Hi everyone,

Welcome back to the bi-weekly GENESIS newsletter👋

If you’re new around here, this is where we share some stories, advice, and resources for GenZ entrepreneurs in the GENESIS community - and plug our events too :)

In today’s edition…

• 👼 7 Insider Tips on Raising $100K+ from Angels

• 💬 Quote of the Week

• 📅 Upcoming Events

• ✨ Perks for our Members

👼 7 Insider Tips on Raising from Angels

Lots of successful founders I’ve talked to recently have sworn by the magic of angel investors.

It makes sense – a good angel can contribute their wisdom, connections, and personal brand in addition to money.

And finding them can be less of a slog than finding early stage venture capital. It may even leave your ownership less diluted. For my own startup Sweet, I’m only pursuing angel capital instead of a venture pre-seed round.

But raising from angels feels like a crapshoot.

How do you find them? How do you negotiate deals? How do you know if someone is the right angel investor?

So I decided to reach out to some of the most successful founders I knew and asked them about their angel strategy. Here’s what they said.

Harper Reed

founder of Modest Inc., acq. by PayPal, former CTO for the Obama administration.

• “Never make the first conversation about money.”

• Angel investing is 100% about relationships. VCs do the math, they have quotas, they have systems in place. Angels simply need to believe in you and your vision.

Aldo Petruzzelli

founder of Omnia & the Peanut Brothers brand, raised from multiple angels across both businesses.

• “Go to places they don’t expect founders” → he found his first angel investor playing soccer in a rec league

• He also mentioned bars and playing golf. It’s true: most powerful people in America play golf

• He met one of his angel investors sitting next to him at a seafood restaurant while having lunch with his wife

• There’s apparently one Italian restaurant near the Meta HQ where tons of VCs go. Some founders will try to become waiters there…

Avante Price

founder/CEO at Posh, an events platform that’s helped nearly 10K organizations host events.

• Ask every person in your network for 2 people who might be interested in your company

• Warm intro’s, that is leveraging people you already know to meet new people, is the key to success for raising angel capital

Grant Roscoe

founder/CEO at Crescent, a treasury management platform for businesses, raised several large rounds.

• Start with identifying WHO you want to raise from. Don’t just think about money; think about other contributions they can make (connections, experience, social media followers etc)

• Get creative to set up meetings with those people

• Ask them a LOT of questions. Keep it casual, build a genuine relationship

• If they start asking you questions that’s a good sign

• At some point say: “you’re taking this thing the distance and want to bring the right people on the journey.” That shows you’re selective but open to working with them

• Always ask for referrals after closing

• Worst case they say no and you walk away with a smart friend in your corner and that never hurts

• If you’re raising from many angels, use Angellist’ rollups to keep your cap table clean!

Andrew Tan

founder & CEO at Nova, a professional community platform for young people, Forbes 30u30.

• Find potential customers or execs at customer firms and try to build relationships with them, eventually they may convert to angels.

• This is nice because they’re incentivized and able to be design partners, give feedback, or convert to a customer if they’re not already

Andy Dunn

founder of Bonobos, the men’s fashion ecommerce brand acquired by Walmart for $75M.

• There’s tons of ex-employees of successful startups who saw their company go from X to 3X in a matter of months. They can help guide you through that process. They’re usually quite wealthy.

• The abundance of such people is what makes SF and NYC great places to start companies, because they make great angel investors (and advisors/employees)

💬 Quote of the Week

This is such a good book for ambitious founders.

It’s about the growth of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 Presidential campaign, and how the small team organized literally hundreds of thousands of volunteers, thousands of events, and quite literally kindled a political revolution.

📅 Upcoming Events

We’re teaming up with our creative friends at Rich Minds to have a catered friendsgiving in downtown Chicago. Tickets are $30. Reply to this email if you’re interested in coming 🍽️🦃

✨ Perks for our Members

• bring speed and structure to your investor relations with Foundersuite - use code “GENESIS” for 40% off the annual plan!

• keep your due diligence docs in one place with Data Room - write “GENESIS” in the associations box to get access to the Deal Room advanced analytical tools for one year

• insurance for startups with Vouch - 5% off

more coming soon…

If your firm wants to get in front of 1500+ founders please reply to this email and we can include you in our partner marketplace!

👉Join our GenZ founders Slack👈

👉Join our young founders retreat in Costa Rica👈

Thank you for reading this edition of the GENESIS newsletter! See you soon🙏

~ Toni Witt