The Playbook for Raising Money

Every week I get asked my cheat codes to raising money.

Since I’ve raised $1B the last 10yrs, people expect I have secrets.

I don’t have secrets.

But I do have a playbook:

— Brett Adcock (@adcock_brett) June 24, 2023

- You want a repeatable process -

Don’t bank on raising capital via referrals, networking, or events.

It’s impossible to predict & people don’t like sticking their necks out for referrals.

Instead, build a coin operating machine.

The goal: a process that can be repeated

— Brett Adcock (@adcock_brett) June 24, 2023

I’ll even take this one step further:

If you’re process is centered around referrals, at some point you will fail.

It’s a bad strategy that might work for 1 fundraising round but can’t be repeated at scale.

— Brett Adcock (@adcock_brett) June 24, 2023

- Fundraising Formula -

I raise capital exactly the same as running a sales/marketing funnel.

At the end of the day, this is a conversion rate funnel - maximizing top of the funnel leads & converting those to meetings.

This can be repeated every year. pic.twitter.com/PottBWiPAB

— Brett Adcock (@adcock_brett) June 24, 2023

*This is a process that is used every single time you raise capital.

Just like any machine, it needs maintenance & improvements.

You have to constantly work to tweak the nobs to get results.

It’s 10x more work than referrals, but maximizes your probability of success.

— Brett Adcock (@adcock_brett) June 24, 2023

I wrote in detail my entire process end-to-end in this post.

Please reply with anything missing and happy to build on this over time.https://t.co/521K0SkkKM

— Brett Adcock (@adcock_brett) June 24, 2023

Some other notes:

→ Investors are max momentum investors. Consider them a “No” unless you are seeing constant forward motion

→ The capital raising lessons in Ben Horowitz’s book are great, the hard thing about hard things. Worth a read.

— Brett Adcock (@adcock_brett) June 24, 2023

→ Doing the upfront work of mapping out every “qualified investor” is the most important step of every fundraise I do.

→ Meetings from cold emails needs to be 80% of your pitches. If <80% you’re under optimized.

→ Be prepared to chew glass and stare into the abyss

— Brett Adcock (@adcock_brett) June 24, 2023

→ If earlier stage, never hire a banker, you need to learn how to do this yourself.

→ Be determined and persistent. You are knocking down doors.

— Brett Adcock (@adcock_brett) June 24, 2023