Founders Tips from Haseeb Qureshi
Founders, we want to see you win.
And to succeed as a founder, you need to be good at money. Making it, managing it, and most importantly, asking for it. You need to be able to fundraise. You need to sell your vision to people who are looking to say no. While a yes could change the course of your business forever.
Your pitch needs to be so good that people feel stupid not investing.
In this post we will share highlights from Haseeb Qureshi crypto fundraising survival guide for founders, first presented in a workshop with our Codebase Incubator teams.
Get in front of the right investors.
Don’t spray-and-pray every fund; focus on investors who already live in your lane (crypto, infra, RWA, etc.). Investors in your niche people will not only be more willing to invest, but also already have the connections you need to win. This can make or break your business.
The pitch starts long before the investor meeting even happens.
How you come in contact with potential investors can make or break your chances.
Warm intros beat everything. Try and get intros from portfolio companies or co-investors. random cold emails go straight to the spam folder.
If you truly have to go cold, do it via Twitter or a targeted DM and make it personal: how their writing or investing actually influenced you, not just “I saw you invested in X.”
Practice your pitch until you’re sick of it.
Get in front of friends, advisors, and even ChatGPT in “brutal VC” mode. Explicitly ask for criticism, not encouragement. Do this until you feel every potential scenario and criticism has been resolved.
Emphasize design and purpose.
Your deck should look polished. Basic design here, will immediately prove to the investors you have an eye for product.
And, above all, the deck should answer, in simple language: who you are, what you’re building, how it works, and why it can become big (GTM + differentiation).
Less is more.
Your pitch deck should feel uncomfortably short. Think closer to a Y-Combinator seed pitch rather than a 30–40 slide brain dump.
Tell a clear story and give a sense of TAM without turning it into market-size theater (especially in crypto, no one really knows).
Nail your competitor analysis.
Show an honest view of what existing players do well, where you’ll start worse, and the specific, narrow ways you’ll be better. Plus a read on the “graveyard” of past startups and why your approach avoids their fate.
People are investing in you, not your idea.
Once you’re in the room, the real product demo begins: you. The pitch is no longer about the deck, it’s about how you connect.
Explain the product simply first, then offer to go deep if the investor wants to nerd out on the technicals.
Treat it like a two-way interview: ask what they think about your market, your GTM, your wedge.
Your deck isn’t the pitch.
Don’t read your slides; the deck is a visual aid, not a teleprompter. Send it ahead so the call can be a conversation instead of a live slideshow.
Avoid jargon as performance. Good founders teach instead of trying to confuse their way into sounding smart.
When they’re skeptical, don’t get defensive; acknowledge their view, then lay out your theory of why this time is different.
Relax and be confident.
Speak a bit slower than feels natural, and remember to sound like you actually like your own startup.
Pulling a Round Together.
Signal demand and scarcity (busy calendar, tight allocation). But, and this is important, DON’T ever lie, especially about term sheets or commits.
Be timely and explicit about timelines; don’t ghost, it makes you look disorganized.
Remember that a verbal “yes” is often treated like a done deal, so if something is tentative, call it a soft yes or “pending decision by X date.”
Be choosy.
Too many tiny, low-value checks turn into a noisy cap table; optimize for a strong lead and a few real partners.
In summary: focus on the prep, the deck, the conversation, and the close. Easier said than done, but these pointers from Haseeb should help.
Good luck out there. And when you’re ready for more, you can find it at the Codebase Entrepreneur Academy:
Avalanche is the road to the capitals🔺