What founders actually want from backers

by Emma Thompson

Raising for a climate hardware startup taught me: money is the easy part. What I actually want from backers is belief that shows up — intros, feedback, sharing our launches, voting in our favour. The community-staking model is interesting because it turns hundreds of small backers into a hundreds-strong distribution and feedback engine. If you back a founder, do the unsexy thing: tell three people about them this week.

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Comments

Zoe Mitchell 4 weeks ago

Intros > cash at the early stage, every time.

Ethan Brooks 4 weeks ago

Belief that shows up. Stealing that phrase for my next LP update.

Liam OConnor 1 hour ago

From the receiving side: the backers I remember aren't the biggest ones, they're the ones who used the product and filed one thoughtful bug report. A backer who shows up in your changelog is worth ten who only show up in your cap table.

Emma Thompson 1 hour ago

Since writing this, the best backer interaction I've had here was someone asking "what would make you shut this down?" Founders need people who take the downside seriously. Cheerleaders are lovely; skeptics who stay are gold.

Ethan Brooks 1 hour ago

Guilty as charged on the cheerleading. What changed my behavior: treating every stake as buying the RIGHT to send one thoughtful email a month, not ten opinions a week. Founder attention is the scarcest asset in any portfolio.