Shedletsky: Instrumental generated investor FOMO using a Y Combinator interview date
Anna Shedletsky · 20VC: How To Create FOMO For Investors, How To Manage VC Conversations & A Repeatable Process For Learning New Things with Anna Shedletsky, Founder & CEO @ Instrumental.ai · Apr 7, 2017 · at 17:16
Anna Shedletsky, founder and CEO of Instrumental, explains how she raised funding by asking VCs for advice regarding their upcoming Y Combinator interview.
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“A few months after taking angel funding, we applied to Y Combinator, fully intending to try to get in because we thought it would be a great network for our company, and our application was selected for an in-person interview, and I picked a date three weeks out, and I happened to be meeting with a VC that I'd been kind of developing a relationship with over the last couple of months, and I asked him, what do you think about Y Combinator? Should I do Y Combinator? And he said, You don't need YC. You can raise money now. And he suggested that I go talk to all the other VCs I'd been building relationships with, tell them that I had an interview scheduled and ask for their advice on whether we should do YC or not. And what I realized afterwards is that he had helped me create a FOMO situation with the YC interview. And so in the end, we actually got our first term sheet a week before our interview.”
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