Tremendous

An angel investor's take on life and business

  • Why It’s Easier to Raise $3 Million Than $300,000

    “I know this sounds crazy, but it’s actually easier to raise $3 million than it is to raise $300,000.” Yesterday, I was helping a wonderful founder plan his fundraise. Like many founders, he thought a small raise would be easier — but it’s not.

    One of the weird things about venture capital is that raising a large sum is easier than raising a small one.

    Signaling Risk

    When I see a company raising a very small sum, I think to myself, “Why aren’t they raising more? Other companies are raising millions. Are they unable to raise?”

    And if they’re unable to raise, is there something wrong with the company?

    We don’t have much data to go on for an early stage startup. So investors pay a lot of attention to those signals, even if they can be misleading.

    “What Happens in 3 Months?”

    Let’s say a company is burning $100,000 a month and raising $300,000. What happens in 3 months?

    If I’m putting a check into a company, I don’t want them running out of cash right afterward. So I look for 12 months runway after a fundraise closes. I’d prefer to see 18-24 or more.

    Investors don’t want to see you limping along from small check to small check. They want you to raise significant cash and get the company to the next level.

    Big Ambitions

    Raising a larger round shows you have big ambitions. VC’s love ambitious founders.

    Only a huge outcome will make the VC’s money. Their business model is to lose money on 30 investments and have a single company put them into the black.

    Raising $2-4 million at seed shows that you plan on building this into a major company. Raising a couple hundred thousand may mean you just want to make a solid, small business.

    That small business may be great for you. But it won’t get the VC’s paid.

    Bringing in the Institutions

    Most institutional lead investors need to write a check of $1 million or more at seed. If your whole round is $200,000, they can’t do that.

    Now, you’re left with no lead.

    Every other investor you meet will wonder why you don’t have a lead. Did they pass on the deal? Did you fail due diligence?

    With questions like that in their minds, VC’s will just move on to the next deal.

    Insiders vs. Outsiders

    When you show up asking for $3 million for a seed stage startup, you’re showing that you know how the game is played.

    You know what your company is worth and what it can raise. And you have the network to get it done.

    When you show up looking for a $250,000 “seed round,” you look like an outsider. You look like you don’t know how venture capital works.

    Fairly or unfairly, investors want to back insiders, not outsiders.

    Wrap-Up

    If you’re going to bother raising money, you may as well take down some serious cash. Aim for a seed round of $2-4 million.

    You’re ambitious on signing customers, right? Bring the same ambition to your fundraise.

    There will be no blog tomorrow for Thanksgiving.🦃 I’ll see you on Friday. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

    More on tech:

    Benchmarks for Valuation and Traction at Y Combinator

    How Much Runway Do I Need?

    Small Investors Lead to Big Investors

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Benchmarks for Valuation and Traction at Y Combinator

    Next week, YC’s first fall batch will present at Demo Day. Here is what will distinguish the top companies from the stragglers, based on my scores of meetings with YC companies over the years.

    1) Top Tier. This elite group makes up 5-10% of the batch.

    These companies have built a serious business in a very short period of time. They have significant revenue, typically $150,000 to $500,000 ARR.

    You’ll see these guys raising $2 million at a $20-25 million post-money valuation. The rounds often wind up oversubscribed.

    2) Mid Tier. This is the average YC startup, perhaps 60% of the batch. Expect to see revenue of $3-5,000 a month, often in pilots.

    You’ll usually see these raising $2 million at a $20 million post-money valuation. The rounds do not usually oversubscribe.

    3) Lower Tier. This final group of companies is struggling to sign customers. It represents perhaps 30% of the batch.

    Expect to see zero revenue with these. They may have some Letters of Intent (LOI’s) or a rich pipeline, but cash is king, and they don’t have it yet.

    You can pick these up at a $15 to $20 million cap. The round is unlikely to oversubscribe.

    Even if a startup isn’t at the front of the pack on Demo Day, it can still be a huge success. No one can look at a brand new company and say for sure where it’s headed.

    Why Investing in YC Companies Is Hard

    Let’s take the average YC company at Demo Day. We’re talking about a startup with a couple thousand a month in revenue priced at a $20 million cap.

    If you build an entire portfolio of these, it will be very hard to make money.

    Assume a miracle happens and one of these startups hits a $1 billion valuation. You’ll be diluted by half along the way, giving you a 25x return.

    A portfolio of early stage startups might contain 30-40 companies. So, that $1 billion outcome didn’t even return the fund. Meanwhile, most of the others are probably failing.

    The fundamental problem for the investor is that these are pre-seed companies priced like late seed stage startups with $500,000-$1 million ARR.

    How I Approach Investing at YC

    That said, YC has a history of producing some of the best companies. I don’t want to exclude YC as a source of deals.

    I pick off one or two excellent YC startups a year before Demo Day. I also invest in others a year or two after Demo Day, when their traction has caught up to their valuation.

    This gives me a portfolio with a couple high priced deals balanced out by many cheaper ones in non-YC companies. My average entry price stays reasonable, at $9.7 million for companies averaging around $300k ARR throughout 2024.

    Wrap-Up

    YC does a ton of filtering for the investor. They also give their startups some of the best coaching on earth.

    This valuable service isn’t free. Hence the higher valuations.

    Like any luxury product, it’s okay to indulge from time to time — if you have the money.

    Note: YC also admits many biotech and deep tech companies. Those companies have entirely different benchmarks and I don’t invest in those areas, so they are excluded from this analysis.

    More on tech:

    How Much Runway Do I Need?

    Pitch Deck Roast: LightHaus

    Small Investors Lead to Big Investors

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • How Much Runway Do I Need?

    How much runway* do you need? How much should you burn? Here’s an overview of what the best people in the business do, and what I expect to see as an investor.

    Learning from Rahul

    Rahul Vohra has built Superhuman into one of the hottest startups in America. On a recent episode of This Week in Startups, Rahul explained how he makes sure Superhuman never runs out of money:

    “Every single quarter, we make sure that at that moment in time, we have 48 months of runway left.”

    48 months might sound ridiculously conservative, but Rahul stands by it:

    “Some people aim for 24, which, by the way, why 24? Guys, that’s not enough. You need more than 24 months of runway.”

    Rahul has run Superhuman in an uncommon way. And he’s gotten uncommon results, building a unicorn in just 7 years.

    How Much Runway I Want to See

    I love Rahul’s approach. He might have left a little bit of growth on the table, but he’s mitigated one of the biggest risks to his company — running out of cash.

    But of course, most startups don’t run this way.

    When I’m looking at a deal, I want the company to have a minimum of 12 months runway once the current round closes. If it’s any less than that, I pass.

    With under 12 months runway, the founder will have to turn around and start raising again almost immediately. It’s hard to run a company that way.

    When to Raise

    You want to start raising when you have at least 9 months of runway in the bank.

    The raise could take 6 months. You want to make sure you still have some cash on hand at the end of that period.

    Having lots of runway when you go out to raise gives you leverage with investors. You don’t have to accept just any terms.

    If you can make it to breakeven before you start raising money, even better! You can always ramp up the burn again when you refill the gas tank.

    Remember, investors don’t invest in startups that need money.

    Wrap-Up

    Always know your runway. Making sure you don’t run out of cash is one of your most important jobs as a founder.

    Aim for a minimum of 12 months runway after a raise. And seriously consider Rahul’s conservative approach — it’s working for him!

    If worse comes to worst and you do run out of money, your company can still survive. I’ve seen startups lay off everyone other than the founders and keep building.

    I have enormous respect for entrepreneurs like that. But it’s easier not to go broke in the first place!

    How much runway do you like to see?

    *Runway: The amount of time your startup has until it has $0 in the bank, given its current burn rate and cash in bank. For example, if you’re burning $50,000 a month and you have $500,000 in the bank, you have 10 months runway.

    More on tech:

    Pitch Deck Roast: LightHaus

    Three Free and Easy Ways to Meet Investors

    Small Investors Lead to Big Investors

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Which Jobs Will AI Replace? Which Jobs Are Safe?

    “Am I going to be out of a job?” That’s the first thought a lot of people have when they see a new AI tool. So what jobs are safe, and what jobs aren’t?

    As an angel investor, I see new technologies before most people do. So let me give you a sneak peak of what’s coming, and what isn’t…

    Most Threatened Jobs:

    1) Sales Development Representatives (SDR’s). SDR’s cold message sales prospects and set meetings for their bosses, the Account Executives (AE’s).

    There are a million AI SDR startups. It’s so many that I avoid investing in them — the market is too crowded.

    If your job involves sending customized cold messages to prospects, qualifying leads, and setting meetings, start looking for a new job. AE’s are safer because they actually meet with customers.

    2) Loan officers. Loan officers decide who should get loans for houses, cars and the like. This job is extremely vulnerable to AI.

    Loan officers gather a ton of paperwork, analyze it, and make a decision on whether someone is creditworthy. AI is great at sucking up unstructured data like this and making a decision.

    3) Customer Service. If your job involves answering similar questions for many different customers, you’re in trouble.

    AI can analyze prior tickets and come to a good solution for probably 90% of customers. The edge cases will go to a much smaller group of human agents.

    Klarna recently laid off two thirds of their customer service staff, some 700 people. An AI system now does their jobs.

    What Klarna is doing today, everyone will be doing within 5-10 years.

    Least Threatened Jobs:

    1) Emergency Medical Technicians. EMT’s take vitals, drive ambulances, and even administer some medications. They also spend a lot of time calming down scared patients.

    This job is too multifaceted to be automated.

    “If it ever happens, it will be at least 20 years from now,” I recently told a friend who’s an EMT.

    The same is true for most jobs in healthcare. The jobs are too varied, not to mention heavily regulated.

    2) Plumbers. Plumbers fix clogs, install new plumbing, and repair water heaters among many other tasks.

    The job is physical and highly variable. The industry is fragmented. This makes plumbing quite difficult to automate.

    The same is true for most skilled trades. As AI gobbles up more and more jobs, the trades will be a great home for many workers.

    3) Live performers. An android can sing and dance. But will anyone come to the concert?

    I doubt it. They’ll all be watching Taylor Swift.

    Humans want to connect with performers. We want to obsess over what Taylor’s wearing and who she’s dating.

    What’s true for big stars is true for local bands and theater troupes as well. It will be a long time before these jobs go away, if ever.

    Wrap-Up

    AI is a serious threat to a lot of jobs. But many other jobs will be safe for a very long time.

    If your work is multifaceted, physical, or involves human connection, you’re in a strong position.

    In the end, we will always find ways to be useful. Society has been automating jobs for centuries, and there’s more jobs now than ever.

    We humans land on our feet.

    What jobs do you think are most at risk from AI? Which are safe?

    Have a great weekend, everyone!

    More on tech:

    Three Free and Easy Ways to Meet Investors

    YC’s New Request for Startups

    Pitch Deck Roast: LightHaus

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Three Free and Easy Ways to Meet Investors

    You want to meet investors. But how do you do it? Here are 3 free, easy ways to get in front of us:

    1) OpenVC. OpenVC is an awesome platform that connects founders and investors.

    OpenVC is free and anyone can join. You post a blurb about your company on their website. Investors can see it and if they’re interested, they contact you.

    At that point, you can send them the deck and set up a meeting.

    I did a deal from OpenVC earlier this year. The company is doing so well that I just invested in it a second time!

    Since I’ve found a winner here already, I make sure to pop in several times a week. Many top VC’s do the same.

    2) Crunchbase. Crunchbase is a database of startups and investors. I troll the site several times a week, looking for interesting new startups.

    Anyone can submit their startup to the database for free. I wrote a step-by-step guide on how to submit your company, which you can read here.

    Many VC firms have analysts assigned to monitor this database. If you’re in it, they may contact you.

    This is a lot easier than having to do all the outbound yourself!

    3) Mercury Raise. Mercury Raise is a program that helps startups raise money. It’s open to all customers of Mercury.

    Mercury is a bank for startups. Many of my portfolio companies use it and love it.

    Mercury Raise sends a batch of startups to investors each month. Some even participate in a Demo Day with the founder, Immad. I attended one of those recently and it was great!

    Lots of VC’s use Mercury Raise to find new investments. And especially if you’re already a Mercury customer, you may as well take advantage of this.

    Wrap-Up

    Meeting investors can seem like some sort of dark art. But it’s actually pretty easy and shouldn’t cost you anything.

    If you use all 3 of these methods, you’ll be booking meetings in no time!

    What are you favorite ways to meet investors?

    More on tech:

    YC’s New Request for Startups

    Pitch Deck Roast: LightHaus
    Meet My Latest Investment: LedgerUp

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • Meet BMW’s New Factory Workers

    You work in a car factory. Androids come into the shop and start doing your job just like you used to. What does that feel like?

    Workers at BMW plants are finding out. In a new video from robotics startup Figure, founder Brett Adcock shows his androids assembling car parts faster than ever.

    The Figure robots in the company’s headquarters are doing 1,000 placements every day. (Taking Component X and putting it in Place Y is one placement.)

    The robots are still pretty slow compared to a human. But their dexterity is impressive. I especially like watching the hands move.

    Figure robots aren’t just in a lab. The company deployed the androids to a BMW factory in South Carolina in a two week pilot earlier this year.

    Figure appears to be way ahead of Tesla’s Optimus. The Tesla androids stood behind the bar and bopped to the music at the recent “We, Robot” event. But they didn’t do much else.

    If you work at BMW’s South Carolina plant, what are you thinking when you see androids walking onto the floor?

    Sure, the robots are slow and awkward now. But we can all see the writing on the wall.

    They’re going to get better and faster. And there will be many, many more of them.

    Robots don’t take breaks. They don’t need healthcare. And they don’t unionize.

    How can you compete with that?

    In the long run, you can’t. If I worked in a car factory now, I’d be looking for another job.

    In 10 years, I expect to see androids all over auto factories. And they’ll be in other factories too — steel mills, chemical plants, you name it.

    Working in a car factory is dangerous. The risk of being injured is twice as high as the average American worker.

    Putting robots in these dangerous jobs will avoid a lot of good people getting hurt. On the other hand, those people will no longer have a paycheck.

    With a little retraining, factory workers could move into the trades. Auto workers might become plumbers, a job that’s less repetitive and harder to automate.

    They’d make more money too!

    Government should help with that retraining. Masses of laid off workers is bad for the economy, not to mention political stability.

    In the end, no one really wants to work in an auto plant. It’s boring, repetitive, dangerous work.

    They just want the money.

    Let’s outsource these rotten jobs to robots. We humans can do things we enjoy, and make lots of money along the way.

    What do you think of the Figure robot?

    More on tech:
    YC’s New Request for Startups

    Pitch Deck Roast: LightHaus
    Meet My Latest Investment: LedgerUp

    Save Money on Stuff I Use:

    Fundrise

    This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

    More on Fundrise in this post.

    If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

    Misfits Market

    I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

    I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

    Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

  • YC’s New Request for Startups

    Y Combinator has released a new Request for Startups. Today, I went through the list and picked out the ideas I think are the most promising — plus one of my own.

    1. New Defense Technology. Group Partner Jared Friedman wants startups to build defense tech and replace the old, slow contractors that dominate the business.

    There’s a huge opportunity here.

    Today, defense contracts are almost all cost-plus. That means there’s no incentive to be efficient.

    We need nimble startups doing fixed price contracts that reward efficiency. If we can do that, we will have the world’s best defense industry.

    YC is right that we need new defense tech, but we also need better ways of making the tried-and-true weapons like artillery shells and Javelin missiles. Our stores are badly depleted from the Ukraine war.

    The big, slow defense contractors could take years to replenish our armories. We need startups that can produce those common munitions cheaply, quickly, and at massive scale.

    2. A Way to End Cancer. Cancer is the second biggest killer in America after heart disease, claiming over 600,000 lives a year.

    YC’s Surbhi Sarna notes that MRI’s can now detect a cancer the size of a millimeter. But they also surface a lot of false positives.

    If we had better AI systems to tell a tumor from normal tissue, we could get more use out of these MRI’s and catch more cancers early. Catching cancer early is the key to defeating it.

    3. Foundational Models for Biological Systems. Over 90 percent of drug candidates fail to make it to FDA approval.

      Imagine the time and money we spend on this! If we could model the human body in a computer and test on silicon, drug development would be dramatically cheaper and faster.

      My Request for a Startup: A Derivatives Clearinghouse

      $715 trillion — that’s the notional value of all outstanding over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives in the world today. It’s a number I cannot even contemplate.

      Believe it or not, these massive financial contracts are mostly recorded in spreadsheets!

      What happens when someone deletes a line and CTRL + Z doesn’t work? I shudder to think.

      We need software to manage and track these massive transactions. I once saw a startup take a shot at this, but it didn’t catch on and they pivoted to something else.

      Nonetheless, someone is going to capture this massive market. It may as well be you!

      Wrap-Up

      Request for Startups is fun! We investors get to turn the tables and pitch you ideas for a change.

      You definitely don’t need to do one of my ideas or one of YC’s. Work on a problem that means a lot to you.

      But hopefully the YC partners and I gave you some interesting ideas. Play with them, make them your own, then give us a chance to get our beaks wet. 🙂

      Which Request for a Startup was your favorite?

      More on tech:

      Meet My Latest Investment: LedgerUp

      Pitch Deck Roast: LightHaus

      Why I Don’t Invest in CPG Startups

      Save Money on Stuff I Use:

      Fundrise

      This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

      More on Fundrise in this post.

      If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

      Misfits Market

      I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

      I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

      Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

    1. Why I Don’t Invest in CPG Startups

      There’s one type of startup I never invest in: CPG companies. These startups were the darlings of the bubble as investors poured billions into companies like Peloton and Casper. But now, this category has become radioactive.

      Here’s why…

      Terrible Public Comps

      Even the biggest winners in CPG are in the toilet.

      Peloton is down over 95% from its peak. Allbirds has been left for dead, with a market cap under $60 million. Even Warby Parker is 60% off its peak.

      When you invest in an early stage startup, you dream about an IPO. But in CPG, even if you get there, you still don’t make much money.

      Difficulty Scaling

      When I order a Peloton, Peloton has to take metal and wires and make a brand new bike. If I sign up for Notion, all Notion has to do is make me a log-in.

      Software scales much more easily than a physical product. That’s why it’s easier for a software company to grow fast.

      And since selling an additional seat for a SaaS product costs very little, the gross margins are great. The same can’t be said for Peloton.

      Black Holes for Capital

      A software company needs capital to hire engineers and sales/marketing people. A CPG startup needs those as well.

      But it also needs a bunch of additional cash to build inventory.

      If I order a pair of Allbirds shoes, Allbirds has to have a warehouse full of them ready to ship. This means they need to spend a fortune building up all that inventory.

      That’s a cost a software company doesn’t have. And of course, no one knows if these items will even sell!

      The China Problem

      If a miracle happens and your CPG product is a hit, you have another problem. Someone in China will knock it off within days.

      Expect to see items that look just like yours on Amazon and Temu. The price will be a fraction of what you charge.

      Many CPG companies find themselves playing whack-a-mole, fighting one Chinese copycat after another. It’s a battle that’s hard, if not impossible, to win.

      One Time Only

      If you beat all the Chinese copycats and make that sale, you have yet another problem. Many sales in CPG are one-time only.

      If I buy a Casper mattress, I’m probably not going to buy another for a long time, if ever. Meanwhile, software companies often have recurring revenue.

      Some CPG companies like Peloton have found a way around this. Their bike comes with a software subscription. But many other CPG startups aren’t so lucky.

      Wrap-Up

      With so many headwinds, investors have mostly abandoned CPG as a category.

      In a bubble where the cost of money is 0, investors threw cash at anything. Mattresses, toothbrushes, coffee shops, why not?

      Those days are over.

      CPG may be a tough category, but I’m still excited about investing in consumer software startups. Selling to consumers can be awesome, but only if you’re peddling the right thing.

      What do you think of CPG startups?

      More on tech:

      Pitch Deck Roast: Bharosa AI

      Pitch Deck Roast: LightHaus

      Meet My Latest Investment: LedgerUp

      Save Money on Stuff I Use:

      Fundrise

      This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

      More on Fundrise in this post.

      If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

      Misfits Market

      I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

      I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

      Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

    2. Pitch Deck Roast: Bharosa AI

      A very brave founder, Vandit, sent me his deck to roast in public. His startup, Bharosa AI, is making an awesome chatbot for healthcare. I dug into the deck in the video below.

      Some key points:

      • There are too many slides here. Aim for 12 max.
      • The demo is awesome, super impressive!
      • Focus on a single, clear business model and show how you’re going to execute it.
      • Move up the team slide to the 2nd slide in the deck. Team is the most important thing.
      • Do a bottoms-up TAM.
      • Tell us about regulatory risks.
      • The raise is too large. A pre-launch company can raise perhaps $500,000.

      Congrats to Vandit on his amazing product! All he needs to do is tighten up this deck a bit and he should be in a great position to raise.

      Do you want your deck roasted in public? Leave a comment and let me know!

      Have a great weekend, everybody!

      More on tech:

      Pitch Deck Roast: LightHaus

      Meet My Latest Investment: LedgerUp

      Small Investors Lead to Big Investors

      Save Money on Stuff I Use:

      Fundrise

      This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

      More on Fundrise in this post.

      If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

      Misfits Market

      I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

      I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

      Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

    3. Meet My Latest Investment: LedgerUp

      “You have to meet these LedgerUp guys, they’re crushing it!”

      With an intro like that, I knew I had to take the meeting.

      I was chatting with a great YC founder, and he told me about his batchmates, Joseph and Bailey. He was super impressed with how their bookkeeping software startup was growing.

      So I cold messaged the founder, Joseph Johnson. Within minutes, we were on a call.

      Less than 24 hours later, I was asking Joseph for an allocation. This is my fastest meeting-to-investment ever.

      LedgerUp is really that good. It can take a PDF contract and turn it into invoices automatically, saving you many hours.

      Not only that, it can send personalized follow-up emails to your customers to make sure you get paid. Imagine the time you can save!

      LedgerUp is the tool to manage your startup’s finances. Instead of building a finance team, just outsource it to them!

      Joseph is a really hard worker. He’s full of energy, and goes about his work with a wide grin. I can tell he loves what he’s doing!

      I’m delighted to be a small part of LedgerUp’s recent seed round. Check out LedgerUp and handle your startup’s finances, faster and better than ever!

      More on tech:

      Raise More Money!

      Pitch Deck Roast: LightHaus

      Why VC’s Hate Solo Founders

      Save Money on Stuff I Use:

      Fundrise

      This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

      More on Fundrise in this post.

      If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

      Misfits Market

      I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

      I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

      Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order.