Playbook
A Guide to Seed Fundraising
Why, when, and how to raise a seed round
Why it matters It is the standard reference founders send each other, covering SAFEs, valuation, and process end to end.
Fundraising & VC Starting Up
The Reading Room
A curated shelf of long-form writing worth a founder's time: essays, playbooks, and founder stories from across the internet. Read on the original, and save what you want to come back to.
All topics
Starting Up 34
Product & Design 52
Growth & Marketing 46
Sales & GTM 36
Fundraising & VC 22
Strategy & Moats 61
Leadership & Management 57
Hiring, Team & Culture 30
Operations & Scaling 51
Founder Life & Mindset 54
Engineering & Craft 67
AI & the Future 36
Money & Finance 48
Career & Learning 49
Essay
Default Alive or Default Dead?
The one question to answer before you raise again
Why it matters It gives founders a sharp test for whether they are building a company or just outrunning the next raise.
Fundraising & VC Money & Finance
Essay
How to Raise Money
The full mechanics of running a startup fundraise well
Why it matters It lays out how investor psychology, momentum, and closing actually work, so you stop treating fundraising as a mystery.
Fundraising & VC
Deep Dive
Term Sheet: Liquidation Preference
The term that decides who gets paid in an exit
Why it matters It breaks down the single most consequential economic term after price, from the Venture Deals series.
Fundraising & VC Money & Finance
Essay
The Burn Multiple
Efficiency in one number
Why it matters A single ratio, dollars burned per dollar of new ARR, that tells you how efficiently your spend is buying growth.
Money & Finance Fundraising & VC
Deep Dive
A Disruptive Cab Ride to Riches: The Uber Payoff
Valuation from first principles
Why it matters The valuation dean walks through how to value a high growth company from first principles, a masterclass in the story behind a number.
Money & Finance Fundraising & VC
Playbook
A Founder's Guide to Venture Capital and Startup Fundraising
How VC works and how to run your process
Why it matters It connects how funds actually operate to the practical steps of running a disciplined raise.
Fundraising & VC
Essay
Burn Rates: How Much?
How much to spend by stage
Why it matters Simple stage by stage benchmarks for how much a startup should reasonably spend each month before it has proven itself.
Money & Finance Fundraising & VC
Playbook
For Companies Raising Seed Rounds
Practical guidance for structuring a seed raise
Why it matters It gives concrete norms on amounts, instruments, and structure from someone who has done this many times.
Fundraising & VC
Essay
Fundraising Will Take You Three Months
Plan for how long a raise really takes
Why it matters It corrects the optimism that leaves founders raising from a position of weakness with no runway left.
Fundraising & VC
Playbook
Here's What You Can Really Expect When Pitching Your Seed-Stage Startup at a VC Partner Meeting
What actually happens inside the partner meeting
Why it matters It pulls back the curtain on the most opaque step of a raise so founders walk in prepared, not guessing.
Fundraising & VC
Deep Dive
How Funding Rounds Differ: Seed, Series A, Series B, and C
What each stage is actually for
Why it matters It maps what a company must prove at each round so founders raise against the right milestones.
Fundraising & VC
Deep Dive
How Much Cash Should Your Startup Burn?
Burn benchmarks from the data
Why it matters Uses public company data to give you a real benchmark for monthly burn at each stage instead of guessing.
Money & Finance Fundraising & VC
Essay
How Much Money Should I Raise for My Startup?
Size your raise from the milestones you must hit
Why it matters It gives a needs based method to pick a number instead of raising as much as the market will give.
Fundraising & VC Money & Finance
Essay
How Much Money To Raise
Sizing a round around dilution and runway
Why it matters It offers a simple durable frame, aim for reasonable dilution and enough runway to hit the next milestone.
Fundraising & VC Money & Finance
Deep Dive
Indus Valley Annual Report 2025
India's startup economy in charts
Why it matters The most cited annual read on the economics of Indian startups, funding, markets, and margins, told through a hundred charts.
Money & Finance Fundraising & VC
Deep Dive
On the Road to Recap
Why high paper valuations can trap a company
Why it matters It is the definitive warning on how dirty term sheets and inflated markups quietly hurt founders and staff.
Fundraising & VC
Playbook
Our Top 10 Term Sheet Hacks
The terms that matter most in a term sheet
Why it matters It teaches founders to focus on control and economics that actually bite, not the headline valuation.
Fundraising & VC Money & Finance
Essay
Preemptive Rounds
When to take money you were not out raising
Why it matters It helps founders decide whether an unsolicited term sheet is a gift or a distraction worth passing on.
Fundraising & VC
Playbook
Take Your Fundraising Pitch from Mediocre to Memorable with These Storytelling Tips
Structure a pitch as a story investors remember
Why it matters It gives narrative techniques that make a deck land emotionally instead of reading as a list of facts.
Fundraising & VC
Essay
The Pro-Rata Opportunity
Why pro rata rights matter from the investor side
Why it matters It shows how investors think about following on, which helps founders read their cap table dynamics.
Fundraising & VC
Playbook
Writing a Business Plan
The pitch outline Sequoia asks founders to answer
Why it matters It is the classic ten part deck skeleton that forces you to say what a company is and why it wins.
Fundraising & VC Starting Up
Questions, answered
What should founders read?
The eChai reading room curates long-form essays and articles worth a founder's time, on building, fundraising, product, and people.
Where can I find essays for startup founders?
The reading room is a hand-picked set of long reads that link out to the original source, curated for founders on eChai.
eChai Partner Brands
