2 builders who never spoke to each other

Buy the audience that comes with the money

Investors and programmes carry distribution, and it is worth as much as the cheque. Individual investors with a top business podcast, the largest newsletter in the category or hundreds of thousands of followers are matched to founders by market, and an accelerator run by a well known podcast host can hand its portfolio airtime, which belongs in the calculation of what the equity costs. One founder joined a cohort while already funded purely for the exposure and the peer group, and reached a demo day with hundreds of registrations.

The method

1. 01

   Choose an individual investor whose audience matches your market, because their distribution is worth as much as their cheque.

2. 02

   Count the media an accelerator owns as part of what you are buying with the equity you give up.

3. 03

   Join an accelerator cohort even when you are already funded, for the exposure and the peer group rather than the money. Kahl joined the Paddle AI Launchpad on a friend's suggestion specifically to spread the word about Podscan.

What it returned

• 200,000

  Haines points to Shaan Puri with a top ten business podcast, Lenny Rachitsky with the biggest business Substack and Sahil Lavingia with over 200,000 Twitter followers, and matches crypto founders to one set of names and enterprise SaaS founders to another.

• $120,000

  TinySeed puts in $120,000 for a first founder plus up to $60,000 per extra founder for a permanent 10 to 12 percent stake, and is run by Rob Walling, who hosts Startups For The Rest Of Us. That show can hand portfolio companies airtime.

• 130

  Cohort of more than 130 companies, 10 selected to pitch at demo day, and Paddle reported over 500 registrations for the event

Sources

• SaaS Funding 101 | Corey HainesCorey Haines · corey.co · VC · 2021-08-04
• Tipping Over – The Bootstrapped FounderArvid Kahl · thebootstrappedfounder.com · 2024-07-12