YZ Yuanzhe Fu + YY Yuyan Wang, founders of YUVC are thrilled to be joined by Dan Siroker, founder and CEO of Limitless/Rewind AI.
Dan made VCs crazy by releasing a public pitch that attracted over 1k preliminary investment offers, 170+ term sheets, 30+ offers valued over 1b+. More recently, he charged $100 for an investor meeting (luckily, we got the meeting for free).
Rewind AI is a tool that many of the VC partners we talked to had regretted missing out.
Previously, Dan served as the Director of Analytics for Obama's first campaign. He also co-founded Optimizely, the #1 workplace according to San Francisco Business Times.
Dan has raised hundreds of millions in his career.
Highlights:
YZ: How do you select and filter investors, and what are the key traits you admire in them?
Dan: The most important thing I look for when evaluating investors is alignment around our long-term goals. Usually, you get into hot water when your goals are not aligned with the investor's goals. You really want to make sure that both the person you're working with at the venture fund and the fund itself are aligned with your values. For me, it's long term.
YY: Are there any fundraising advice you could give to other startup funders in 2024?
Dan: The core of that success has come from building a great product and building something people want. Usually, that's the most important thing.
YY: What's the biggest challenges for you in hardware?
Dan: How much you need to plan ahead. I'm a big believer in valuing responding to change over following a plan. So if something new comes in, new information, I want to be very nimble and quick as a team at incorporating, at learning, iterating. And hardware, you have physical atoms. And those physical atoms need to be put together, shipped to a customer. And once they're shipped, it's quite hard to change those atoms. And so that's been the biggest challenge for me.
Chapters:
00:01 Introduction
02:07 What's Dan's next fundraising move?
12:14 Is 10x easier than 2x?
23:47 The Limitless Pendant
31:11 Meaning of Life
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