🙋 Why I started @socap_ai (YC W23) as the top YC founder and what’s next Thanks all for the support during last week’s @socap_ai (YC W23) announcement! A lot of you were curious why I decided to start it after transitioning from CEO to a Board Member at @mightybuildings (a top @ycombinator company) — here’s why 👇 I’m a rare founder who has been at the other side of the venture table (just to remind you, I started as a VC having founded a number of firms — Ruvento Ventures, EnchantVC, and HaxAsia to name a few — and have famously invested in 2 unicorns out of 17 seed investments while at Ruvento). Being a VC was fun and all, but I wanted a more interesting challenge. When we started Mighty, I couldn’t have imagined how complicated this road would be. As a deep tech company, we needed to raise A LOT of funding and needed to raise it fairly quickly. So far, Mighty has raised over $150M all the way from YC W16 to Series B in 2023. During this journey, I learned from the best of the best — at the YC Series A program and from the unicorn founders who have angel invested in us/advised us. Hundreds of people have helped me along the way with their generous feedback and, most importantly, intros/connections. I don’t think we would have been able to get there if not for my meticulous approach to parallel fundraising and activating/growing my social capital. I started @socap_ai (YC W23) because I grew tired of seeing founders completely misunderstanding what the successful fundraise looks like as well as lacking a quality way of growing their network. Oftentimes it’s a one-time opportunity and if you fuck up the process, that’s it. My mission with this is to change the mindset and make it 10x easier with the help of AI and the right kind of infrastructure (e.g. community). The tech startups scene and fundraising as the use-case is just the beginning for @socap_ai (YC W23) — I, my partner @ednevsky, and our team (former VC associates and finance leaders) are so well-connected and well-versed in this beachhead market segment, that it would be stupid to start anywhere else, especially seeing founders pain every single day (I get around 50 connection requests daily from founders seeking help). I’m proud that along with the official Socap.ai announcement we have started hosting regular Socap.ai fundraising bootcamps as the initiative where founders can learn from me and a slew of other top founders (@MichaelandMa, @slyjacklee, @aahholm, @Chung, @bykahlil to name just a few, there are dozens more whom I'll tag in the coming posts) — for free. We’re pioneering a more streamlined way for these top founders to share their social capital and help companies/founders they like, all powered by the AI platform we’re currently beta testing. Excited to kick off our bootcamp cohort #1 this Thursday — we’ve already started sending out first cohort acceptance letters — check them out if you applied! #fundraising #startups #socap
