Hi there 👋 I'm Elizabeth co-founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund. AMA

@rrhoover Thank you Ryan -- that's really kind! And likewise, I admire all you've built w/ this site and Weekend Fund! Because we now have a lot of portfolio companies (300+), we've had to spend a lot of time on scaling. Processes, technology, and scope. In the beginning, it was @ericbahn and I running around kinda doing everything haphazardly and working w/ our companies 1:1. That was fine when we had even say 50 companies but then it got really challenging. We now do a few things at scale: -we encourage founders to help each other on Circle and we'll weigh in too -we run programs / workshops to help a lot of ppl at once (mostly with growth via our Redwood School) -we do a lot more async; I record a ton of Loom videos that seem to address people's qs in a faster way -we hacked together our own technology platform to keep track of things in a more systematic way. Our principle Will Bricker built our triaging system to triage deals quickly and also our system for doing deals quickly. With just a few clicks, we can send out a SAFE, a clear to wire email, and collect onboarding docs for our auditors. There have been growing pains along the way esp when each of these initiatives were in it's infancy, but it's neat to get scale as a VC.

@elizabeth_yin1 appreciate you sharing. I knew you had a ton of investments but 300+ is wild!

@andygcook Ooof -- so many tough lessons! Probably the big one is around people management -- esp when you're pivoting or experimenting with a number of things. Employees feel whiplashed around, and no one likes their work thrown out, when you're pivoting or are not sure what the right direction is. Spending a lot of time communicating this framing is really important when you're pivoting for team morale sake.

@vingar thank you Vinish!

@ericbahn It was your mom's idea.

@elizabeth_yin1 Talked to my mom just now, she is disappointed you didn't become a doctor, like your mom.

@leeconstantine No hard and fast rule, but the fastest companies tend to go from product to $1m in < 1 year. More typical for good companies, $1m in < 2.5 years. So working backwards, if you raise a pre-seed at no revenue, under this timeline, you might be raising a seed in 6-12 months. But, again, there's no typical, and sometimes it takes a while to figure things out. If you have to pivot, I would say your "start time" on the idea was post-pivot and don't incl all the other time you spent on other ideas.

@jimbomorrison I think 2 things are impt. Founding team and more importantly market pull. In 3-6 months, you can learn a lot about the founding team. Do they execute with speed? Can they hire well / attract talent / do ppl want to work for them? Can they learn new skills? Are they focused on 1-2 things? etc. But you can't always learn about whether the idea has market pull. It may require a lot more learnings and pivots along the way which could even take years. Market pull is a combination of understanding why customers buy? If the problem is really dire / urgent to warrant this solution? And if there is a seemingly repeatable channel to get more of that customer.

@elizabeth_yin1 Fascinating, thanks Elizabeth. Really appreciate you taking the time to come back to me. Best of luck with the fund! 🚀

@ivandothetrick We do not hold Nationality from anywhere against a founder. We cannot invest in Russian incorporated companies.

Hi @ivandothetrick 👋 I am Moiz, founder of https://grandeur.dev. Barging in the conversation because I have been there (almost, originally based out of Pakistan). In my experience, nationality doesn't really matter (we raised from multiple US VCs). But the location of core team matters. For starters, incorporate in USA. It will open so many doors for you (particularly, if you are a global company, like targeting US users). But if you are solving a local problem (e.g. Uber of Russia), then it is actually much better to raise from local VCs. Because local VCs will help you solve a lot of regulatory problems in long run.

@moizhusnain We are the venture studio based in New York scouting at post-soviet space and trust me I've seen it all. My question here is based on experience of hundreds of founders I met in person. Post-soviet founders is highly underrepresented cohort not even recognized here as one and now it's getting even worse. I think @elizabeth_yin1 told the truth, at least the one she believes in. But I will truly believe in it when I see these talented founders among The Hustle funds deals. So far the % of founders coming from post-soviet countries getting here pre-seed funding is catastrophically low.

@stefani_kovachevska this is probably the most unusual pitch I've received as an investor: https://twitter.com/dunkhippo33/...

@elizabeth_yin1 Awesome, they really did their homework and connected the dots creatively :) Thanks for sharing!

@andelyons Thank you, Ande and yes! Lots of ups and downs (and mostly downs), but so much personal development and growth I wouldn't trade for anything else.

@imarkphillips Building out Hustle Fund! Hustle Fund is fundamentally a company. We started with our VC firm, but we now have many other business lines run by other GMs. Our mission for the company is democratize wealth via startups by impacting capital, knowledge, and networks. We have 20 people now working on programs like Angel Squad (our angel program), Hustle Fund Scale (our late stage angel program), Redwood School (our growth school) 3 crypto initiatives, and more to come. It's fun!

@sanja_mitar Re: founder traits - hustle (as I define as execution with velocity), focused on just 1-2 things, experimentation mindset, customer-centric, able to learn new skills, and frugality.

@bradley_miles_ This is a big topic and probably not one I can do justice to here! :) That said, I think it's impt to schedule time to rest + reflect to help with mental health (and burnout). I believe that founders should take (most) weekends off (obviously there will always be sprints). Cut back a LOT to focus on just 1-2 that matter. And also schedule in time to rest at least 1 week per qtr. It doesn't have to be a fancy vacation. Just time to think about other things and decompress. I think this helps a lot with mental health. When people are exhausted, they don't have the fortitude to overcome challenges. (This is also why depression is linked w/ lack of sleep). I'm no therapist, and I realize that all of what I just wrote above is tough to do, but I do think if founders add it to their calendar, it will force ppl to do it -- just like any other meeting.

@evgeniyantoshkin Thank you Evgeniy! That's really nice of you!

@5harath Haha -- too many. At this point, I've seen 30k-40k pitch decks in my career - yes. However, the big buckets of pitfalls: -sell the dream but be honest (sometimes ppl will put logos on their slides for customers or investors when they haven't closed yet); make sure it's clear between what has been done vs what you are working towards -don't dive into too many details on your deck; you can always answer investor questions in a conversation but you don't want some minutia detail to prevent you from getting a mtg; e.g. I'm raising $2m (when you'd be open to raising $500k) -- an investor just may say it's out of scope

@aleksdahlberg I basically take guesses on whether the idea will have market pull in the long run. More here on how I make that guess: https://twitter.com/dunkhippo33/... We invest at pre-seed, so there's rarely a situation where we will say no and re-evaluate and invest a few months later. My guess could just be completely wrong (and often is) and I won't know for years. That said, from time to time, we may change our mind a few months later if there's been strong uptake in customers, and if we were already on the fence about whether there could be market pull the first time we evaluated it.

@elizabeth_yin1 Awesome thread thanks a lot!

@jpmontgo Thank you!

@webb_knudsen1 Oh gosh - I think both are hard (with the caveat that the investor role is as an emerging VC fund manager). For both, you have to do 2 things that are particularly challenging: 1) Marketing / customer acquisition. 2) Fundraising Both are just hard activities to do. As a founder, I thought that being an investor would be way easier, but we do way more fundraising mtgs than any of our founders. And our B2B lead generation process is very similar to what I've done before as a founder. One thing that I think is a lot easier in being a VC, though, is that you don't have to manage people or as many people. And that's also really hard. For startups who get off the ground and get to scale, people management (and recruiting) becomes a real nightmare...because well people... :)

@elizabeth_yin1 great and honest answer. Thank you!

@ehsanullah_baig Unfortunately, this isn't something that I can answer. This has to be founder-driven based on your own customer development and talking w/ your own customers / users. I think in most other models I've seen of marketplaces, they charge a % in between, so perhaps that's a model to explore. But you can explore all kinds of models -- SaaS model for power users. Or maybe your own token if you make this app decentralized. Regardless, I would message 20 of your customers and call them to learn why they picked your app, what they hoped to succeed with it, and learn about their willingness to pay (and in what way). Just my $0.02.

@edgar1 I would take a step back and think about: 1) Are you still excited about doing a startup? 2) If so, are there other problems (with the world wide open) that you are excited about solving? 3) if so, perhaps do customer development in those other areas Sometimes people need to take a break, make some money, and then get back at it. Finding product market fit is hard (and a lot of luck IMO), and sometimes you just need to reset a bit.

@elizabeth_yin1 Thanks for your answer! I will definitely get to thinking this weekend. Definitely still excited about doing a startup just need to think about everything