Ron Conway talks through fundraising best practices

Don't ask people to sign an NDA. We rarely get asked anymore because most founders have figured out that if you ask somebody for an NDA at the front end of the relationship, you're basically saying, I don't trust you. So the relationship between investors and founders involves lots of trust. The biggest mistake that I see by far is not getting things in writing. You know, my advice on the fundraising process is do it as quickly and efficiently as you possibly can. Don't obsess over it. For some reason, founders get their ego involved in fundraising, where it's a personal victory, it is the tiniest step on the way, as Mark said, and it's the most fundamental. Hurry up and get it over with. But in the process, when somebody makes a commitment to you, you get in your car and you type an email to them that confirms what they just said to you. Because investors have a lot of investors have very short memories and they forget that they committed to you that they were going to finance, or they forget what the valuation was, that they were going to find a co investor. You can get rid of all that controversy just by putting it in writing. And when they try and get out of it, you just resend the email and say, excuse me, and hopefully they've replied to that email anyway. So get it in writing, in meetings, take notes and follow up on what's important.