Hey - it’s Jason Yeh 🕺🏻

This is my Friday recap of thoughts I’ve had while helping founders solve their fundraising challenges this past week (3.11.22)

If you have any questions, please reply! I try to get to every comment/question I get :)

On to the Fieldnotes for 3.11.22…

This is Why Preparing to Fundraise is Hard

I sent this tweet out like I do most of my tweets – off the cuff and without much thought:

If you follow me on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc), you’ve probably noticed I’ve been posting more. It’s the result of a recent effort to help my writing reach more people. 

Sometimes I worry that the casual visitor to my social media channels assumes I’m a wannabe influencer shilling my content like it’s the next trendy energy drink or weight loss supplement. In reality, I work hard to provide the most genuinely useful and actionable fundraising advice for founders. My daily conversations with founders and investors generate the market’s most current and relevant fundraising insights and help us advise founders at scale. 

One principle I teach is the outsized importance of preparation in executing a successful fundraise. The effort that is put in before a fundraise kicks off is where all the magic happens. It's why I launched the podcast Funded. Telling the full story behind fundraises helps disavow founders of the notion that the amazing fundraises they hear about on Twitter were quick or easy. 

Recently, I realized that in pushing fundraising prep, I had skipped the most important part of being a great advisor that I tweeted about.  While I constantly remind people that it’s hard, I have been failing to do the work to truly identify and recognize WHY it's so hard.

Recognizing why

A few weeks ago, the CEO of Flow Club Ricky Yean sent out an email about task prioritization. He referenced what is called the Eisenhower Matrix. The Eisenhower Matrix is a framework to help decide how you execute tasks, made popular by the 34th president of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower. President Eisenhower was president during World War II and as you might expect, had a lot of tough decisions that required prioritization to effectively manage the country in some very trying times. 

The Eisenhower Matrix breaks down all tasks into a 2 x 2 matrix mapped against the dimensions of urgency and importance and helps you decide how to process each combination:

 (continue reading…)

Smart Twitter Takes

The dating analogy fits too well

Related: respect yourself, be confident, and attract what you want (wait are we talking about dating or fundraising?)

Till next week. Stay adamant and be chased.

Jason

In case you missed it…

Last week, we dived into fundraising’s cold start problem and how to overcome it:

Small asks!

If you thought this was helpful or enjoyable in anyway, I’d love for you to:

• Forward this newsletter with others who would enjoy it

• Follow me on Twitter where I’ve begun building in public (my course, my podcast, etc)!

• Listen with a friend to Funded, my podcast that tells the rollercoaster stories of how founders raised millions (and subscribe🙏)

• Ask me your fundraising questions so I can help you and cover them in a future issue