Hadley
@Hadley
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Cofounder @EniacVC | Leading seed rounds & helping founders find product-market fit | Built & exited 2 VC-backed startups.
NYC🗽
Joined September 2007
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In 2010, we launched our 1st fund at $1.6M. Today excited to announce our 6th seed fund with $220M in new capital—a 137x increase 😝
Our focus stays the exact same: leading pre-product-market fit seed rounds and accelerating founders from 0 to 1 🚀
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Let me tell you about a crazy time when the N in FAANG stood for Netflix, not Nvidia
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Startup idea: Coinbase but show users the cost basis for all their holdings
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Building a startup is extremely difficult but it’s still easier than going to a meaningless job everyday
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As a startup investor you work for the company’s CEO
Your job is to do what you can to make her or him successful
Too often VC’s get confused and think it’s the other way around
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Building a startup is not a sprint, it’s a marathon of back to back sprints
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The most underrated members of the startup ecosystem are the early employees who join before major funding
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Who you build your startup with is just as important as what you build
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I don’t want to brag but
@VitalikButerin
&
@elonmusk
have been hitting me up inviting me to invest some ETH in their new thing 😎
Going to be huge! 🚀
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Founding a startup is a really bad way to make money but a really fun way to live your life
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I heard Sam Altman was fired for covering up the fact that ChatGPT’s underlying model is actually a huge team of fast typing filipino kids 🤯
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My fiancee’s mom’s WeChat got shut down yesterday after she started sharing articles and giving her opinion in Chinese about the HK protests. The fucked up thing is she lives in Sydney.
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Make sure you’re having fun. Otherwise you might as well be an investment banker
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You never see a sports coach who didn’t play that sport so why are there VC’s who didn’t build a startup? 🤔
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Building a startup is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really hard
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One of the biggest hacks in VC is being kind & respectful
It’s amazing how low the bar is
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Dear AR/VR founders,
We just happened to check our spam folders today and found all the pitches you’ve been sending us over the last few years.
We’d love to chat. CCing Sarah to help us find a time.
Regards,
VCs
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Stop👏talking👏like👏it’s👏now👏easy👏to👏raise👏VC👏money👏
It’s still extremely difficult for the mass majority of founders
Particularly underrepresented founders & anyone not well connected to VC ecosystem
It’s insulting to those struggling to get their life’s work funded
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It feels so weird to not have any VC’s congratulating each other on Twitter after a massive exit like this 🤯
JUST IN: Mailchimp has been acquired by Intuit for $12 billion — the biggest-ever deal for a privately-held bootstrapped company, as Mailchimp took no outside funding since its 2001 founding.
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The credit given to VC’s when a startup kills it is waaaaaaaaay too high
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I'm always confused when people say a VC backed startup failed because it ran out of money
Running out of money is the result, not the cause of failure
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I recently heard a VC refer to themselves as a “founding investor” and immediately felt the urge to throw up 🤮
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Can we stop using the term friends & family round?
It’s insulting to the mass majority of people who’s friends & family can’t (or definitely shouldn’t) be writing $50k checks into super early startups
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The rise of Tiger Global exposes an uncomfortable truth for VC’s
That there’s a good chunk of founders who just want to be left alone
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A lot of people are misunderstanding this VC funding market
More money is flowing into market but the increase is not evenly distributed
The market believes winners can be much bigger but not necessary that there will be more winners
It’s still very hard for most to raise VC💰
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Just realized Superhuman has been autocorrecting "ccing" to "doing" so I've sent a number of emails like this recently 😒
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Calm raises new round from Lightspeed at $2B. Cue my pass email from 2013 questioning that they could build a big company 😏
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Pitch decks are tired
I really like the new trend of founders using something like Notion instead
It gives them so much more flexibility to truly tell their story
I’d love to see the norm for seed rounds move to keeping pitches conversational and using Notion for info sharing
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The unsung heroes of the startup ecosystem are the early employees who join before major funding
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2023 has been the hardest year to be a founder in the 14 years I’ve been a VC
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Tiger Global’s hedge fund is down 44% YTD yet every VC thinks they know exactly how the market is going to play out for the next 3 quarters 🙄
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Heard from a reliable LP source that there are a number of twitter famous VCs who will not be able to raise their next fund because their returns are really bad
All sizzle and no steak 😬
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Exactly 12 years ago my startup got acquired and I went from being heavily in debt to pretty comfortable, not to mention validation on 4 years of blood, sweat and tears. Celebrated at close with a 40 at 11am 🤭
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If seed stage VC says they are passing on your seed round because you don’t have enough traction they are either misguided or lying
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If all VCs passed as soon as they knew they weren’t going to invest, fund raising would be quite a bit easier for founders
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The bar for series A is as high as I’ve ever seen it in my 14 years of seed investing. For example, most SaaS cos will need >2m ARR, >2x growth, great retention and some expansion. Founders need to keep burn low to give themselves the time to finger out how to hit these targets
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VC’s who complain to founders about how busy they are have no idea what it’s like to run a startup
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This is why my family’s wealth is mainly in very risky seed investments. Either way my kids will be in good shape for college admissions
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One thing the western world definitely got wrong was the whole wearing shoes in your house thing. Why would you want people walking on streets where dogs shit and then walking into your home? Makes no sense
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Even after 11 years of investing in seed stage startups I still need to remind myself every time we decide on a new investment...
It’s👏all👏about👏the👏founders👏
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Hey startup peeps, in 2023 make sure you’re having fun. Otherwise you might as well be an investment banker
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Last week I asked the twitterverse for incredible female startup thought leaders that I could follow & learn from and the response was amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing!
I've followed all 340 and have included the entire list in the thread below
Get following!👇
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The fact of the matter is that more than 9/10 founders can’t raise $1M to fund their startup
They’re seeing $500M seed funds get raised and know damn well none of that is coming to them
It will be divvied up in large chucks to the same founders who were going to raise anyways
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It’s really hard for unconnected founders to raise VC money
Cold outreach is really tough. Us VC’s get inundated with cold pitches
Instead, focus on building your squad. Find people who are connected & convince them of your vision. Maybe make some advisors
Don’t go it alone
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I’m sorry but I dont give a shit who your advisors are
Please do not fill half your team slide with them
What I do care about is you, your cofounders and your team who work day & night to make your startup successful. Please share as much info as possible about them 🙏
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Many VC backed startups fail because founders & investors prematurely think they have product market fit
They move from experimentation to optimization too soon & never get the strong customer pull of true PMF
They end up in a local maximum that isn’t big enough to raise more💰
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After raising your seed round you should ask yourself what’s the minimum team I need to figure out product/market fit?
Unfortunately most founders don’t do this. They instead start hiring, at least partially, for growth
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It’s crazy how much respect people get for being at a rocketship startup irrespective of what they did there
I’d much rather invest in a founder who previously had a big impact on building a $100M company than someone who happened to spend a couple years at Stripe
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Founding a startup (regardless of whether the company succeeds or fails) is one of the greatest life experiences a person can have
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As seed stage investors we’ve seen very little correlation between traction at the time of investment and eventual results
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I'm following way too many dudes. Who are some killer female thought leaders in the startup ecosystem I can follow to balance things out?
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If forced to decide whether to invest in seed stage startups based on just one factor it would probably be what I call: founder/problem fit
To what degree are the founders the very best people to solve the problem they’re attacking
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Being a solo founder is really, really, really tough but it’s still better than picking the wrong cofounder
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Whoever ran the Crypto to Web3 rebrand strategy was a marketing genius
😆
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Founders, be careful of getting overly distracted by the doom & gloom of the markets
Your success will be predominantly driven by you and your team’s ability to execute, not stuff like macroeconomics
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There is a narrative that the optimal age to be a founder is young 30s but in my experience founders in their 40s and 50s crush hard
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Today is my birthday and I feel extremely blessed 🥰
For every ❤️ this tweet gets my wife & I will donate $1 to
@CushingCenters
, an amazing nonprofit serving children with intellectual disabilities
🙏
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We have invested in over 100 seed stage companies over the last 10 years and I can’t think of one case where Google, Amazon, Microsoft or Apple killed them. That is almost never a valid reason to not make a seed investment.
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If you’re going to found a startup make sure it focuses on something you’re super passionate about otherwise you might have to fake it for around 10 years
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I’m really surprised founders almost never ask where VC’s money comes from
To me there is a big difference between making money for a charitable foundation vs a Saudi prince
FWIW for our latest
@EniacVC
fund we only let in new LPs who are charitable foundations or non-profits
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It seems like there are more DAO tooling startups than actual DAOs 🙄
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VC pro tip - instead of spending time with portfolio companies send them a customized magic 8 ball with awesome advice & questions such as:
-Hire slow, fire fast
-Focus on doing 1 thing really well
-Iterate faster
-Be more customer-centric
-Have we considered pivoting to Web3?
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I see a lot of advice on twitter for aspiring founders like “just do it, the rest will follow”
This is really shitty advice
Building a startup could be all encompassing for a good chunk of your life. Make sure you’re super passionate about what your building before jumping in
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Please do not list MBA after your name in your email signature like you’re a medical doctor 😒
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I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but a high percentage of people who raised their first fund over the last few years will not be able to raise a 2nd fund
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Sequoia has led a $70M series C in Attentive less than 6 months after they led a $40M series B and less than 3 years after we led their seed. I’ve never seen (or heard of) customer adoption grow this fast. We at
@EniacVC
feel very fortunate to be along for the 🚀
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Next time an investor asks you why a big company won’t just kill you by launching a competing product ask them why the best decathletes don’t also win each of the 10 individual events that make up the decathlon
It’s very very hard to be elite at many different things
Focus wins
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That startup you admire has been a shit show on the inside for much of its existence
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If you want to be a founder but don’t have something you’re super passionate about starting, don’t force it
Instead join a well run startup, it’s by far the best training ground for becoming a founder
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If you show up for a pitch and the only person attending for the VC is a summer intern it is perfectly acceptable to politely say no thank you and bounce✌️
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Someone should offer some sort of blue check mark type service for VCs who are actually check writers
Would be super helpful to founders
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We need a Midas List for early startup employees who join pre-Product Market Fit. They deserve so much more recognition.
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People pushing for the decentralization of VC forget that startup investing overall loses money
If you make it easier for more people to invest in startups, overall loses will likely get worse
Investing in startups is fun but let’s not pretend it’s a good way for most to make💰
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What’s the best food city in the world?
I’d say Tokyo, Paris & Shanghai are my favorite places to visit for food but no place can compete with NYC in terms of diversity of excellence
What’s your fav?
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Can we finally end the ridiculousness of startups being able to raise at much higher valuations just because they’re web3?
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New drop: Axel Ren (仁) Harris
Mom & baby are doing great and Zion can’t wait to meet his little brother 🥰
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My son is 1 month old today and still:
-Has zero Twitter followers
-Hasn’t made a single angel investment
-Hasn’t written any medium posts about the power of the creator economy
😕
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Feels like early-stage VCs will be quite active this fall, especially preseed/seed. Should be a decent time to raise money 💪
While at the later stages VCs are basically just waiting for companies to run out of runway so stuff goes on sale before they go shopping 😏
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Zoom is very good at detecting when I'm running late for an important meeting so it can force me to install an update
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Cheers to all the jackass VCs who spurred on this bank run🖕
Maybe Jamie Dimon will buy you a drink at the bar after he scoops up SVB on the cheap 🙄
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I drove down Sand Hill Road today and reflected on the shitty behavior I experienced pitching VCs back in the day. Those moments deeply influence my approach now as a VC.
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A common mistake when founders first start talking to potential customers is to focus on selling them the exact product they plan on building when they should be focused on asking lots of questions to figure out what product attributes solve the customer’s deepest pain point
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Respect to all the early founders out there who are NOT pivoting to Web3
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At the beginning of a startup founders literally do everything - engineering, product, marketing, sales, customer success…
But as the company grows success is often driven by their ability to replace themselves with people who are better at each of these areas than themselves
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People underestimate the importance of roll models
Why are there so many successful founders from Stanford, because of unique abilities?
No, because they have confidence they can do it based on many super successful role models
Underrepresented groups need more role models
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If VCs actually want to “be helpful” to founders when they don’t invest, proactively do something like intro them customers or incredible hires
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There’s a notion that early stage startups need to focus on doing one thing really well but that’s only true if that one thing is working
In reality pre-product-market fit companies need to be constantly running experiments trying to find that one thing they can do really well
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Something every founder & angel should be intimately aware of (but few are) is QSBS - Qualified small business stock
If optimized you should be able to get most (if not all) proceeds from a startup exit tax-free
There are some actions best done early so inform yourself asap
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While most VCs seem to be vacationing in Europe we’re sweating it out in NYC dropping termsheets 😅
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