Fundraising in AI with Aaron Harris

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Aaron Harris was a partner at YC for 7.5 years where he funded Deel, OpenSea, Scale AI, Rappi, Lattice, and others. He also built YC's Series A program where he worked with founders on over 200 Series As and Bs that raised in excess of $3B in capital. He joined Sam Kirschner, VP at Village Global, to give Village Global founders helpful tips on fundraising.
Takeaways:

Investors bet on stories, not just data. Your job? Tell a story of massive economic opportunity — not just how you fit into the future, but how you create it.
Hype lowers the barrier to turn attention into excitement.
Fundraising isn't the trophy, even though it's celebrated as such. But if you optimize for raising money, you get great at burning money and miss the real point: building something that lasts through the hype cycles.
Think about raising money with terminal value in mind, not just the value of this current round.
Raising an A: you'll need to raise about 20% of your company. Series B: 15-20%. Seeds are all over the place. More competition in a round means less dilution; less competition means more dilution. Hype helps reduce dilution.
Be aware of dilution on SAFEs so that you don't all of a sudden start arguing about a point of dilution here or there on a given round.
AI companies have been getting faster investor movement. The hottest deals land term sheets in 48 hours. Next tier? 1-2 weeks. Beyond that, a 2-6 week grind with unpredictable timing. After 6 weeks, rounds can stretch to 3-4 months where persistence is what leads to success.
Understand the market and how investors think by having casual, no-pitch-deck coffee chats. The real signal? Not a follow-up meeting — that's just a VC's job. Look for action: are they willing to spend political capital for you? That’s true interest.

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