Fun Raising

About Fun Raising

Welcome to Fun Raising, the podcast where the best early-stage investors pull back the curtain on the fundraising process, one founder question at a time. If you're a pre-seed or seed-stage founder trying to figure out how to get your first check, navigate a term sheet, or just understand what VCs are actually thinking when you walk out of the room — this is the show for you. Every episode, we sit down with top early-stage investors and put them on the spot with real questions from real founders. No fluff, no recycled advice, just honest, tactical conversations about what it actually takes to raise in today's market. From crafting your pitch to closing the round, we cover the moments that make or break a fundraise. We put the "fun" in fundraising. Because someone has to.

Publisher

Mat Vogels

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

7 Mar 2026

Latest episode

13 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

56 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   13 Oct 2026

   Alex Moore | 8VC

   Alex was employee number one at Palantir and now sits as a partner at 8VC, which is celebrating its ten-year mark and writing larger checks as the firm has grown. He set up 8VC's build program, which incubates a handful of companies a year, and he still interviews engineers and builds alongside founders. His framing is blunt: you are not just taking money, you are marrying operator-builders who help you ship. Favorite part of the job is living a few years ahead of the economy. The hard part is constant context switching and having to get to the point fast. The tactical spine starts before any VC meeting. Practice the pitch on smart engineer friends first, then treat the deck as a deeply thought-out worldview document, not a brochure: where the puck is going in five years, why the problem gets big, and how the company intersects it. Cold email still works if you iterate. Email fifty people on LinkedIn, two reply, then email another fifty with a better pitch. Woody Allen's line sticks with him: 90% of life is showing up. In the room he is studying energy. Are you lit on fire by your own idea? The deck carries the idea. The meeting carries belief. Founder-idea match is most of the book. A little vulnerability goes a long way: say what you need help with. Intellectual honesty beats ego, and asking for help is also a litmus test on whether the investor is a banker or an operator who will get in the mess with you. On closing he likes waves, not a blast of thirty firms at once. Eight to ten in the first wave, then a second, then a third if needed. Prefer your best group first so they feel special, then let later waves hear that earlier people are already signed and you need a lead. He calls it a slow boil with an estimated closing date as friendly pressure, not fake FOMO. When you have a choice, go to dinner, ask about childhood, and learn whether they are mission-driven. Optimizing for valuation and skipping that work is the common mistake. After close, the first ten hires dictate the outcome. Give early employees real equity. Founders owning over 30% reads as a negative to him. The locker-room close is history: Bezos raised his first million in $50k checks from dentists and his dad's friends, and Palantir took three years to its first revenue check while working out of a Stanford Hospital basement. Struggle is a rite of passage. Hire a buddy so you suffer together.

2. 

   6 Oct 2026

   Morgan Hitzig | Overmatch

   Morgan's path starts with 9-11 in New York. That day shaped nearly every professional choice that followed: NYPD counterterrorism, Navy reserve time overseas, then nearly a decade building companies, including Data Miner from Series C through F and Peregrine Technologies from seed to Series B. Venture came next at Venrock, then earlier this year a move with Evan Loomis and Jordan Blaszczak to take Overmatch into its next chapter. The firm does pre-seed through Series A and runs a build program. Check sizes vary. The framing is getting in the boat and rowing hard with early founders. Favorite part of the job is putting a finger on the scale for companies that make hard jobs easier for the people who do them. Least favorite is saying no 99% of the time while staying optimistic. The tactical spine starts with whether venture is even right. Do the homework on the business model and how much of the company you are willing to sell before you go to market. Warm intros from trusted founders and network still clear the bar fastest. On materials, Morgan wants why you are a top-five team on the planet to build this, why this problem is worth a decade, and what top-three customer problem you are solving. Product in search of a problem is still the number one killer. In the room, Overmatch's core value is fun. They want rapport and a force of nature who will run through walls, plus truth-seeking founders who name the five ways it does not work and still want to make the run. Jumping into a deck in the first three minutes is not how you hook them. Diligence after a first call they love goes through their expert network, sometimes landing the founder a customer conversation, including former DARPA PMs as phone-a-friends. On closing, break the email wall. Once you are in real diligence, text or call. Pushing FOMO too far has killed deals Morgan was excited about, because cracks show when the relationship turns transactional. If you can choose partners, ask what happens when the going gets tough before you pick a brand, and talk to founders they have worked with, including ones that failed. After close, do an after-action on the raise while it is fresh, keep touch points with people who passed for the next round, and stiff-arm the post-announce inbound so you can build. You do not have to announce. The locker-room close: it only takes one true believer. Find ten with real connectivity, ask for advice when you are struggling, and prefer the believer over the mismatched story on your cap table.

3. 

   29 Sept 2026

   Caie Kelley | Lowercarbon Capital

   Caie's path is late-stage finance into hardware growth. Econ undergrad, JP Morgan tech investment banking in the DTC-goes-public era (including WeWork), then private equity, then a move west when talent started clustering around hard tech builders. A couple of years concentrating on companies ready to commercialize and scale manufacturing, then Lowercarbon Capital for the last few years on the same beat: Series B and C checks, typically $10 to $30 million, one step past team-and-dream and one step earlier than mega growth funds, right as commercial proof points and unit economics start to change. Favorite part of the job is learning from founders tackling problems that feel like a calling. Least favorite is ripping a BOM or techno-economic analysis after the gut already said yes. The integrity line is you cannot fake science. The tactical spine is authenticity over narrative noise. By the time a theme is loud on Twitter or LinkedIn, many investors already underwrote it 12 to 24 months earlier. Pitch the story that is true to you for a ten-year partnership, not the consensus slot of the week. Growth is also a different process map: more nebulous definitions of "growth," less regular 12 to 24 month cadence, and a readiness test of whether you can say if I put $10 million in I know how to push that into $100 million of sales. Growth investors try to know founders before a formal raise and watch for that inflection. Signal matters. Press, writing, conference presence, and hyperscaler-style announcements are how they find you; blasting every growth name on a list is not the play. Materials still matter: a pitch deck (or memo or monthly updates) for narrative clarity, and an Excel model as proof you can think in numbers even though models are always wrong. Do not use Claude to build the deck. In the room, look for equal-caliber talent around the founder, in-person energy, and a vision bigger than the investor's. You never want to dream a dream bigger than your founder. The Elon and Gwen point: growth underwrites that you can hire many operators, not only that you are the visionary. On fit and after close, Lowercarbon wants founders who can say in two sentences why if this goes well the world is a better place. Caie's specialty is capital allocation: non-dilutive financing, grants, management teams at Series B, and how late-stage and infrastructure money think about DevCo, project co, and top co. Self-awareness beats perfection. Name what you need to hire. After close, prep the first growth board so the investor is inside the tent, do not immediately hire randomly, recalibrate to final terms, celebrate with the team, and get back to the work that energizes you before re-engaging the market. Closing advice: every great company has had at least one tough round, you only need one believer, and fundraising feedback is a market check you can take on the chin and keep going.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

3.7 / 5

3 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

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