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Travis Kalanick's Fundraising Rule: Wait Until VCs Come Begging

By Travis Kalanick · Investing · 1 min read

Go as long as you can scrapping. Get your technology and your traction as far as you can. You will guarantee yourself the best fundraising process — a quick process, a competitive process, good terms. If you're doing good stuff, VCs are going to start reaching out to you.

Key Points

Go for funding as late as you possibly can — push traction and technology as far as you can first
Waiting guarantees a quick, competitive process with good terms
When VCs start reaching out and you say 'I'm not really raising' — that's when you know it's time

Go as long as you can scrapping. Get your technology and your traction as far as you can. You will guarantee yourself the best fundraising process.

As Late as You Possibly Can

Kalanick: This is one of the more difficult questions I get — when should I go out for funding? If you're a seed-stage company, the way I look at it is: go for funding as late as you possibly can.

Go as long as you can scrapping. Get your technology and your traction as far as you can. You will guarantee yourself the best fundraising process — that includes a quick process, a competitive process, good terms.

Go for funding as late as you possibly can. You'll guarantee a quick, competitive process with good terms.

When VCs Start Reaching Out

Kalanick: If you're doing some good stuff, eventually those VCs are going to start reaching out to you. And you're going to say — oh, I'm not really raising. They're going to try to preempt. And then you know it's time to do a real process.

VCs start reaching out. You say 'I'm not really raising.' They try to preempt. That's when you run a real process.

But Don't Wait Until You're Dead

Kalanick: Push it out as far as you possibly can. But you can't wait so long that you have 10 employees and two weeks left and you're like — okay, it's time to raise. There's a timing element to it. But again — push it out as far as you possibly can.

Push it out as far as you can. But not 10 employees and two weeks of cash left.