I’m Ivan. This is a newsletter about startups and investing—for founders and investors. Each week I cover how top 1% startups use ai, raise, and grow.
Hey folks,
This week’s drop is the 80/20 of fundraising resources for early-stage founders. These are the guides, benchmarks, and tools I find myself sending to founders again and again, so I pulled them into one place.
I’ll refresh it quarterly with updated valuations, metrics, and new resources. In the meantime, I’d love your feedback, just hit reply (I read and answer every one).
Lets go:
This week’s sponsor is AI CRM Attio (raised $52M from Google Ventures):
Attio is the AI-native CRM for the next era of companies: Connect your email and calendar, and Attio instantly builds a CRM that matches your business model — with all your companies, contacts, and interactions enriched with actionable insights.
With Attio, AI isn’t just a feature - it’s the foundation. You can do things like:
Instantly prospect and route leads with research agents
Get real-time insights from AI during customer conversations
Build powerful AI automations for your most complex workflows
Fast-growing companies like Granola, Modal, Replicate and more are all experiencing the future of GTM with Attio.
1. Incentives: how vc’s think.
Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome. (Charlie Munger)
If you don’t understand venture capital incentives, and we’ve talked about how to fail at fundraising in the past, you are shooting yourself in the foot for no good reason.
Read first: Venture Deals by Brad Feld.
Deep shelf:
AVC Blog - Fred Wilson
Secrets of Sand Hill Road - Scott Kupor
Sam Altman’s Playbook - Sam Altman
Elad’s Blog - Elad Gil
Above the Crowd - Bill Gurley
PG blog - Paul Graham
Naval Archive - Naval
Pmarca Archive - Marc Andreessen
YC Startup Library - Y Combinator
BVP Memos - Bessemer Venture Partners
Oaktree Memos - Oaktree Capital
2. Process: build & ride momentum.
Fundraise like a surfer — plan to take on investors in sets. (FirstRound)
The 80/20:
Systematise → track, measure, iterate.
Batch your outreach → momentum compounds.
Target + personalise → spray-and-pray kills you.
Warm intros are king → always.
Fundraising is sales → The art is being persistent enough to stay top-of-mind without crossing into annoying.
Find momentum, ride it → speed creates more speed.
Guides:
Fundraising guides - Y Combinator
Fundraising wisdom - First Round
Fundraising - Creandum
Warm intros - OpenVC
3. Equity & Compensation.
Equity is your most expensive currency, use it wisely. Protect your startup with vesting.
Founding equity:
Foundational equity split by Carta
Co-founder equity split by Carta
ESOP:
Cash:
Founder Compensation - Startup Riders
4. Proof Points: metrics and PMF.
At pre-seed your story is the metric. At seed, it’s traction quality. At Series A, it’s proof of PMF.
Early-stage signals
Liquidity Quality - Bill Gurley
What is good retention - Lenny Rachitsky
Churn - David Skok
Benchmarks
5. Valuations.
Valuation sets the expectations you’ll live with. Price today dictates the bar for the next round.
6. Storytelling: decks, data rooms, narrative.
Your deck is the story investors repeat when you’re not in the room.
Deck Building & Narrative
Series A Deck Template - Creandum
Startup Pitch Deck GPT - Startup Riders
Story Branding - Donald Miller
The Idea Maze - Balajis Srinivasan
Data Room & Plan
Data Room template - Creandum
Business Plan - Sequoia
Cap-Table - Carta
How to build a financial plan - Creandum
7. Tools: the 80/20 fundraising stack.
Tools won’t win your round, but they can save you weeks.
The best founders I know don’t over-optimise, they use:
Linkedin, Twitter, (worth trying Happenstance) - for warm intros.
Attio AI CRM or similar - to run a tight, data-driven, fundraising process.
Crunchbase - access data to figure out who to target.
Startup Pitch Deck - to challenge the quality of your deck.
DocSend, Notion - shareable data room + track who viewed what.
Other potentially useful tools:
Crunchbase Pro / PitchBook / CB Insights → fast investor lists.
Affinity / Clay → if you want automated investor mapping from your network.
Carta → cap table, equity management, easy to drop into your data room.
8. Closing the deal: Term Sheets
Keep it simple and transparent. Know your walk-away. Be fair and reasonable.
The 80/20:
At pre-seed, keep it simple → use a SAFE
Prep your data room early → don’t scramble once a term sheet lands.
Know what investors check → team, tech, tam, traction, trenches, cap table, legal docs, IP.
Red flags kill deals → avoid messy ownership or undisclosed liabilities.
Beware of “dirty” economic terms → bad investors hide risk in structure. Good ones keep it simple.
Resources
Pre-seed / Seed: Quickstart Guide to SAFE’s + SAFE Template - YC
Series A+: What a good Series A Term Sheet looks like + Template - YC
High-resolution fundraising - Paul Graham
Demystifying the TS - Mountside
Red flags
I’ll be deep diving into this for Startup Riders Pro members.
9. Boards
A board should be leverage, not homework.
80/20 Boards:
How to run an effective board of directors at seed - Startup Riders
Lessons - Keith Rabois
The Art of Board Membership - Mike Volpi
Board deck template - Creandum
10. Join Startup Riders Pro:
🔒 How not to raise money - a checklist of fundraising mistakes.
🔒 Fundraising Frameworks — 3 frameworks to tighten your pitch.
🔒 Founder Info-Diet - 40+ quality info resources to stay ahead.
🔒 GTM + AI — How founders are rebuilding sales in 2025.
🔒 HubSpot’s 0-$100M Playbook — $0 to $100M sales strategy.
🔒 Founder Compensation — salary data from top founders.
🔒 Agentic Revolution — Deep dive into the next tech platform shift.
🔒 AI Voice Agents — Market map of where capital flows.
That’s it! I’d love to hear from you, just reply to this email (I reply to all of them) 👋.
These are great Ivan! Lots of these recommendations can also be applied to IR teams and Emerging Managers in LP acquisition mode e.g) Affinity, Pitchbook, Gamma, Docsend, and Carta.
I'm actually really enjoying a more link heavy rundown where a reader can learn at their own pace and bookmark the post. Your work is a great example of this Ivan!
I would be curious for a section about the most common mistakes first time Founders make.