Usman Gul
@usmangul
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Founder/CEO @MetalRaise -- building super intelligence for fundraising. Previously @Airlift_tech @DoorDash @MasterCard. Reach out at [email protected] 🇵🇰
Los Angeles
Joined January 2010
Loved this conversation with @sashaorloff from @puzzle. We talk about all things fundraising, from war stories to the biggest misconceptions. Thanks for having me, @sashaorloff!
Venture capital is intentionally opaque. So when I met Gul, who built Metal to reverse-engineer how venture funding decisions get made, I had to dig in. If you’re a founder navigating fundraising (or planning to), this episode will make you smarter.
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Most founders end up talking to the wrong investors. As a result, they end up getting the wrong feedback from the market. We built @MetalRaise to help founders identify investors that are actually likely to invest, using real historical data. In this video, we explain with
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Couldn't agree more. The median startup will not be alive in five years. Following the "standard playbook" of posting content and going viral has a very limited shelf life -- I don't think this trend will live long. It is actually massively counterproductive to chase growth when
For early-stage startups, viral marketing is often a mistake. The same goes for heavy paid marketing. You might get a lot of views, but not the right ones. What usually happens is that you miss the true early adopters, the people who would actually love your still-in-progress
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Must read. I’d say Alpha VC is <5% of the overall industry, maybe even less.
Alpha VC vs. Beta VC - my current take on our evolving industry - and how it impacts founders, GPs and LPs. https://t.co/9g9oHfIKi9
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Couldn’t agree more! The team at Notion spent two years in Japan to build out a killer product. The best teams tend to think in fiercely independent ways (versus following the herd).
It’s much easier to build something insane in Canada than in SF. In Canada, if you’re doing something crazy, everyone just ignores you and you can do whatever you want. In SF, if you’re doing something crazy, a bunch of really smart people keep pointing out why you’re wrong.
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Raising your first round is one of the hardest parts of building a startup. Join us for a live session where you will gain practical insights on how to frame traction, think about valuation, and build genuine momentum in your raise—while avoiding the common pitfalls that turn
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An important reminder that truly great products take time to get to a level where the liftoff becomes imminent.
We looked at this chart in our board meeting yesterday. In 2025, more teams than ever are signing up and building with @linear
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Such an important point — some of the biggest wins and misses in history can be tracked down to strategy, which is an offshoot of deep independent thought.
Most people focus on executing because it's far easier to measure, but thinking is far more important. It's hard because thinking is not observable to the outside world. To others, it looks like you're doing nothing or wasting time. Thinking looks like sleeping well, carving
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There are two types of founders -- those that excel at hiring the best people, and those that don't.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of urgency and intensity. With my first startup, I thought urgency came down to a very fundamental sort of bias to action, a natural inclination to figure things out through quick action. As a second time founder, I now view urgency as a
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💥 Partnership Announcement: Metal x Techstars💥 Led by @davidcohen (CEO at Techstars), we have entered into a strategic partnership called “Metal for Techstars” to introduce Metal as the default fundraising software for 10,000+ Techstars founders. 👉 Metal to offer extended
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From idea to launch -- today we start helping founders raise better.
đź’Ą Product Launchđź’Ą Today, we are launching Metal as a layer of super intelligence for founders raising venture rounds. Our vertical AI platform powers every workflow from discovering investors to refining your round collateral to managing the investor pipeline. A thread...
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Congratulations @usmangul on building metal and bringing this amazing vision to life. Kudos!! đź‘Źđź‘Ź
đź’Ą Product Launchđź’Ą Today, we are launching Metal as a layer of super intelligence for founders raising venture rounds. Our vertical AI platform powers every workflow from discovering investors to refining your round collateral to managing the investor pipeline. A thread...
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Insane product, insane team - glad to be a part of @speedrun with you @usmangul the amount of features paired with impeccable UI is đź’Ż
đź’Ą Product Launchđź’Ą Today, we are launching Metal as a layer of super intelligence for founders raising venture rounds. Our vertical AI platform powers every workflow from discovering investors to refining your round collateral to managing the investor pipeline. A thread...
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Founders consistently say that fundraising is the most dreadful and opaque part of building a startup. Metal just launched to change that. Metal is superintelligence for fundraising, an incredible product that leverages AI and data to solve this pain point for founders
đź’Ą Product Launchđź’Ą Today, we are launching Metal as a layer of super intelligence for founders raising venture rounds. Our vertical AI platform powers every workflow from discovering investors to refining your round collateral to managing the investor pipeline. A thread...
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Metal is a really cool product that saves tons of time on fundraising
đź’Ą Product Launchđź’Ą Today, we are launching Metal as a layer of super intelligence for founders raising venture rounds. Our vertical AI platform powers every workflow from discovering investors to refining your round collateral to managing the investor pipeline. A thread...
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@usmangul is launching Metal publicly today. I've tried a lot of fundraising tools. Metal is the one I actually use. It works. Raising? → gul@metal.so
đź’Ą Product Launchđź’Ą Today, we are launching Metal as a layer of super intelligence for founders raising venture rounds. Our vertical AI platform powers every workflow from discovering investors to refining your round collateral to managing the investor pipeline. A thread...
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