It's a good time to see the resilience of founders and their abilities to pivot, weather the storm, or rethink how they’re doing things.

When COVID happened, it blew up our idea because people simply couldn’t meet up in person anymore. However, because I still believed in our mission and vision, We decided to pivot and turn our idea into a video-first community platform.

Big news: We’re joining Dropbox!

I believe that capital will continue to flow, but the direction that flow takes is still uncertain. As many founders and angel investors know, there are exciting opportunities at the early stages without adequate capital allocators.

If it was not for DocSend, we wouldn’t have been able to complete our pre-seed raise in such a small time frame. Using specific links to track document analytics helped us focus our energy on reaching back out to the right investors who were actually interested.

Not only have we seen investors shift their focus toward greater efficiency, but a brighter spotlight has also been shone on the importance of high-quality, compelling pitch decks.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about fundraising is one I learned quickly during this last round: investors want to see more than good numbers. Compared to a seed round, investors are looking for more documents, proof of traction, and a compelling pitch deck in a Series A.

Nowadays, you don’t need to come from a Sequoia or Kleiner Perkins to start a VC fund: there are so many different people starting their own initiatives. And importantly, they might not even be doing it full time.