What the @$%# does fundraising have to do with winemaking?

Coyotes bellow outside. Population: 146. Plus one former city girl, one coyote-snack-sized dog.

This is wine country, where the vines twist and turn around trellising.

Flash back to a few days earlier.

I was living in Williamsburg Brooklyn, New York with my tiny dog Ralph. Indulging my hipster sensibilities in things like: craft beer in wine glasses, pizzas topped with vegan sausage, and street fairs brimming with too-cool for Etsy wares.

Life was perfect. And I had decided to leave it all for a wine innovation job in Napa.

Once in California, the reality of my situation set in as quickly as my last brief Tinder romance. I was living in Rutherford, a region of Napa that’s less than 2 square miles in size. On a working vineyard, no less.

My new home was about three-quarters of a mile from the nearest road, down an unpaved dirt path that crossed over a bridge and through rows and rows — and even more rows — of vines.

Suddenly getting an Uber/Lyft took about 20 to 30 minutes — about as long as it would take me to walk to the end of the driveway.

Like anyone in my precarious (amazing, lucky) situation, I adjusted. Nature was everywhere. Craft fair jaunts were replaced by vineyard strolls. Vegan sausage with local grass-fed organic beef. I became friends with farmers and winemakers. My new reality was incredible.

For the first time in my life, I started paying attention to the land. To nature. I fell in love with something real — the constant life and death struggle all around me. It rained, and I watched as the dry, thirsty land soaked it up. I observed the occasional flood wreck havoc on the land. And on the grapes.

I realized just how much love and attention and care the land needed to produce grapes that went into amazing wine.

The land was cared for on an hourly basis.

Irrigated.

Controlled for pests.

Given extra nutrients.

Cover crops were planted between rows of vines to increase yields and improve soil quality. Vines were manicured. An endless array of tweaks and details to ensure a quality product. All because if left to their own devices, vines would overgrow, get sick, and yield poor grapes.

Even with all that care, so many things happened that were out of our control. Floods, droughts, fires, diseases. An entire vintage could be ruined because of these natural conditions.

It’s now over two years later, and coyote howls are a thing of the past.

I no longer live on a vineyard or work in the alcohol industry.

I’m actually in tech.

So what in the world does learning about farming, snakes (I befriended one in my backyard) and winemaking have to do with tech and startups?

Actually, everything.

Startups are embattled every day in the same kind of life and death struggle I saw in the vineyard. Doing everything they can to control their conditions and grow in a way that’s planned, measured. And fast.

Controlling as many factors as possible is essential when growing a startup.

Keeping expenses down. Cultivating team culture. Winning customers and retaining them. Building the right feature set. Designing beautiful and functional products.

And then, there’s fundraising.

Fundraising is like startup Miracle-Gro. Startups need money to create products and grow. Money from customers, friends, family. And often, from angel and institutional investors.

Money is their fuel for growth — the thing that helps them attain their ambitions, to bring their vision into the world. Without this water of life, many startups wither and die.

It also happens to be the thing that drives them the craziest.

The challenge of raising money is the most common problem faced by startups, striking fear into the hearts of even the most seasoned of founders.

Founders aren’t sure which investors to approach, how to reach those investors, which investors are even right for them, how to structure their pitch decks, what terms to set, and a countless set of other questions.

While the earlier part of my professional life was focused on corporate mergers and acquisitions, strategy and new product development, my business partner Hiten Shah was on the other side of the fence. He’s started a dozen businesses, raised money from investors and is an investor/advisor to over 100 companies.

When we stumbled on fundraising as such a huge, integral problem to solve, we decided to take action. So in 2016 we talked to founders about fundraising nearly every day. We took the time to give feedback on over 200 decks. We helped create a dozen fundraising decks from scratch. We talked to dozens of investors. And we conducted over 50 customer development interviews with founders who were raising money.

During the conversations a few key patterns emerged:

• Fundraising is time consuming. It takes founders away from their jobs for months at a time.
• Pitch decks are messy. Pitch deck templates don’t work, are dated, and aren’t contextual. Decks take lots of time to get right, and are constantly iterated.
• Founders feel a lack of control. Founders aren’t sure what investors are thinking and if their decks will get into the hands of competitors.
• There is no magic bullet. When it comes to raising money, there are lots of opinions, and they are often dissonant and opposing.

Startups across industries face these problems every day, no matter the round they are raising.

Once we had the ammunition and really understood the pain, we set out to create a solution.

Based on the problems we identified, we knew we needed to create something that helped startups raise money with more confidence, faster. And that’s exactly what we did! (And if not, you get to tell us!)

We are super pumped to announce the new software product we made just for fundraising. It’s called dogo, and it’s free-to-use for founders, investors and advisors!

With dogo founders can get clear, consistent feedback on their pitch decks from friends, advisors, and other founders, so they can get the best version of their deck in investor’s hands faster. Founders use dogo to track the pitch decks they share with investors and advisors, as well as limit who has access to them.

You can sign up for early access here. We’re sending out invites every day!

We’re excited to see how this evolves and to continue improving the product! A huge thanks to everyone who helped us along the way 😃

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