Semil Shah, General Partner at Haystack Ventures, talks about fundraising in a changing VC environment. Semil highlights ways for founders to raise investors’ interest in their companies, and explains why founders should occasionally imagine a future where they won’t have to raise more capital.

In this episode, you'll learn:

[**4:56**] Ask investors questions to make the conversation more interesting.

[**8:10**] Build something and let investors reach out to you.

[**12:23**] Do the risks you’ve taken show that you really want to be in the game?

[**18:14**] Enterprise value will drive startup fundraising in the future.

The non-profit organization that Semil is passionate about: Humane Society Silicon Valley (HSSV)

About Guest Speaker

Semil Shah is the founding general partner at Haystack Ventures. Semil has also been a Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners since 2018. In 2022, he was featured on the inaugural Midas Seed List (in partnership with Forbes Magazine) as one of the top 25 seed investors worldwide. 

Fun fact: Before Semil got into investing, he had a winding career path that took him to an early-stage startup, to the galleys of the NY restaurant scene, and even a butcher shop.

About Haystack Ventures

Haystack Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that backs outlier founders at the earliest stages. Haystack has been a fortunate investor in 200+ companies, including DoorDash, Instacart, Hashicorp, Figma, Opendoor, Carta, Applied Intuition, Filecoin, Ironclad and more.

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