Resources for Extending your Runway

You keep hearing that you need 24-30 months of runway during this time. You’ve already pivoted, scoped down your product offering and improved your revenue stream -- and you don’t want to take out a loan. What are your options? Here are (un-affiliated unless mentioned otherwise) resources.

Resources to help you get in front of VCs:

• Investors that are still writing checks: indie.vc and dot.la list (May) and The TechCrunch list (July)

• Get introduced via FounderNest or Valence

• Investors that don't require warm intros:

  • Yuliya Belyayava's list and advice for reaching out

  • Dan Hightower's list

  • Paige Doherty's list

  • Forbes' list of 51 VCs Who Want To Invest In Women, Black And Latinx, And LGBTQ+ Founders

• Pitch in front of potential investors, get their feedback to build connections, and follow-up on feedback [Gary Livingston]. Here are some events to consider:

  • dot.la pitch showcase (monthly)

  • 805 startups: Pitch to your Peers (weekly)

  • January Ventures’ PitchCollective (June 11 deadline)

  • Women Founders Network Fast Pitch (July 19 deadline)

  • IFundWomen pitch day (Sept 4 deadline)

  • StartEngine pitch competition (Sept 18 deadline)

  • TechSparks CONNECT Pitchfest (Oct 10 deadline)

  • VCs investing in minority founders

Not every start-up is a fit for VC; here are alternatives to venture funding:

• Equity Crowdfunding via StartEngine or Crowdcube or WeFunder

• Grants [George Le]. Here are my recommendations:

  • Black Founders: SoGal and lists of emergency relief resources

  • Grants available to minority founders

  • Grant and virtual workshops from Tory Burch Foundation (Nov 12 deadline)

  • SBIR

  • National Science Foundation (NSF), as shared by Amanda Bender, founder of Kilo

  • National Institute of Health: NIH and NCCIH

  • South LA Founders (October 9 deadline)

• Networking opportunities:

  • Finding co-founder through CoFoundersLab* or an adviser

  • Pay It Forward resource for Black entrepreneurs, shared by Jesse Ruiz

  • Lunchclub

  • Global InvestHer Community of founders and investors

  • 805 start-ups (weekly, virtual) community check-in

  • Mentoring through First Round Fast Track Mentoring Program, shared by Harlem Capital

  • dot.LA Summit (October 27 & 28)

  • Alignable, including crowdsourced advice on pivoting from community

• Cloud computing credits: AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft technologies + Azure, IBM

• (Free) Course on Venture Deals and Financing from Kauffman Fellows and Techstars

Please reach out and let me know which resource helped you.

You may also like:

• Talk on systematizing Product Market Fit from the very beginning

• "Ask A Seed VC" column, by Eniac Ventures

• The “Forwardable Email”: How to Tee Up a Warm Introduction, by Craig Cummings of Moonshots Capital

• Visa IFundWomen entrepreneur toolkit

• YC Startup Library of previously published advice, based on work with 2K+ start-ups over last 15 years

• How to Get Funding For Your Startup That’s *Not* Venture Capital, by Gefen Skolnick and Miki Reynolds

• Pitch deck advice:

  • • What are the most common pre-seed and seed-stage pitch deck mistakes?

    • Eniac Data Room Template when pitching for Series A, as referenced in this article What Startups Need (And Don’t Need) In Their Series A Data Room

    • A Pitch Deck Masterclass: Lessons for founders from reviewing ~1000+ pitch decks, by Samantha Wong

    • 700+ pitch decks in PitchDeck Database of top tech companies in the world

• Legal Concepts for Founders, by Clerky

• On Co-Founding: (1) Why 50/50 partnerships are lazy and the expensive lessons learned from a toxic business partnership, by Cathryn Lavery and (2) When you are not the Default, by Holly Liu

• Book on "Founder's Dilemmas", by Noam Wasserman

• The Difference Between Rich Founders and Poor Founders, From an ex-VC, by James Skylor

• Read Dave Parker's book: Trajectory: Startup: Ideation to Product/Market Fit

*Irina is an advisor on the CoFoundersLab platform