How Investors Really Decide Which Startups Get Funded

If you’ve ever wondered why your startup didn’t get funded — or how to craft a pitch investors actually say yes to — this page is for you.

This is your founder-first guide to understanding how venture capital really works behind the scenes. No jargon, no vague advice — just clear insights into how investors make decisions and what it takes to get a “yes.”

What You’ll Get from Reading This Page

• A clear understanding of how venture capital really works — and whether it’s the right path for your startup
• A practical, inside look at how investors assess startups, make decisions, and what signals they’re actually looking for during fundraising

Whether you're a first-time founder or seasoned operator prepping for your next round, this resource is built to sharpen your fundraising approach and help you see your startup the way a VC would.

Before you pitch, What VCs Want helps you get clear on what investors actually need to believe.

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Section III: How VCs Evaluate Startups

Why VC Feedback Often Conflicts

Feedback from venture capital funds can be disorienting and is often conflicting. This is for two major reasons:

1. Fund Strategy and Investor Composition

• VC firms differ in approach: some write early cheques, others invest post-product market fit. Some diversify, others concentrate.
• Inside a firm, each partner has their own lens. You need one person to champion you internally.
• Conflicting advice from VCs often reflects these internal differences—not that your startup is wrong.
• How to decode a fund’s strategy:
• Review their portfolio—this is the best indicator.
• Read their public investment notes for language, themes, and founder preferences.
• Identify their typical check stage and role (lead vs. follow-on).
• Ask founders who’ve raised from them—what they diligence, where they push back.

Blackbird example: We've backed pre-seed to Series A across deep tech (OpenStar), infrastructure (Kwetta), B2B SaaS (Tracksuit), AI monitoring (Watchful), and consumer upskilling (NextWork). Their strategy spans early-stage, ambitious, product obsessed startups.

2. Fund Size = Fund Strategy

• Venture funds must return 3.5x net to their LPs—around 5x gross on invested capital.
• Power laws governs VC: over 80% of the value comes from 1 or 2 companies per fund.
• Example: In Blackbird’s first fund, Canva was >100x more valuable than its next most valuable holding. There were four unicorns in the portfolio.
• This affects what investors need to believe:
• For a large fund (e.g. Blackbird), a “fund returner” could mean 10% ownership in a $4B company.
• For a small fund (e.g. Outset), that could be 5% of an $800M outcome.
• Result: Different fund sizes lead to different definitions of “venture-scale” - this dictates the feedback that you might receive.

Quickfire Realities

• Do NZ-only outcomes excite VCs?

Rarely. Exceptions include fintech like Sharesies, Emerge, Debut. Most other sectors need global scale early to hit $1B+ potential.

• Do VCs care about <$500M exits?

Yes—those are great outcomes. But for top-tier fund performance, a $50M+ fund needs at least one >$500M exit to hit return targets. For a larger fund the reality is a $500M exit is great but not sufficient to generate world class returns.

Evaluation of startups

The most common reason a VC investor will pass is the one they seldom share… they don’t believe in the founder(s).

Founders

Investment decisions at the earliest of stages begin and end with the founding team. It is the first gate and many investors will be willing to invest singularly on the strength of a team even in the absence of an idea.

The criteria VCs use in assessing founders is not always the same but it does rhyme.

“My job is to invest in pattern-breakers—people who challenge the way things are done and propose a radically different way.”

Mike Maples @ Floodgate

“Great founders are on a mission to correct something they believe the world got wrong—brutally honest, insanely curious, often outsiders to the industries they disrupt.” Alfred Lin @ Sequoia

“When investing in founders, you’re looking for an extraordinary trait. The chances that a person anywhere in the world will found a world/category-changing company rounds to basically 0% so that’s why unless you need to find a top 1% spike in something, otherwise you shouldn’t invest. Then, if they do have spikiness, does that person spike in relation to the skills needed to build this company?” Keith Rabois @ Khosla

“I believe in the hungry not the proven — the people who bring about change are outsiders, not insiders.” Niki Scevak @ Blackbird

“Founders reason from physics-like first principles - not MBA-style formulas” Peter Thiel @ Founders Fund

“Action-orientation beats analysis-paralysis every time.” “You can’t coach desire – it’s either burning or it’s not.” Fred Wilson @ Union Square Ventures

The assessment of founders and their capacity to go from a standing start to building a category defining company is the single most important decision - so are common aspects investors look for:

• Life’s work: Many firms search for founders doing their life’s work - what is it about this problem these founders have discovered? What drives an insatiable need to solve it? Do they have an earned secret about the problem space and market? Will they express the resilience necessary when faced down by adversity?
• Talent magnets: The team you build is the company you build. Can you source and win world class talent? Is there a cult-like fervour at the heart of this company? Can you find and recruit undiscovered talent? Is everyone on the team relentlessly resourceful and operate at pace?
• Learn it all: Founders need to rapidly master fresh domains over the course of a scaling journey — they might begin with an earned secret, as a world class technologist — but steadily need to grok sales, marketing, people, culture, the list goes on. Do these founders reflect an insatiable hunger to learn? Are they continuously probing for feedback and calibrating what to take a leave?
• Product obsessed: In an AI-transformed world the best products earn founders the right to explosive growth and the most exciting roadmaps offer a path to category leadership.
• Extreme speed: The path to a escape velocity relies on speed. Do these founders operate with extreme urgency? Do they have a fast learning cycle time? Venture capital is there to prove, disprove and discover a secret about the world - the faster a founding team can chart a path to these learnings, the more they will compound.

Evidence: Building a shipping product, evidence of short learning loops (how have you changed your strategy?), depth and breadth of customer feedback.

So a VC is excited to invest in the team - what else is on the bingo card?

1. Market size and slope

Is now the right moment—and is your market slow-moving or fast-moving?

Why the question matters

Right-time entries enjoy tail-winds: lower CAC, faster adoption, friendlier regulators. Mistimed launches burn cash educating a market that isn’t listening yet or one that doesn’t grow into a venture scale outcome.

Sizing

Can this market support a fund returning outcome?

For me I want to believe in a path to US$200M+ of revenues growing >50% yoy and ideally, a non-zero path to $1B of revenue.

There are layers to a market sizing bet that you are making:

1. What is the underlying size of the market today?
2. How fast is that market growing?
3. Does the product unlock new value in a market that could be capture?
4. What adjacent opportunities could the business expand into?

When articulating market sizing - bottoms up is best.

• Who is a great customer?
• How many are there?
• What is their willingness to pay? Why?
• How do they value the product?

What not to do?

❌  Reference random industry reports

❌  Size your market with reference to spend rather than pricing power

❌  State you only need to win 5% of a massive market

Investors will make both bets. Obviously large enough markets (think about the myriad successful start ups focussed on payroll) — and markets that are too small today powered by tailwinds driving rapid growth.

Slow or Fast moving market

Every start up should aim to solve urgent and important problems - which should motivate given the right product rapid adoption.

Different product markets experience wildly different adoption curves. For example lawyers have until recently been an awful customers. Slow moving, decision making by committee, technology averse and inept.

However, AI has shifted this. Will the advent on models with the capacity to make lawyers wildly more productive we’ve observed a massive acceleration of technology adoption for what previously was a venture capital mine field.

Evidence of this speed will come through in the early days as the ease with of customer discovery and post product in the speed of purchase. Explosive growth relies on a powerful and accelerating customer need.

Look no further than Mercor - growing from 0 - $100M+ in revenue in less than 12 months with access to deep talent networks right at the moment reinforcement learning accelerates.

Inflections 👉 Tailwinds

There are types of market inflections that drive market tailwinds.

• Technology – a concrete capability jump (phone-based GPS → ride-sharing; LLMs → Agentic everything).
• Regulatory – rule changes that unlock latent demand (Medicare’s 2020 tele-health ruling).
• Societal / Adoption – shifts in norms or critical-mass uptake (trust tipping-point enabled Airbnb).

This is what makes now such an amazing time to build. AI makes so many fresh customer experiences possible 🚀

How investors pick it apart

• Outline market triggers: cost declines (e.g., LLM inference), new laws, demographic swells.
• Study adoption curves: how long does it take a customer to switch? Have adoption rates shifted?

Nuances & blind spots

• Fast markets reward speed but punish execution miss-steps.
• Slow markets give you learning cycles but need higher contract values to compensate
• A “right moment” can be geographic: what’s late in the US can be early in LATAM.

Evidence that convinces

• Data series showing inflection (e.g., EV charger installs, cloud-migration rates).
• Month-on-month growth that outpaces legacy vendors.

2. Product

Is your product 10 times better than anything else available in market?

Why the question matters

Investors back step-changes, not tweaks. A 10× jump in one or serveral core dimensions (speed, cost, accuracy, delight) cuts through noise, lets you price with margin, and makes copy-cats look second-rate.

10x is relative

10x is always a market relative to existing products available in market.

• Markets with slow moving and decades old incumbents can be more vulnerable to an inflection.
• Markets with a large number of fresh well funded competitors require a greater degree of reimagination to cut-through.

The idea maze

Walking investors through the idea maze is a powerful skill.

• Document the dead ends. List every past startup, corporate effort, and academic project in your area and the reason each stalled.
• Mark the trapdoors. For every step of your roadmap, identify the biggest risks (regulatory, capital intensity, network effects, etc.) and how you’ll neutralize them.
• Surface the secret. Tie your product to a change in technology, distribution, or culture that only recently unlocked the opportunity (“why now”).
• Tell the story crisply. The maze narrative should be so clear that the listener feels they could guide someone else through it after one conversation.

This demonstrates depth of knowledge and a level of first principles thinking that is rare.

How investors pick it apart

• Benchmark the product against today’s best alternative on a single, legible metric.
• “Pattern-matching” - VCs will meet with many companies in the same category, creating a clearer vision of what is fresh and different.
• Stress-test whether the advantage endures as the market reacts - are their compounding advantages available?
• Does a product provoke a visceral emotional response in the customer?

Nuances & blind spots

• Bundle vs. spike: 3–4× better on several axes can beat a single 10× spike.
• Cost curves: hardware or deep tech may only need a 3× edge if you can then believe technology is driven down a cost curve.

Evidence that convinces

• Independent benchmark results or side-by-side demos.
• Early customers volunteering NPS scores or case-study savings.
• Accelerating

3. Distribution

Does your product sell itself, or have you engineered a repeatable motion?

Why the question matters

Superior distribution routinely beats superior tech. Without a scalable path to market, better products die in obscurity.

Some distribution patterns

Category defining businesses require both a product and distribution insights.

• Templates → SEO: Canva for example leveraged pre-designed templates to build a self propelling distribution advantage across SEO. While the product was meaningfully behind Adobe - it was discoverable and immediately valuable to less technically inclined users.
• Turn sharing into onboarding: links (Figma, Discord) or templates (Canva) double as acquisition.
• Give away the ‘viewer’ experience so every user becomes a silent evangelist (Figma).
• Friction-free “anyone-can-join” links + generous freemium; viral adoption inside teams, then across organizations, amplified by app-store and hardware partnerships (Zoom).

How investors pick it apart

• Unit economics: payback period (<12 months), sales-cycle length, gross margin (75%+).
• Growth loops: referrals, network effects, platform integrations.
• Channel depth: if more resource is added will efficiency scale or rapidly diminish?

Nuances & blind spots

• ACV vs education
• High ACV → longer cycles, often requires buyer education & ROI proof.
• Low ACV / self-serve → can scale with zero-touch PLG, require no education.
• B2B motion should always start as founder-led sales → glamorising “PLG” too early can forfeit key early learnings
• Partnerships take twice as long and seldom work as expected.

Evidence that convinces

• Organic sign-ups outpacing paid.
• Viral coefficient > 1 or referral share of new ARR.

4. Team

Do you have the right team to drive real product innovation?

Why the question matters

Ideas die in the wrong hands. Early hires hard-wire culture, pace, and technical DNA.

Investors will obsess over the quality of early talent. The founding team’s taste in people. Ability to win them over. And the level of cultural alignment and pace that they have injected in the company from day one.

A common belief is that all of the great early stage start ups are cults in some way - just as you should be excited to work for the founders you invest in, they should be excited to work for the early talent they select.

How investors pick it apart

• Founder-market-fit: personal obsession, earned secret, or unfair access.
• Complementary skill mix—no all-CEO teams.
• Evidence of shipping speed: prototypes and demos, customer feedback

Nuances & blind spots

• Missionaries vs. mercenaries: stock options alone can’t buy passion.
• Diversity of thought beats monoculture brilliance.

Evidence that convinces

• Demo delivered in weeks, not months.
• References on grit and humility.
• Key talent already working below market cash because they “can’t not do this.”
• Ask yourself this - would you work for their early employees?

5. Durability

Is there a path to a durable advantage in 10–20 years?

Why the question matters

VC pricing bakes in compounding over a decade. An early edge need to translate into durable moats over the medium term.

🏰 Moats

Defensibility at the beginning of an early stage start up is a myth.

My favourite framework for moats is Hamilton Helmer’s Seven Powers:

1. Scale Economies – When average unit cost keeps falling as volume rises, a large leader can price or spend in ways a smaller rival simply can’t match without destroying its own economics. Most hardware companies enjoy scale economies at scale. Anything were large cost lines can be amortised across a larger group of users / customers.
2. Network Economies – Every new user makes the product or service more valuable for every existing user, creating a self-reinforcing, often winner-take-most flywheel that newcomers struggle to ignite. Social networks. Marketplaces.
3. Counter-Positioning – A challenger adopts a superior business model that incumbents could copy only by cannibalising their current profits, so the rulers stay put while the rebel gains ground.
4. Switching Costs – Customers face meaningful financial, procedural or emotional costs to move elsewhere, so even an attractive alternative must overcome a built-in “lock-in” penalty. ERPs like SAP or Netsuite. Most systems of record aim to establish switching costs.
5. Branding – Allows a company to achieve a higher margin selling a product of the equivalent quality - owing to a perception of identity or status because buyers “just prefer the brand.”
6. Cornered Resource – Exclusive or preferential access to something uniquely valuable (a patent, scarce talent, long-term rights, etc.) deprives competitors of the raw material they’d need to imitate the leader’s success.
7. Process Power – Proprietary, continuously improving routines or cultures deliver lower costs or superior products, and are so embedded that rivals can’t replicate them quickly even if they see exactly what’s being done.

As you can see very few of these manifest right at the beginning of a startup. Scale economies, network effects and process power occur at scale. Branding emerges as a function of time. Switching costs rely on a breadth of product that cannot be delivered on day one. Cornered resources are brittle until commercialised.

While most every startup attempts their own version of counter-positioning. If you haven’t then do you really have a secret about the world worth pursuing?

Simple advice… the best path to building enduring moats is to become large and enjoy all of the benefits of being large. Simplify the job to delivering the most valuable product features in the shortest period of time. Too much focus on “building” moats too early will distract from delivering customer value - early love and the path to explosive growth.

There are of course ways to thoughtfully build network effects and switching costs into your product - just remember that there is always a flip side. Network effects businesses suffer a cold start problem - can you deliver customer value in the absence of the network. Just as markets or product categories with natural switching costs - will of course have incumbents that enjoy those benefits too.

Product roadmap

Most all software start ups begin with a wedge. Something that fundamentally changes for the better an element of a users work or life. Starting small is necessary. It allows great progress and customer love on short time periods and with small amounts of capital.

But it is not sufficient to build a category defining business. The best companies are marching towards a version of the future and the first product is only the first small step. Investors love to see and believe in a never ending roadmap - so make sure you paint the boldest version of that future.

How investors pick it apart

• Dig into the technology - how much toil and talent is really needed to build the product?
• Plans for moat deepening: is there a path to 👉 data fly-wheels, ecosystem lock-in, standard-setting
• Pricing durability: Should we expect a price appreciation or decline as capability becomes more commoditised
• Sensitivity to margin compression or new entrants.

Nuances & blind spots

• Pure technology advantages decay but transform into economies of scale and process power
• Network effects strengthen over time but fresh technology waves can usurp the value
• Long-term talent pipelines (academia, visas) matter more than people realise.

Evidence that convinces

• Multi-year contracts or usage-based revenue with retention > 90 %.
• Road-map showing step-function moat upgrades (e.g., proprietary chips in year 3).
• Competitive analyses updated quarterly plus sensitivity tests.

Section IV: What Traction Really Means

Traction = Proof. When VCs did into the customer conversations, the revenue, the engagement - they are looking for verifiable external validation of your underlying hypothesis.

Traction looks very different by stage, market and product category. So let’s unpack three core buckets:

1. B2B Software / AI Enabled Services
2. Consumer tech
3. Deep tech

B2B SaaS

Framing: B2B companies should solve an urgent and important need for a well defined persona. The product needs to deliver on a core promise - delivering transformative value to that user.

Traction to raise the round:

• Pre-product 👉 100+ customer conversations. Your user / persona is excited to spend time with you and discuss their problems - signalling an urgent problem to be solved. For Kiwi companies US cold outbound is the highest value customer discovery.
• Pre-seed 👉 3 - 5 design partners. Can you convince 3 -5 representative customers to allocate time and resource in providing feedback and using the product. If you can get them to pay something - that is better.
• 👀 Waitlist Fugazi: Push hard for customers to pay ASAP. Product feedback in the absence of paying for the product can lead you down the wrong path.
• Seed 👉 Power users and first paying customers. Ideally for a seed round the product has a wildly happy early cohort of paying customers. Sales are most likely all founder led to keep feedback loops tight. Early renewals (>100% NRR), high engagement and low churn are all good signs here. International revenue > local revenue.
• Series A 👉 Millions (target US$3M+) in revenue and an early GTM channel ready for scale. To raise a Series A you need strong signals of early product market fit and an early and repeatable sales motion that enables your company to add resource and scale revenues. The path to Series B is all about maintaining explosive growth rates.
• Series B 👉 Tripled revenue and positioned to scale. Every round from here is about maintaining escape velocity and staying on the venture path - is there clear line of sight to $100M+ in revenue? Are you building a GTM engine with channel diversification fit for scale? Are you building an organisation that can source, win and onboard talent rapidly and at scale?

⚠️ Disclaimer

These markers are prone moving quickly with market sentiment and the relative pace of growth in different categories. For many years it was par for the course to stand up a good series A on the back of US$1M of ARR. Those days are over.

AI native companies are redefining how quickly B2B companies can grow. $1M → $10M inside 12 months is increasingly common - often powered by either (1) Bottoms up PLG adoption by individual users; or (2) New category creation and fresh budget lines - opening huge new TAMs with unbound top of funnel.

If you are not building with an AI tailwind at your back beware… the traction bar may feel much higher. See below both the median and upper quartiles ARR for Series A’s have grown quickly over the last 24 months post GPT4.

Resources:

• First Round - Levels of PMF
• In particular I love the 4 P’s framework. Suggesting the four vectors you can pivot around include (Persona, Problem, Promise and Product).

Section V: Inside the VC Funnel

Many startups don’t get funded because they fumble the fundraising process.

There are two key rules of fundraising:

1. Prepare + practice:
1. ❌ Do not reach out to VCs at the start. Do 30 - 40 founder pitches first to hone the narrative.
2. ✅ Prepare a small dataroom thoughtfully (more below)
2. Parrallelise
1. Aim to have all of your first meetings with investors (40-50) within 2-3 weeks (max). This will maximise the leverage you get through a due diligence process and also give you the best chance of achieving competitive tension.
2. VCs are social beasts. Many experience FOMO. If you get a term sheet you can force decisions.

Treat these stages as a checklist — especially for timing follow-up and expectations.

What Blackbird Wants to See in a Pitch Deck

1. Samantha Wong | Insights After Reviewing 1,000+ Decks

https://medium.com/blackbird-ventures/a-pitch-deck-masterclass-d6b682857a1

• Start with your top 3 takeaways — then build your narrative around them. Your deck should revolve around what you want investors to remember. Simplicity = memorability.
• Most important slides:
1. Market Opportunity – Ambition, urgency, and a clear target customer
2. Team – Prove this is your life’s work and that you’re a magnet for top talent
3. Traction – Use metrics, not adjectives. Show momentum, not fluff.
• Avoid the common traps:

– Overloaded decks with too much info

– Competitive matrix slides (they confuse more than clarify)

– Customer testimonials instead of real usage stories

– Exit slides — VCs invest in companies, not exits

• Make it beautiful (especially for B2C). Your design is a reflection of your customer understanding.
• Final slide = your strongest point — not your contact details or a generic “thanks.”

Mindset shift: You’re not pitching to get a term sheet — you’re pitching to get to the next conversation. Stay focused, practice relentlessly, and eliminate anything that doesn’t help you stand out.

2. Nick Crocker | Pitch Deck Evaluation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o685C47gEh8

Overview of Nick Crocker’s Evaluation Approach

• Ultra-fast judgment: Nick reviews decks in 10–15 seconds per slide, scanning for clarity, credibility, and compelling data.
• Founders-first lens: Core focus: “Is this a founder I’d want to work with for the next 10 years?”
• Data over fluff: Seeing a $‑sign early (team → traction) is crucial—revenue trumps any qualitative claims.
• Visual & narrative impact: Visual design acts as a proxy for attention to detail; poor aesthetics signal carelessness.
• Mobile matters: Investors often skim on phones—deck readability across devices is critical.

Teardown Takeaways

Key Actionable Lessons

1. Opening matters: Start strong with team credibility and traction ($ signs early).
2. Keep decks lean: Aim for 8–12 slides—fewer distractions, more clarity.
3. Numbers > words: Revenue, growth, NPS, churn—quantify your claims.
4. Visual polish = credibility: A sleek deck signals rigor and care.
5. Highlight your story: If your journey ties directly to the problem, lead with it.

Final Takeaway

A winning pitch deck is:

• Concise and cohesive—designed for fast scanning
• Data-driven—packed with evidence of momentum
• Authentically yours—narratively and visually aligned with your story and category

Blackbird links and resources

Blackbird Founder-Facing Programs

External links and resources:

Customer / Problem Discovery

1. “How to Know if Your Idea’s the Right One” – interview framework for unbiased customer research (First Round). First Round
2. “How to Talk to Users” – YC lecture (Eric Migicovsky) on interview mechanics. YouTube
3. “Do Things That Don’t Scale.” Paul Graham on founder-led user acquisition as discovery. paulgraham.com
4. The Mom Test – Rob Fitzpatrick’s fail-proof question design. Amazon
5. 20VC w/ Chris Paik: “Business-Model Fit vs PMF.” thetwentyminutevc.com
6. Clay Christensen’s Jobs-To-Be-Done overview. Christensen Institute
7. YC Essential Advice: “Build Something People Want.” Y Combinator

2 · Path to Product-Market Fit (orient + pivot)

1. Superhuman’s PMF Engine – Rahul Vohra’s 40% “very disappointed” survey method (FRR). First Round
2. a16z podcast “Product-Market-Sales Fit: What Comes First?” Andreessen Horowitz
3. Sequoia’s “Elements of Enduring Companies.” articles.sequoiacap.com
4. NFX “Network Effects Manual.” 16 archetypes for defensibility. NFX
5. Paul Graham “Startup = Growth.” Growth as the PMF litmus test. paulgraham.com
6. Bill Gurley “All Revenue Is Not Created Equal.” Why unit economics matter before scaling. Above the Crowd
7. Sam Altman lecture on post-PMF company building. Learn with Tree
8. a16z “12 Things About Product-Market Fit.” Andreessen Horowitz
9. YC lecture playlist – “Build Products Users Love.” YouTube
10. Marc Andreessen’s original PMF blog post (“Only the Thing that Matters”). Unbiased Insights
11. Sam Altman’s online Startup Playbook – PMF to blitz-scale checklist. Sam Altman

3 · Fundraising Masterclass (15 picks)

1. Paul Graham “How to Raise Money.” Step-by-step YC playbook. paulgraham.com
2. YC video “Fundraise Like a PRO!” Tactical session on timing & momentum. YouTube
3. First Round “Fundraising Wisdom” – lessons from $18 B in follow-ons. First Round
4. Sequoia Capital Pitch Deck Template – the 10-slide flow. www.slideshare.net
5. a16z “16 Commandments of Raising Equity in a Challenging Market.” Andreessen Horowitz
6. Chris Paik: “How I Raised $400 M” (podcast). YouTube
7. Bill Gurley interview on “dirty term-sheets” & burn-rate discipline. Vanity Fair
8. Angel Podcast w/ Jason Calacanis – investor Q&A on terms & syndicates. angelpodcast.com
9. 20VC x Naval Ravikant – seed strategy & micro-VC economics. Podpage
10. 20VC x Kirsten Green – consumer seed → Series C narratives. Spotify
11. Founder Collective – “How to Break Bad News to Investors.” foundercollective.com
12. NFX “Fundraising Checklist – 13 Proof Points for Series A.” NFX
13. DocSend 2024 Funding Divide Report – data on deck-open rates & bias gaps. docsend.com
14. Secrets of Sand Hill Road – Scott Kupor’s behind-the-term-sheet guide. Amazon
15. PitchBook Q1 2025 Global Fundraising Report – macro context for LP appetite. PitchBook