🔥The Fundraising Formula VCs Don’t Tell You

In This Edition:

• 🏆 Outperform 99% of Founders
• 🚀 Meet 2025’s Hottest Startups
• 🔍 What VCs Really Want
• 🤖 Meet Your New Sales Engine
• 💡 What Investors Really Notice

🏆 Outperform 99% of Founders

🔥 The Fundraising Formula VCs Don’t Tell You

What if the difference between your startup stalling and skyrocketing was just a better fundraising process?

Brett Adcock—founder of Figure AI, Archer Aviation, and Vettery—has raised over $1 billion, and his playbook reveals one powerful truth: fundraising isn’t magic…it’s math.

At the core of his strategy is a simple but brutal formula:

Fundraising = (Qualified Investors) × (Outreach) × (Branding & Idea) = Investor Meetings

Most founders fail not because their startup is weak—but because their process is. Brett’s insights flip the script:

💡 What Actually Moves the Needle

• Find every qualified investor, not just warm intros. 100% coverage = more shots on goal.
• Treat outreach like sales. Cold emails, DMs, and intros—measured, tracked, optimized.
• Build a narrative investors remember. A compelling pitch deck + clear story = higher conversion.
• Expect tiny conversion rates. Real fundraising is a grind: talk to 200 to find your “yes.”

🧩 The Execution Plan (Brett-Style)

• Build a complete investor list in 30 days.
• Run outreach + meetings over the next 30–60 days.
• Close a term sheet in 10 days with a fast-moving lead.
• Finish the round in 30 days.

🚀 What Founders Usually Miss

• 80% of meetings should come from outbound, not intros.
• Slow investors = not interested. Hot deals close fast.
• Momentum isn’t optional—it’s the currency of fundraising.

The takeaway:

Fundraising is a structured process, not a gamble. Master the system, and you dramatically increase your odds of landing capital—fast.

Want the full breakdown? Read the attached playbook and upgrade your fundraising strategy starting today. 👇

🤖 Meet Your New Sales Engine

🚀 AI Sales Tools Are Becoming Your New Competitive Edge

Most sales teams think they need more leads.

But the truth?

They need better systems.

AI sales assistants are quietly becoming the edge that top-performing teams rely on — automating prospecting, personalizing outreach, and even coaching reps live during calls.

🧩 What’s changing the game? Game-changing tools to watch:

• Clay – Builds ultra-qualified lead lists in minutes.
• Reply.io – Sends human-like outreach across email, calls, and social.
• Humanlinker – Creates hyper-personalized messages with buyer insights.
• Attention & Oliv AI – Coach reps live during calls with real-time cues.
• Piper – Auto-captures call notes, action items, and summaries.
• Unify – Enriches and prioritizes leads instantly.

AI isn’t replacing your sales reps — it’s removing the busywork so they can close deals faster. Teams using these tools now will outperform everyone still stuck in manual workflows.

👉 Don’t wait for your competitors to get ahead. Explore the full list of game-changing AI sales assistants and choose the one that can elevate your sales engine today.

🔥 ICYMI: Funding Gold You Shouldn’t Miss

Missed these founder-favorites? Catch up before everyone else does — these resources are powering smarter fundraising, tighter pitch decks, and faster checks.

• 🚀 Fundraising Resources 2.0 — Updated tools every founder should bookmark.
• 🎤 VC Questions & How to Answer Them — The ultimate guide to acing partner meetings.
• ⚙️ 40+ Time-Saving AI Tools for Founders — Automate the busywork, focus on the build.
• 🏦 Best VC Firms for Startups — Curated list of partners who actually write checks.
• 💳 22 Startup Programs With Free Credits & Trials — Save $$$ and extend your runway.
• 🧰 The Ultimate Fundraising Toolkit — What top founders secretly use.
• 🧩 YC Founder’s $4.5M Pitch Decks — Open-source inspiration for your next raise.
• 📘 The Pre-Seed Playbook — Nail your very first raise like a pro.
• 👼 2,500+ Angel Investors in AI & SaaS — Verified & ready to back founders.
• 💸 Costly Fundraising Mistakes From a $13M Raise — Avoid these before you burn cash.
• 📊 490+ Real Startup Pitch Decks — Actual decks that closed funding.
• 🎓 Harvard’s Startup Guide — Turn ideas into real-world impact.
• 📚 Ultimate Fundraising Resource Stack — Everything you need in one place.
• 📅 2025’s Unmissable Startup Funding Opportunities — Apply before deadlines hit.
• 🔑 The Most Overlooked Key to Fundraising Success — Fix this to unlock investor trust.
• 🔥 Paul Graham’s ‘Small, Intense Fire’ — The founder mindset that attracts capital.

🏆 Meet 2025’s Hottest Startups

🚀 The 2025 Unicorn Boom Nobody Expected

2025 isn’t just another strong year for tech—it’s becoming one of the biggest unicorn-minting years in history.

With AI driving unprecedented investor momentum, more than 80 startups have already crossed the $1B valuation mark—and the year isn’t even over.

But here’s the twist: while AI dominates, it’s not the only sector soaring. Satellite companies (Apex, Loft Orbital), blockchain platforms (Tempo, Polymarket), precision medicine (New Limit), sustainable rockets (Stoke), legal tech (Eve, Filevine), quantum computing (PsiQuantum), and even beverage brands (Olipop) are joining the ranks.

🔥 What’s Fueling This Surge?

• Record-breaking AI capital flows creating ripple effects across SaaS, robotics, infra, and automation.
• Mega-rounds becoming the norm—Reflection ($8B), Thinking Machines ($10B), Fal ($4B), Fireworks ($4B).
• New sectors emerging as dark horses, from defense tech (Castellion) to oncology platforms (Thyme Care) to decentralized trading (Flying Tulip).
• Younger startups rising faster than ever, with multiple companies hitting unicorn status within 12–24 months of launch.

📌 Why This Matters

This isn’t just about valuations—it’s a signal of where capital is flowing next.
Founders gain a roadmap. Investors get a heat map. Operators see where talent is migrating.

The takeaway: 2025 is redefining what “fast growth” means, and the hottest corners of tech are shifting in real time.

👉 Want the full list & sector-by-sector breakdown? Read the complete unicorn tracker now and stay ahead of the next billion-dollar wave.

🔍 What VCs Really Want

🔥 The Fundraising Secrets VCs Never Admit

What if the biggest reason investors aren’t funding you… is something you haven’t even noticed yet?

Most founders believe fundraising boils down to a crisp pitch deck and a good story. But Marc Andreessen—co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz—says the truth runs far deeper. In one of his most insightful Stanford talks, he reveals the hidden strategies elite founders use to raise capital faster, with fewer mistakes, and with far more leverage.

Here are the 5 rules Marc insists every founder must master:

1️⃣ Pitch junior VCs first.
They’re your rehearsal room—helping refine your narrative before you face partner-level scrutiny.

2️⃣ Raise long before you need to.
Momentum creates leverage. Desperation kills deals instantly.

3️⃣ Become undeniable.
Real traction, sharp insights, and mastery of your market convert far better than hype ever will.

4️⃣ Build VC relationships early.
Fast fundraising isn’t luck—it’s familiarity. The best founders are already known when they start raising.

5️⃣ Prepare for diligence months ahead.
If you’re scrambling when interest appears, you’re already signaling chaos.

The takeaway:
Great fundraising isn’t guesswork—it’s a skill. And the founders who understand these rules simply win more often.

Dive deeper and watch Marc Andreessen’s full Stanford talk to upgrade your next fundraise—starting now. 👇

🔍 What Investors Really Notice

🔥 The Hidden Blueprint Behind Fundable Startups

What if fundability isn’t luck, timing, or charisma—but a structure top founders deliberately engineer?

Naval Ravikant has long argued that great startups don’t win because they’re loud. They win because they’re designed to be irresistible to investors. And his Founder Showcase keynote reveals the five foundations that quietly determine whether a startup becomes fundable—or forgotten.

Here’s the condensed playbook every founder should internalize:

🚀 Traction That Proves You Can Execute

Investors ignore theory and chase evidence. Retention, conversions, revenue curves, product stickiness—your metrics tell a story long before you pitch.

👥 Teams Investors Trust With Capital

The most fundable teams aren’t perfect—they’re resilient. They learn fast, ship fast, and adapt faster than competitors.

🤝 Social Proof That Accelerates Trust

A single respected intro or endorsement can collapse investor skepticism instantly. In a noisy world, signal beats volume.

🛠️ Product as Your Silent Pitch

Investors don’t remember decks—they remember products they can feel. Build something undeniably useful and it sells itself.

🎯 Markets Where You Can Truly Win

The strongest founders enter markets big enough to scale but focused enough to dominate. The Goldilocks zone is how you create inevitability.

The truth: Fundable startups aren’t born—they’re architected. Designed with intention. Engineered for proof, trust, and momentum.

👉 Want the full blueprint? Watch Naval’s keynote and start architecting a startup investors can’t ignore.

🔥WEB PICKS

💸 AI Boom Pushes Data Centers Into $96B Debt Spiral

Infrastructure partners are borrowing at unprecedented levels to fuel OpenAI’s mega-compute ambitions, signaling a new era where AI growth is built on massive leverage.

🌦️ DeepMind Just Crushed Traditional Weather Forecasting

Google’s new AI model beats the world’s best prediction system on 90% of metrics — and does it in minutes, not hours.

📱 Ads Are Coming to ChatGPT — And It Changes Everything

OpenAI is testing search ads inside ChatGPT’s Android beta, raising major questions about the future of conversational search and monetization.

🧬 AlphaFold’s Creator Reveals What’s Coming Next

John Jumper says the next frontier isn’t just protein folding — it’s modelling complex molecular interactions and unlocking real drug discovery.

🤖 New Robot Framework Learns Faster Than Anything Before

RGMP lets humanoid robots handle totally unfamiliar objects with 87% success — using 5× less training data than current systems.

🎥 Kling Teases a Wild ‘Omniverse’ Video AI Launch

Text-to-video AI is heating up as ByteDance also drops Vidi2, reportedly outperforming Gemini 3 Pro in long-video object and action detection.