The Habits You Need to Unlearn for a Successful Fundraise
Fundraising is weird. Until recently, my experience has been that I had to put on a fundraising persona that felt deeply unnatural. To pitch well, I felt like I needed to toss away my natural strengths and create artificial ones that didn’t fit. In raising Ethena’s $15.5-million Series A, I realized that I didn’t need a different persona for “fundraising me” versus “normal me.” Instead, I needed to channel the very things that make me good at company-building (focused problem solving, transparency, humility) and present them as part of the storytelling process. Given how hot the fundraising environment is right now, it seems like the last thing anyone needs is more advice on how to raise. But fundraising is still hard, and data shows it’s even harder for certain groups. Women make up around 15 percent of VCs, women founders get around 2 percent of venture funding, and Black founders get about 1 percent of funding. It’s impossible for me to know how much of my experience fundraising is