The YC Joke That Raised Us $3.5M

tl;dr: Fundraising at YC Demo Day is not like traditional fundraising. You have to focus on the elements that matter to your audience, think about the best way to communicate your unique customer insight, and stand out by saying something interesting or even provocative.

Whatever you do, you need to know your audience. And after thousands of jokes from straight white men in our lives, we knew exactly what the investors at YC Demo Day would find hilarious.

Meanwhile, we were the 37th two-minute pitch of the day, and even the most competent investor was likely to get a little overwhelmed by the peripatetic shifts from biotechnology to space exploration to consumer goods to neo-banking every 120 seconds.

“Investors are looking for a reason to cross you off their list”, our YC partners warned us. “So don’t give them one.”

This is the unfortunate reality of fundraising from large investors: you can’t talk about the aspects of your business that matter to you or to the world, like increasing accessibility to fertility services, helping couples with their family planning, or even the public health benefit of being able to use a healthcare service from home.

Instead, you need to tailor your pitch to your audience. Investors need to hear, “BIG MARKET SIZE”, “TEAM-MARKET FIT”, “TRACTION”. We had those slides ready to go, but so did dozens of other companies, and we needed to get everyone’s full attention in the first 20 seconds.

In this world, attention = mind-share = investment dollars.

To get the attention we needed, we went with a joke that also validated our business model and consumer insight. And then we practiced, and practiced, and practiced, until our pitch took exactly 1 minute and 58 seconds (2 seconds for buffer). We took a deep breath, and got on stage.

That pitch led to the $3.5M seed round we announced earlier this year.

And with these funds, we can go back to doing the things we really care about: building a better product for men (and for couples) thinking about their families, their futures, and their legacies. Like the grant to fund male fertility research, free kits for cancer patients, or offering telehealth to our clients.

Watch the first 30 seconds of our pitch below: