Fundraising Panel at Female Founders Conference 2016

TL;DR

Four female founders (Talia Frankel, Caitlin Gleason, Arthi Ramamurthy, Liz Wessel) discuss their fundraising experiences at a Y Combinator panel. Core advice includes: bootstrap to build leverage before raising, persist through hundreds of rejections, know your numbers cold without a deck, treat investor “no” as a temporary state, and only raise if you actually need capital.

Key insights

• Bootstrapping first (e.g., Caitlin built a prototype and got deals with no technical cofounder) forced the company to create value, making later fundraising easier.
• Arthi emailed ~250 investors, met 85 in person, and took 8 months to close a $1.2M seed round—persistence and a systematic spreadsheet were key.
• Liz intentionally refused to use a deck in investor meetings, relying on knowing every number so she could answer any question and even point out what investors should be asking.