Fundraising in AI with Aaron Harris

Aaron Harris was a partner at YC for 7.5 years where he funded Deel, OpenSea, Scale AI, Rappi, Lattice, and others. He also built YC's Series A program where he worked with founders on over 200 Series As and Bs that raised in excess of $3B in capital. He joined Sam Kirschner, VP at Village Global, to give Village Global founders helpful tips on fundraising.

Takeaways:

• Investors bet on stories, not just data. Your job? Tell a story of massive economic opportunity — not just how you fit into the future, but how you create it.
• Hype lowers the barrier to turn attention into excitement.
• Fundraising isn't the trophy, even though it's celebrated as such. But if you optimize for raising money, you get great at burning money and miss the real point: building something that lasts through the hype cycles.
• Think about raising money with terminal value in mind, not just the value of this current round.
• Raising an A: you'll need to raise about 20% of your company. Series B: 15-20%. Seeds are all over the place. More competition in a round means less dilution; less competition means more dilution. Hype helps reduce dilution.
• Be aware of dilution on SAFEs so that you don't all of a sudden start arguing about a point of dilution here or there on a given round.
• AI companies have been getting faster investor movement. The hottest deals land term sheets in 48 hours. Next tier? 1-2 weeks. Beyond that, a 2-6 week grind with unpredictable timing. After 6 weeks, rounds can stretch to 3-4 months where persistence is what leads to success.
• Understand the market and how investors think by having casual, no-pitch-deck coffee chats. The real signal? Not a follow-up meeting — that's just a VC's job. Look for action: are they willing to spend political capital for you? That’s true interest.

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