James Turner

"It always takes long than you think, even when you know it takes longer than you think". It's hard to predict how long fundraising can take. In a world where most VCs say no, it's difficult to know if you're truly investible until the money comes in. You should have a plan of investors to reach out to and always be adding to the list. Once you start to get 50% of your round committed is when you should start planning your close. Until you have a good indication that the fundraising is real, keep putting in the effort, grow traction, and plan to meet more investors.

Relationship building takes time. Quite often people want to get capital immediately and they need to understand that building relationships with VCs, investors, and financiers will always take more than one meeting. It is better to have friendly rapport that's non-threatening and not annoying so that VCs continue to answer your emails and get excited to see you. Almost always founders don't fit the thesis or traction requirements of funds or financiers and it's better to work towards that and keep a good relationship instead of becoming the annoying founder. Read the room, continue building, and reach out for investment when it makes sense.

Newer and emerging industries often have underdeveloped market research methods which means two things: 1) Adjacent market research will be helpful but not totally telling 2) Intuition and a deep understanding human behavior is essential to making investment decisions There was no market research about the demand for cars in 1899

Customer Validation takes form in two different ways: Problem Validation and Product Adoption As a founder you need to both validate that the problem you're trying to solve is both wide and deep and that the MVP that you've built gets adopted. You need to show that every part of the customer acquisition is validated. From marketing, to the sale, to the adoption, to the continued use it's your role as a startup to make sure early users love your product.

You have to give to get. In every VC negotiation founders and investors want and prioritize different things. If the founders are hyper focused on control,  then push them on valuation (or discount rate if it's a SAFE). It's also critical to make sure that if they are focused on control, that you trust them, because they could easily make a decisions that you can have no power over.