The YC S11 batch was Paul Graham's artisanal era — intimate dinners, direct access, a different quality of feedback than what most founders get. What I took from three months in that environment wasn't the tactical advice. It was a specific, usable model of what founder resilience actually looks like — and what it doesn't.
Fundraising
Both sides of the table.
Having raised $40M as a founder and helped tier-one VCs evaluate deals, the patterns are clearer than most fundraising advice suggests. What investors actually look for when the traditional signals aren't there yet. When not to raise at all. How to read a room during a raise. And what founder and investor incentives look like when they diverge at critical moments.
15 articles
- What Y Combinator Actually Taught Me About Resilience
- Founder/Market Fit: A Three-Question Self-Audit Before You Raise
Investors talk about product-market fit constantly. They talk about founder-market fit much less, but they're evaluating it in every meeting. Here's the three-question framework I've developed from sitting on both sides of the table — and how to audit yourself against it honestly before you start a fundraising process.
- What YC Taught Me That Actually Applies to Building in the Nordics
Y Combinator's model was designed for a specific context: young founders, fast iteration, San Francisco network effects, three months to Demo Day. Some of what it teaches transfers perfectly to Nordic building. Some of it is actively misleading. Here's the filter I use.
- The Six Board Slides That Actually Matter
Most board decks are theater. Founders present optimistic narratives; board members ask polite questions; the meeting ends and everyone has learned approximately nothing. After being on both sides of the table, here are the six slides that make a board meeting genuinely useful — and why most founders avoid them.
- What the MongoDB Acquisition Actually Felt Like: Notes from the Founder Seat
We built Realm for eight years, raised $40M, reached 2 billion installs, and then got acquired by MongoDB. Here's what the acquisition process actually looks like from the founder side — the parts that surprised me, the mistakes I made, and what I wish someone had told me going in.
- Nordic Founders Fundraising in the US: What Actually Works
The US venture capital market is the deepest pool of early-stage capital in the world. Nordic founders who navigate it successfully tend to do three things differently from the ones who don't. Here's what those things are, from someone who raised $40M in the US as a Danish founder and has since helped others do the same.
- From YC to Series A: Building Enterprise Software for Pharma
My first startup went through Y Combinator and raised $40M. My second is building for pharmaceutical companies. The fundraising playbooks couldn't be more different. Here's what I learned about raising for enterprise software in regulated industries.
- The Three Questions Investors Ask When the Traditional Signals Aren't There Yet
After sitting on both sides of the table — raising $40M as a founder and helping tier-one VCs evaluate early-stage deals — I've noticed that the investors who are right at the early stages aren't pattern-matching on traction. They're pattern-matching on three specific things. Here's what they are and how to test yourself against them before you pitch.
- Dilution Without Regret: What I Wish I'd Known About Cap Tables Before Raising $40M
After raising $40M across three rounds and watching the cap table evolve from a simple three-person founding team to something requiring a lawyer to interpret, here's what I actually learned about dilution, preference stacks, and the decisions that compound in ways founders don't model until it's too late.
- PMF Is Not One Number
The product-market fit conversation in most startups is binary: do you have it or not? That framing is wrong, and the wrong framing leads to wrong decisions. Product-market fit is a spectrum with specific diagnostic signals at each stage — and knowing where you are changes what you should be doing next.
- Default-Alive, For Real: The Calculation Every Founder Should Run Monthly
Paul Graham wrote about default-alive in 2015. Most founders read it and nodded. Very few actually model it. Here's the specific calculation, why it matters more than runway, and what changes when you treat it as a monthly discipline rather than a one-time analysis.
- Why Building in Denmark Is a Secret Advantage (That Most Danish Founders Don't Use)
A Danish founder who spent 13 years in Silicon Valley and came back to build in Copenhagen. What I found when I returned is not what I expected — and the advantage is larger than most Nordic founders realize, mostly because they're too close to it to see it clearly.
- The Night Seed Funding Changed Forever
I was in the room at YC S11 when Yuri Milner and Ron Conway walked in and announced that every company in the batch would receive $150,000 as an uncapped SAFE — no negotiation, no diligence. The palpable shock in the room that evening changed founder psychology overnight. Fifteen years later, it's still shaping how startups are funded.
- The Hardest Thing I've Done Professionally
We scaled Realm to 68 employees, then cut to 24 in a single round when the fundraising market tightened. What those 44 conversations taught me about the real cost of capital dependency — and the principle I've built every company around since.
- Technical Due Diligence: What Investors Actually Look For
Having been on both sides of the table—as a founder being evaluated and as an advisor helping investors assess startups—here's what technical due diligence actually examines and how to prepare for it.