Resources for Extending your Runway
During and post- COVID
Post was originally published in July 2020 and has been updated monthly, through January 2021 for relevancy.
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:
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:
805 startups: Pitch to your Peers (weekly)
January Ventures’PitchCollective(June 11 deadline)Women Founders NetworkFast Pitch(July 19 deadline)IFundWomenpitch day(Sept 4 deadline)StartEngine pitch competition(Sept 18 deadline)TechSparksCONNECT 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 workshopsfrom Tory Burch Foundation (Nov 12 deadline)National Science Foundation (NSF), as shared by Amanda Bender, founder of Kilo
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
Global InvestHer Community of founders and investors
805 start-ups (weekly, virtual) community check-in
MentoringthroughFirst Round Fast Track Mentoring Program, shared byHarlem Capitaldot.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)CourseonVenture Deals and Financingfrom 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
What are the most common pre-seed and seed-stage pitch deck mistakes?
The “Forwardable Email”: How to Tee Up a Warm Introduction, by Craig Cummings of Moonshots Capital
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
A Pitch Deck Masterclass: Lessons for founders from reviewing ~1000+ pitch decks, by Samantha Wong
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
*Irina is an advisor on the CoFoundersLab platform