Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

How to Start A Venture Firm in Your 20's? #shorts

12 Jun 2022 · 1 min

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In this short dialogue, two founders recount the early fundraising journey of their venture fund. They set an initial target of $5 million, but faced intense stress and doubt when progress stalled at about $2.5 million for several months. The speakers describe a “trough of disillusionation,” repeatedly asking existing investors for introductions, only to receive refusals or dead‑ends. Despite the uncertainty, they persisted and ultimately reached the $5 million goal.

Chapters

At the beginning of the fund, there was that period where it was just like, oh my God, are we gonna even be able to do this? Should we lower the fund size target? Oh my gosh, we were, we were stressed.
I think it's like, so we had set a target of, of $5 million and that's what we ended up raising. But I think that there were definitely bumps along the road where we were going through periods. Like I, I was joking with Josh about it being like the trough of disillusionment where you're like, can I, Can we actually do this? I think we were sitting at like $2.5 million for like a couple months of fundraising and no one was committing. We were like asking all of our investors for other intros. They were like, sorry, don't, you know, don't know anyone. Or like, we've already talked to them. And we were just like, is this the end?