My name is Josh Payne and I am the founder of Coframe. 

The thesis for Coframe is self-improving, living digital assets or user interfaces.

Every piece of copy out there and every piece of UI should have a KPI that is actively optimizing itself for that specific person who is on it.

I am a serial entrepreneur with some of my other startups being Autograph — raising over $200M — and AccessBell which was acquired by Tata Group.

We most recently raised a seed round of $9M. From demo day to first term sheet was a couple of days. We reviewed our offers and decided within a week.

Coming into it I hadn't decided if I was going to take venture funds — there's been this new movement towards bootstrapping. 

I just wanted to go fast. Life is short and venture capital is just an accelerant. Even if it put us on the all or nothing track, I still wanted to take that swing. 

I realized that there will be a window for this type of business and that there's going to be other teams working at this once this idea gets out there.

I just wanted to really accelerate things. We had a demo day with HF0 for that and then got offers from a few VCs — this kicked off an ad hoc process.

We wanted to be able to bring on a small, elite team. It is our perspective that a small well-run team will run laps around one or two person startups along with bloated, large companies. 

When we were deciding between offers, we wanted technical partners. At Khosla, every partner on the team is highly technical.

Nat Friedman who co-led the round is also very technical.

I saw that they could work with me and help me think through challenging issues — not just on the high-level governance and business operation questions.

Typical VCs can be very useful but at the early stage you're finding product market fit — it's about iterating quickly.

At Khosla the whole team is very upfront and says it like it is — they really push you. 

They won't play the politics game and pretend you're doing great when you actually aren't — and they’ll push you even when you are.

I really wanted to be held to a high standard and have that clear signal because I've worked with other VCs in the past who were hesitant to push when it was important to — it was detrimental.

I wanted that sense of being held accountable.

Most of our offers were inbound from our demo day.  

We spoke to a lot of the big funds — most of the intros were warm introductions. 

I'd either ping a friend and say, “Hey, I'm doing something”, or a friend of mine would suggest someone in their network should meet us and talk to us.

Our situation was unique because we did a demo day to multiple investors and got offers a few days later.

I emphasized the vision and the size of what this could become.

Never let anyone else know who you’re specifically talking to — also don't give the specific terms. 

You can give the ballpark amount you’re raising and then state what the market dictates in price — that's usually the best way.

Keep the market efficient. It’s important to signal that you have that interest once you have it. Getting that first lead term sheet is the hardest piece of it. 

From there everything is much easier. It doesn't necessarily matter who it's from or for how much — its just so that you can say you have a lead term sheet. 

Lead is important because I don't think VCs give credence to someone offering to put $250k in a follow-on. Unless it's a party round — these are generally not advisable.

Sometimes VCs will give you an exploding offer and when you present that to another VC to see if they want to give you a term sheet, they can’t move fast enough to get their diligence done in that timeframe. 

Not all reps are created equal, but getting a lot of reps in is important. Being able to story tell and refining that story over time is really crucial — we as humans operate on stories.

Use other good storytellers as your sounding board when you are developing your pitch. They will have a good sense of what is working and what is not.

Careers last long beyond companies. and integrity is #1 — make sure you’re being accurate and factual with everything you say to investors.

Most of the investors I've worked with in the past have been good in different ways — Khosla, Nat Friedman, HF0, a16z, KP, and Pear VC. 

I have to give special props to Khosla and Nat for being more technical and in the weeds — I'd recommend all of them though.

PG's essays and Jason Cohen's writings.