordan.

5. Raise on proof: reach a clear milestone with what you have, then pitch the progress.

   5 experts · 7 quotes · 2014 to 2026

   20142026

   “you're almost always better off making your business better than you are making your pitch better.”

   “you just do what you can on the money you got. As long as you can get to some kind of milestone”

   Quoted: Gustaf Alströmer, Jason Calacanis, Marc Andreessen, Michael Seibel, and Paul Graham.

6. Keep burn low enough for 12 to 18 months of runway, and get to default alive.

   4 experts · 7 quotes · 2020 to 2026

   20142026

   “you're gonna need eighteen months of cash that's the bottom line”

   “And I always thought of burn rate as a measure of risk.”

   Quoted: Aaron Levie, Bill Gurley, Jason Calacanis, and Michael Seibel.

7. Pitch a clear story that ties the company to a big shift, backed by traction today.

   4 experts · 7 quotes · 2023 to 2026

   20142026

   “when you're building a story for a company you usually want to track the story to a trend”

   “I would skip the SaaS concept. I would say, you know, you would want the architecture to be agent first.”

   Quoted: Alex Hormozi, Andrew Chen, Lulu Cheng Meservey, and Rory O'Driscoll.

8. Fund the company from revenue or your own money first; raise only when the business truly needs it.

   4 experts · 6 quotes · 2022 to 2025

   20142026

   “you don't actually need to start with this money to like start a company and to like get customers”

   “if you have a market that must be captured quickly in order to get a network effect of some sort,”

   Quoted: Alex Hormozi, Jason Fried, Michael Seibel, and Patrick Campbell.

9. Keep investors, even those who passed, updated long before you need to raise.

   4 experts · 5 quotes · 2020 to 2026

   20142026

   “create a list of the people who said no put them on your monthly update to non investors or potential investors”

   “You probably should spend 5 to 10% of your time, you know, meeting investors in a very casual way, right?”

   Quoted: Alex Rampell, Jason Calacanis, Jason Lemkin, and Shaan Puri.

10. Make the pitch easy to take: lead with your strongest point, keep it short and prepared.

    4 experts · 4 quotes · 2020 to 2025

    20142026

    “what I tell all my founders is to have an account on their MacBook or the chrome book called presenter”

    “I would send them a a Loom over email.”

    Quoted: Dylan Field, Gustaf Alströmer, Jason Calacanis, and Uri Levine.

11. Raise when you do not need the money, and take as much as the leverage allows.

    3 experts · 4 quotes · 2022 to 2025

    20142026

    “when you don't need something you're way more convincing than when you're begging for something”

    “with fundraising. My philosophy is you should fund raise the most amount you can when you don't need it.”

    Quoted: Michael Seibel, Roy Lee, and Tom Blomfield.

What changed

New advice is said by at least two experts, every time in 2025 or later.

No advice meets that bar this quarter.

How the questions moved

Fundraising's share of all founder questions in each half-year, with a 95% range.

The share was highest in H2 2024 (4.8%, 40 questions) and lowest in H2 2026 (to Sep) (2.6%, 3 of 117). The ranges overlap, so the change may be chance.

Where experts disagree

Two named experts give opposite fundraising advice in one place. Each split comes from a Gavel framework page. All splits

1. Back the founder or the numbers?

   Alfred Lin

   narrows the standard team, problem, market and model checklist with founder-market fit, and puts a founder's willingness to outlast everybody else above the idea. He asks how big a market can become, not how big it is today.

   Jason Lemkin

   uses customer calls only to confirm numbers he already likes: a SaaS company at $1M ARR growing about 10% a month with low churn, and for enterprise software a net revenue retention above 110%, or he does not invest.

   From Founder-Market Fit

Frameworks

Gavel pages that apply one expert's fundraising framework, with their own quotes and sources.

• Alfred Lin Founder-Market Fit

Other advice

Advice that one expert gives, or that has no quote from before 2024 yet. Not counted above.

• Write governance that protects the mission from investors who want short-term control.

  One expert · Eric Ries · 3 quotes, 2023–2026

Method

1. Quotes: 121 verified quotes from Gavel's expert cards tagged with fundraising. Each quote was checked word for word against the recording, and each card links to the moment it was said. 31 people are quoted.
2. Dates: a quote is dated by its recording's upload date on YouTube. An old talk uploaded late counts from the upload. 43 quotes are from before 2024 and 48 from 2025 or later.
3. Advice: we read every quote and wrote 12 short statements of advice. A classifier (Jev) then placed each quote under one statement, or under none. It agreed with our own reading on 103 of 121 quotes. 85 quotes landed under a statement.
4. Quotes shown: for each piece of advice we show quotes where the classifier and our own reading agree. We skip a quote that is too short to state the advice on its own. It still counts.
5. Time-tested: at least two experts, with one quote from before 2024 and one from 2025 or later. New: at least two experts, with every quote from 2025 or later. Both cut-off years move forward when a new year starts.
6. Questions: 52,235 comments from a16z, Alex Hormozi and Lenny's Podcast, from the second half of 2023 to September 2026. A classifier (Jev) marked which ones ask for help and sorted those into the 22 founder problems. The ranges are 95% Wilson intervals.
7. Limits: the quote mix follows which recordings Gavel holds, and 48 of 121 quotes are from 2025 or later. Advice can look new only because older recordings of it are missing. Most questions come from one channel's audience.
8. Refresh: every quarter we add new quotes and questions and rerun the counts. This page is as of Q3 2026. Next refresh: January 2027.