put a sandwich in my pocket and tsa told me to get rid of it thats messed up

a short post about investors and getting money for what you're building.

Note: I wrote this as a long-form tweet here as well, feel free to send to a friend that’s thinking about this topic right now — hope it helps someone.

At buildspace, we usually stay away from the topic of raising money or finding investors.

I just wanna show people how to make stuff…that’s my thing.

Yet, every week I see a new alumni raise $50K - $500K.

Yes. If you ship, tell the world, repeat... capital finds it's way to you.

But, it's not guaranteed (nothing is).

The reason I stay away from the topic is because I know chasing investors early on can often just be a terrible sinkhole for focus.

Most know this.

You go from building cool products -- to methodically begging others for money.

But, I also don't think fully ignoring the money world is good either, you wanna set yourself up to get lucky + potentially pursue investors.

So -- how do you do that.

Those I see from buildspace that end up raising money magically, scoring a $25K grant, getting a small angel check, whatever often are just really good at "telling the world" consistently over a long horizon (ex. 12-24 months).

I don't mean going viral on Twitter with a demo or blowing up on Reddit once -- these are difficult to control + disappear fast.

You wanna build trust with an audience over a long time.

The most underrated way to "tell the world" your story is simply by writing a newsletter each week with your progress.

This is something I can't believe every builder doesn't just do.

Write about things you tried that week, how you're thinking about your work, how you're feeling, literally whatever.

I wrote mine every week for nearly 3-years, that's nearly 150 newsletters.

It covered everything from the deep dark trenches of my emotions to how I analyzed different markets to decide what to work on. It gave people a view into my head, every week.

Tbh, I thought no one cared and I mainly wrote it for my Mom to help her understand what I was doing (lol).

But, I had 125 people on the list after 3-years (2017 - 2020).

I ended up building an audience of people that deeply understood me + my journey -- and when one day I needed $25,000 to start this company, I ended up getting it from one person on that newsletter.

Your story matters.

It's just your job to package it up nicely for others to also be a part of it.

I often see builders tweet stuff, and then it doesn't blow up, and they move on but the issue is Twitter is extremely ephemeral -- your story fades away quickly.

Something like a newsletter, blog, etc helps people see your long-term history + lets you communicate more thoroughly.

I also have some builders who literally send me a YouTube vlog once a month covering what they did that month.

Do whatever, just please tell your story.

You never know who may read it.

And if you think you have nothing to say you are lying -- because you're living the story right now.

Just takes some practice to tell it.

P.S: I got back from biking through the mountains of Switzerland and it was beautiful, will send more pics soon!