Oversubscribed Weekly #4

To those of you in the U.S., we hope you had a great Thanksgiving! This year, we’re thankful for all of you. Building the Oversubscribed community has been really rewarding for us, and we can’t wait to see what more we can do in 2019.

Read on for this week’s tweets worth reading and Q&A!

Tweets worth reading

Erik is one of the founders of Village Global and a great Twitter follow. (He’s also a phenomenal freestyle rapper on the side.) In this tweet—the first in a thread we highly recommend reading all of—he shares his “conversational hack” for agreements. This question is highly applicable to fundraising (“What would need to be true for you to invest?”), but is also a great framework to use more broadly.

Matrix Partners GP Ilya Sukhar shared the news of Fivetran’s Series A with a comment on how much they’d accomplished with just a small amount of seed funding. Their progress is a good reminder of the importance of doing a lot with a little, and of staying lean even as a venture-backed company.

Q&A with an anonymous founder

Q: What’s a factor you think is under-appreciated in fundraising?

A: Your mood and demeanor in meetings as a founder. Obviously, the fundamentals of your company and pitch are the most important factors, but the way you comport yourself when meeting with an investor—how enthusiastic you seem about your business, how well you know your stuff, and how much of a lasting impression you make—has a huge impact as well. Some days, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and just knew I didn’t do as well in my meetings. This is part of why taking care of your mental health during a raise is important not just for you personally, but for your company’s success too.

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