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Hosted by Mat Vogels · 🇺🇸 US · EN · 41 episodes
Established thought leaders with verified media credentials.
Welcome to Fun Raising, the podcast where the best early-stage investors pull back the curtain on the fundraising process, one founder question at a time. If you're a pre-seed or seed-stage founder trying to figure out how to get your first check, navigate a term sheet, or just understand what VCs are actually thinking when you walk out of the room — this is the show for you. Every episode, we sit down with top early-stage investors and put them on the spot with real questions from real founders. No fluff, no recycled advice, just honest, tactical conversations about what it actually takes to raise in today's market. From crafting your pitch to closing the round, we cover the moments that make or break a fundraise. We put the "fun" in fundraising. Because someone has to.
Mat Vogels hosts Fun Raising, a business show with 41 episodes published.
David Goldman came to venture from the other side of the table. He started as a semiconductor investment banker, then worked at a multifamily office that was an LP in Celesta, evaluating co-investments alongside the firm
Vidyuk is not a generalist software investor applying pattern-matching to hard science. She has a physics degree, three PhDs and a Nobel laureate on her team, and she writes $500K to $2M checks from pre-seed to Series B
Paige Doherty is a former engineer (Northrop Grumman, working on unmanned autonomous systems) who got into venture after writing a children's book about VC, and that background shapes a thesis most generalist seed invest
Aaron isn't a default VC. He spent ten years as an Army helicopter pilot and a West Point grad before an MBA pulled him into startups, and in 2015 he co-founded FirstMile with Bill Miller to be the first check for founde
Winfield is a four-time operator (two IPOs, two acquisitions) who spent two years as investor-in-residence at the Allen Institute for AI before launching Ascend in 2019. That background drives a blunt thesis most polishe
Adam's route to running a venture studio puts him in a different position than most people giving fundraising advice. He came up through investment banking at Goldman Sachs, then spent time at Eric Schmidt's family offic
Bob Mason isn't a finance-first VC. He spent his career as a software engineer and CTO, building two enterprise companies from team formation through public offering, and he invests the way an operator reads a room. That
Santiago Pliego built his thesis around a specific macro claim: the last 70 to 100 years represent an anomaly characterized by globalized Pax Americana, the offshoring of physical industry, and a massive over-rotation in
Rishabh is a pre-seed deep tech and frontier specialist at Gaingels, a 12-year-old venture syndicate that does not lead rounds. Instead it co-invests behind a lead at roughly 10% of the round (typically 250K and up at pr
Jake Storm came to venture through an unusual route: enterprise software sales at Qualtrics and Zuora, then investment banking (including working on Zuora's IPO), before Felicis. That background shapes how he thinks abou
Kenan brings a perspective that's rare even among founder-turned-investors: he's sitting inside one of the most visible early-stage programs in venture (Speedrun sees 20,000+ applications per cohort) while being only abo
Zal isn't your average seed investor. He's the solo GP behind Refactor Capital, a hard tech seed fund based in Burlingame, and he just closed his fifth $50M fund. Before going solo, he spent a decade in product at Google
This is the role-reversal episode where Mat steps out from behind the host mic and gets grilled by Ali Rohde about his own playbook. Mat invests at Harpoon Ventures (deep tech, $1M to $5M checks) and runs Black Flag, Har
Kyle's path into VC is unique and worth the listen on its own. He was a cybersecurity consultant who started the Secure Ventures podcast during COVID simply because he wanted a "How I Built This" for cyber CEOs. That pod
Jacob comes at fundraising from an unusually operator-heavy angle. Julian Capital is staffed entirely by ex-growth people (Julian himself ran growth at multiple billion-dollar companies), and they don't just write checks
Jack's path into VC is anything but standard: he spent his teens and college years as a professional online poker player until the DOJ shut down online poker in 2011, did a brief hedge-fund stint, then moved to Silicon V
Alex Roetter brings a rare operator's DNA to venture. Before co-leading Moxxie Ventures with his partner Katie, he ran engineering at Twitter and led an eVTOL (electric flying car) company. Moxxie writes $500K to $2M che
Natty brings a perspective that's rare in early-stage VC: he's a founder-turned-Techstars MD-turned-fund partner, giving him an almost uniquely high volume of reps with early-stage companies. One of his most actionable f
AJ brings a genuinely distinctive lens to venture. He built defense tech at 16, opened for the Eagles on violin, and had Glenn Fry as a songwriting mentor. That creative background directly shapes how he coaches founders
Jason Chapman brings a distinctly technical lens to early-stage investing. Before launching Convoy in 2018, he was an engineer at IBM's artificial intelligence division, writing code 12 to 18 hours a day. That background
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Fun Raising is hosted by Mat Vogels. The show is categorised under business and has published 41 episodes.
Fun Raising has published 41 episodes.
Fun Raising regularly covers business. It sits in the business category.
Fun Raising is accessible for guests with genuine business expertise. A personalised, episode-aware pitch will still outperform a generic one every time.
Fun Raising hasn't explicitly signalled guest openness in recent episodes. That doesn't rule out pitching. your hook just needs to be especially compelling and relevant to their recent content.
Episodes of Fun Raising average 45 minutes. a focused format where a clear narrative arc and tight preparation matter most.
Our data rates Fun Raising's guest bar at 80/100 (Premium tier). Established thought leaders with verified media credentials. Sign in to PitchCentric to see how your own Pod Score compares against this show.
Methodology. Booking Probability™ blends Listen Score, 30-day Virality, open-to-guests detection, and Apple ratings. Data refreshed every 60 minutes. Listen Score and Booking Probability are calculated by PitchCentric. Last enriched 9 days ago.