Andrew Warner

How to Bootstrap Your First Million

Rippling

Superhuman

beehiiv

Notion

ZoomInfo

Sam Parr


Founded: The Hustle, My First Million & Hampton


Jesse Pujji


Founded: Ampush, GrowthAssistant, GatewayX, Aux Insights


Andrew Warner


Host


Get clear techniques for finding and validating business ideas.

Discover your best business idea

Learn how to find business partners, suppliers, and other partners.

Land the right partners

Discover how a combination of online writing and personal calls will lead to your ideal first clients.

Sell to your first clients

Venture Fluent is a live, online, cohort-based course that demystifies the jargon and lingo of venture capital. 

VC educator, investor, and mentor 

Yale University

Cornell Tech

Kauffman Fellows

Jorge M. Torres

Faculty @ Yale & Cornell Tech | Kauffman Fellow and former early-stage investor

Cohort 4

Six live Tuesday evenings, Oct 13–Nov 17. The full flagship course, capstone included.

Cohort 4: Venture Fluent Flagship | 6 Weekly Sessions

Venture capital moves faster than the blogs, books, and podcasts that explain it. The structures, the terms, and the way deals get done keep changing, and studying on your own often means learning it late, alone, and out of order. Learning that way worked well enough to earn me a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.kauffmanfellows.org/">Kauffman Fellowship</a>, but I would have benefited from learning with peers and a trusted guide.That's why I designed this course. It's for aspiring angels, emerging managers, and operators who want to invest with conviction. It also works for founders who want to appreciate fundraising from the investor lens.Over 6 live sessions you'll write an investment thesis, engage with real term sheets, analyze a cap table, and prepare an investment memo.You leave with: a primer on the key transaction terms, a thesis worksheet, a memo template, two real term sheets, a diligence request list, and more, all of it comprising a portfolio that illustrates your POV and potential.Maven's CEO <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://maven.com/resources/maven-insights-top-rated-courses">cited the Venture Fluent syllabus as a model for instructors</a>. We've run 3 cohorts, and students rate it 4.9 out of 5 stars. Each session ends with open office hours, and you get feedback on your work from me and from your peers.

Get fluent in venture capital, and leave with the work to prove it.

Write an investment thesis that guides where you invest your time and capital.

Evaluate a founding team well enough to develop conviction for an investment. 

Diligence a company well enough to know when to walk away.

Read a term sheet well enough to know which terms matter.

Write a persuasive investment memo and defend it live. 

Choose your next move in VC, whether you want to invest, raise $$, or get hired.

You've had professional success and want to start angel investing, create your own fund, or find a role in the VC industry.

You've studied VC on your own but crave the community of peers who can support you as you accelerate your learning.

You're ready to create a go-to-market plan for finding and supporting the world's best entrepreneurs.

Investors build a file on you before you pitch. This is how you control it. 

GP, 4x founder, both sides of the raise 

JPMorgan Chase & Co.

BlackRock

Google

Uber

McKinsey & Company

Ben Botes

GP & advisor on 200+ deals · 4x exited founder · taught 10,000+

Cohort 1

Most fundraising advice starts in the meeting: the deck, the story, the pitch. But by the time you're in the room, much of the decision is already shaped — by the evidence an investor quietly assembles about your company before you arrive.I've built that file from both sides. As a GP and corporate finance advisor across 200+ transactions, I've assembled the evidence case on hundreds of companies. As a four-time exited founder, I've been on the receiving end of it.Most founders discover their evidence gaps in a "no" three months into a raise. This half-day changes that: you'll see exactly what goes into the file, score your own company against it live, and leave with your gaps mapped and a 30-day plan to close them — before you ever walk into the room.

You'll walk into every raise knowing exactly what investors will find — because you've already scored, mapped, and closed the gaps yourself.

Score your company against the exact evidence investors use to build conviction 

Map every gap in your evidence file before an investor finds it for you

Match your evidence to the capital routes it actually supports today 

Build a prioritised 30-day plan to close your highest-impact gaps first 

Read your raise the way a GP does, from the other side of the table

The First-Time Raiser — approaching your first £500K–£2M round with traction, but you've never seen how investors judge you inside.

The Stalled Founder — mid-raise or fresh off "not now" meetings, and you sense the real problem is the evidence, not the pitch.

The Non-Traditional Raiser — raising via DFI, grant, debt, or blended capital, where generic VC advice fails and route-fit is all.

You’ll pitch with clarity, stop guessing what investors want—and start running a repeatable pitch system that raises more and dilutes less.

Global Startup Advisor (250+ Startups)

Techstars

OpenAI

Foodics

VC Lab

The Wharton School

Omar Aloyoun

Award-winning venture builder helping founders raise more and dilute less

BONUS: Every student gets:• Investor Persona Report (valued at $1200) • 5 aligned investor targets (5 curated round-relevant investors) (valued at $1250) • Custom Pitch Report (within 2 weeks) for every participant (valued at $2500) Most founders don’t lose funding because the product is weak. They lose because the pitch breaks—wrong stage, wrong proof, wrong audience, and fragile answersThe bar is rising. Investors are faster, stricter, and more comparison-driven than ever. In an AI-heavy market, decks look the same—so clarity, defensibility, and audience-fit separate “interesting” from “let’s move forward"In this cohort, you’ll engineer a pitch that holds up in real rooms:• Build stage-specific decks (idea, pre-seed, seed, A+) with the right slides + proof• Run Pitch-Audience Fit: tailor your story for investors vs board vs customers• Defend your valuation narrative with leverage, milestones, and clean “why now”• Handle pressure with a Q&amp;A control system for objections and red flags (kill founder imposter syndrome)• Stress-test your business model to spot pivot signals before investors doAll sessions are live, Q&amp;A-driven—designed to work at scale, without promising a “ready pitch”

Raise with confidence: Build a pitch that survives Q&A and earns your valuation

Build a stage-specific deck investors expect (idea → Series B+)

Clarify your North Star + “why now” story in 1 page

Translate market + traction into investor-grade evidence

Use valuation levers to raise more and dilute less

Handle objections & Q&A without losing control

Adapt your pitch for investors, boards, customers & partners

Pre-seed founders (idea→MVP) who need a stage-right deck, crisp story, and a defensible valuation narrative.

Seed/Series A+ founders tightening traction + metrics, strengthening positioning, and learning to defend the story under investor pressure.

Execs/BD/product leaders pitching to boards/partners/customers who want Pitch-Audience Fit and a story that wins decisions.

Learn how to become an entrepreneur by acquiring a small business & achieve financial independence.

PM → CEO. Bought a 45-year-old business.

The Home Depot

U.S. Army

Cadence

Unilever

Stanford University

Rocky Sharma

Bought a 45-year-old business. Ran $1.3Bn P&L at Home Depot. CEO at 3 companies.

Oct 2026

Most PMs are taught one job: ship what the customer asked for. Owning a business asks for three.Deal fit: the business has real customers, real margins, and a seller ready to walk. Capital fit: the structure works for your savings, your risk tolerance, your timeline. Operator fit: you can run it after close without burning out.Most searchers solve one fit and discover the other two on the hard side of close.Rocky bought NECI, a 45-year-old business with no personal savings, ran a $1.3B Product P&amp;L at Home Depot, and has been CEO at three companies. He teaches all three fits because he's lived all three. The capstone is a bankable deal memo on a real business (yours, not a case study) ready to take to a banker the week the cohort ends.You've already done the cheap homework: the books, the podcasts, the Reddit threads. The gap is structured practice with someone who has actually closed a deal: a 4-week sprint walking you from sourcing to a bankable deal memo.$2,500 buys access to the playbook and to Rocky during the cohort. For context: that's roughly 1% of the smallest deal you'll close, and less than the legal fees on the LOI you walk away from.

The 15-hour playbook for PMs who want to own the cash flow, not run the roadmap.

Find and close a real deal in 8 weeks without quitting your day job (ACQUIRE)

Run the business leaner than the previous owner ever did (OPTIMIZE)

Open the growth levers the previous owner ignored (GROW)

Build the moat using the product judgment you already have (INNOVATE)

Walk out with a bankable deal memo on a business you actually want (CAPSTONE)

Owners who adapt fast win. $50K–$250K in savings · 6–18 month window · Intent to operate · US/Canada residency · P&L experience

You're willing to sit across from a 60-year-old seller and listen for 90 minutes

This course moves fast. A business background means you'll apply frameworks immediately instead of learning basic concepts from scratch.

You can read a P&L well enough to spot a margin trend.

Small business ownership requires influence and accountability. If you've done this at work, you're already ahead of most first-time buyers.

You have 6+ months of runway to spend on sourcing without panicking.

Ambitious PM. You can run the business. You want the equity, not another title.

Quiet earner. Side-income while you keep the W-2. A weekend asset, paid for in cash flow.

Layoff-tired operator. You will not bet the next decade on a manager mood. You are buying durable cash flow.

How to Bootstrap Your First Million

What you'll learn

Why this topic matters

You'll learn from

Sam Parr

Jesse Pujji

Andrew Warner