How to raise funds when you aren’t in the Bay Area

Welcome to TechCrunch+ Friday

In a previous era, aspiring journalists relocated to New York, would-be actors made pilgrimages to Hollywood, and plucky tech founders moved to the Bay Area so they could attract capital and talent.

But San Francisco is no longer the center of the startup universe, and it hasn’t been for a while.

Cities like Boulder, Detroit and Austin had emerging tech ecosystems long before the pandemic forced VCs to start taking pitches via Zoom, and social media has leveled the playing field when it comes to networking and PR.

“We noticed a couple of years ago, in looking at our own analytics, that most of our deals were coming through Twitter,” said Elizabeth Yin, co-founder and general partner of Hustle Fund, last week at TechCrunch Disrupt.

“If I look at my portfolio, my companies that are active on Twitter actually do have an easier time raising money because investors feel like they know them.”

Reporter Dominic-Madori Davis moderated a discussion with Yin, Mike Asem (founding partner of M25), and Accel partner Rich Wong that elicited suggestions for early-stage founders who don’t live in the 415 area code and spilled the tea about “the emerging markets on their radars.”

If you’re interested in the entire conversation, there’s a link to a video at the end of the article. Keep an eye out for more recaps from TC Disrupt in the coming days.

Thanks for reading,

Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

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Play-to-earn games (P2E) are particularly susceptible to this problem, which is why “building a game that succeeds in the long term means developing monetization strategies that can weather market ebbs and flows,” says Corey Wilton, co-founder and CEO of Mirai Labs, the gaming studio behind Pegaxy.

In this primer for P2E founders, Wilton shares suggestions for how to approach investors, explains why tokens are not a reliable fundraising vehicle and discusses the recent “shift toward Web 2.0 monetization.”

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On Tuesday, founder and CEO of codebase analytics company Sema, Matt Van Itallie, shared a guest post for founding teams who are about to begin technical due diligence before an investment or acquisition.

On Wednesday, he followed up with a detailed checklist for C-level executives and senior managers responsible for helping VCs determine whether their “codebase is safe enough for investment.”

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