I’m launching Vibe Raising 💰💸 Fundraising is exhausting. It’s very challenging to run a fundraising process and close customer deals in parallel. Vibe Raising takes the guess work out of your fundraising strategy so you can focus on growth and land VC meetings without all the stress. I’m helping multiple VCs and angels with deal flow. Introducing my portfolio of founders daily and providing warm intros where it makes sense. If your ideal VCs aren’t on my list, I’ll cold call and/or DM them for you to get it done. We’ll also rework your pitch, deck, memo, and any fundraising material in order to make your story stand out. VCs are known for ghosting or giving soft no’s, saying things like: “It’s too early” “Come back when you have more traction” “Keep us posted on your progress” Avoiding soft no’s from VCs starts in the prep I work with founders on. If you’re raising a pre-seed or seed round, let’s talk. I have the green light on introducing founders to the best funds across the country. Currently, I’m sitting at $18.25M raised for founders. My goal is to reach $100M+ by helping founders like you vibe raise. Let’s get it. Dre ✌🏿

Greatest city in the world. No debate.

Stop letting agents burn 🔥 through your TAM. Founder-led sales is a learning exercise and leveraging agents to do the dirty work will kill your vision. You have to feel the pain of rejection yourself. Handing it over to an agent makes you weak, reactive, and susceptible to losing to the founder who gets rejected over and over again. Pick up the phone, send the DM, write the email, and talk to your prospects. Acquiring the resilience you need to build a world class sales org starts with the founder - not through an agent. Let's get it

Something ALWAYS happens in October. best month of the year 🥶😤😎

One of the greatest business models ever created 🥶

Lots of early-stage VCs are using AI forms to filter the startups they are looking to back. If you’re a founder, I’d caution spending time filling out AI forms for a shot at pre-seed/seed rounds. The insight and data you receive building your own VC/angel pipeline is invaluable at this stage. The rejection from these AI forms, gives you absolutely no signal on the effectiveness of your pitch. You’re literally pitching into a black hole. It’s a complete waste of time. Spend the time researching and identifying the right partners (there are MANY) who’s thesis best align with your vision …and cold email/call/ or DM them or seek intros through your network. It’s a tried and true strategy to find not only capital but the RIGHT partners you want on your journey. Let’s get it!

Lowes speeding up time, pushing up “deadlines” to get more of your money. If you see any company doing this, just ignore it. Treat it for what it is. Time manipulation to get you to buy more shit you don’t need.

Every father in America

Started cold calling VCs for my founders last week while everyone else hoping their email gets a reply. It’s a true unlock to cut through the noise if you know how to do it 🔥

So basically @HubSpot is putting $100 to their churned customer’s @MonacoGTM bill

Why does Claude consistently lie and manipulate conversations? I’m now fact-checking half of its responses.

My first summer running my own business, helping founders is coming to an end and I feel blessed. I moved to San Francisco in 2012 with $900 in my pocket, a dog, 2 suitcases, and full of ideas. My overnight success took 15 years. I still have a lot to accomplish, but I wanted to take a minute to thank the founders who took a bet on me. Thank you for believing in me to help you build your vision. Let’s get it 🔥 Dre ✌🏿

Heard @claudeai is down. Good time to go play with your kids.

Chegg was worth $14.5B, now it's about $100M ...Most people think it's because of GPT and Claude which is only half of the story... Their entire business model gave students answers for 20 bucks a month. Then GPT launched. Suddenly they were up against a platform that gave students the same power for free. GAME OVER. That's only the tip of the iceberg and most startups face the same risk. Chegg had piles of revenue from millions of customers What they didn't have is a customer no one could take from them. Their customer had no loyalty and a budget near zero. The second something free showed up that was actually better, there was nothing holding them. No switching cost. No relationship. No reason to stay. The revenue was real but their customer base was a pile of sand. I had a lengthy conversation with a prominent seed investor last week and something clicked ... He said he stopped underwriting revenue. Instead, he and many others like him underwrite who your customers are. This is why diligence is shifting, all the way through series B. If you looked at Chegg at its peak, the numbers look glorious! But the customers were the most churnable humans on earth. The revenue told you nothing about whether the business would survive contact with a better option. So here's what I'm helping founders think through.. You're being told to get traction by any means. So you're chasing deals that are easiest to close. Quick sales cycles... Avoiding procurement.. Small buyers.. Revenue on the board. That's Chegg. Savvy investors are not reading your revenue like the glory days of SaaS. They're reading whether your customers will stick with you as models get better and free versions of your product manifest themselves in the market. A buyer who has budget, has reasons to stay, and everyone in your space respects is worth more than a thousand who closed because you were cheap and easy. Chegg didn't fall because Al got good. It fell because it sold to an ICP who were never going to stay. If you need guidance on closing the right logos for your startup, let's talk so you don't build a Chegg. Dre ✌🏿 #startups #sales #founders

Helped a founder close his first $56,000 🤑 deal in 3 weeks with 3 months of runway. Here’s what I did: Most prospects leave breadcrumbs of where they're headed on their site. A pricing page. An FAQ. Tons of breadcrumbs in the 10K if you’re selling to enterprise buyers. A “coming in Q3” note next to a feature they haven’t shipped. This is the gold you’re missing in your DMs. It tells you they’re building something in-house that’ll take them months. And it tells you they don’t have the support to get there fast. That’s your opening. Here’s the play: 1. Find breadcrumbs about where they’re headed and have already published. Find the feature they’ve promised but haven’t shipped. 2. DM the CEO. 1-2 sentences, 3 max. Speak to what they’re building and ask if getting there faster would matter. 3. Let time-to-value do the selling. You’re not pitching a product. You’re pitching months back on their calendar. That one DM got an intro to their CTO. The conversation wasn’t about my client’s features. It was about the thing the prospect was struggling to build, and how to have it next week instead of next quarter. 🏃‍♂️ The wedge gets sharper when their roadmap has revenue attached. 💰 If they’re losing deals because a capability isn’t live, and your product makes that capability live now, you’re not a nice-to-have anymore. Your product becomes the wedge between them and net new revenue. Stop pitching what you do. Find where they’re already headed, and get them there faster. If you feel stuck getting 5-6 figure deals with your startup let’s talk. Dre ✌🏾

90% focused on customers - 10% focused on VCs Let’s Let’s get it!!! 💰💰💰💰💰 #founder #vc #ai #sales #startup

I sat with a founder this week and noticed something about GTM that most early-stage teams get backwards. . . He'd spent months building the full product. The grand vision. The platform that does everything. And then trying to find a small market to squeeze it into. I told him to flip it. Take the smallest, sharpest slice of the product and lead with that. Same big vision underneath. The wedge is one thing, done better than anyone, for a customer who feels the pain today. When your wedge is narrow, your message gets loud. You stop explaining ten features and start naming one problem the customer already knows they have. The hook writes itself. A good wedge doesn't shrink your market. It's the door into it. You land customers on the one thing, then two months later you say... "by the way, we also do this now, want to turn it on?" You expand inside accounts you already earned. The trap is falling in love with the platform vision so early that you try to sell all of it at once. Customers can't say yes to everything. They can say yes to one thing that fixes what's broken. Narrow the wedge. Sharpen the hook. Let the vision pull, not push. The founders who break out aren't the ones with the sharpest hook. Hope this helps you on your journey. Dre ✌🏾