What is a down-round and how to survive one? By Russ Wilcox

Russ Wilcox, Partner at PillarVC talks about his experience running startups himself. Throughout his career he raised 10 times and 3 times these were down-rounds. In this episode Russ explains what down-rounds are bad, how they happened to him and how he managed to survive and thrive!

Russ' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russ-wilcox-2005/

Pillar VC's website: https://www.pillar.vc/

For people who want to understand how to get in touch with the right investor, a course developed by Fundraising Radio's team and myself: https://fundraising-courses.com/

Some topics we have covered in this episode:

- your fund invests in three fields, which one of those do you specialize in?
- you've raised 10 rounds of funding and 3 of those were down-rounds with an eventual happy ending, can you tell us a bit more about that experience?
- the unique trait of your fund is that most of your managers have experience building their own companies, how transferrable is that experience?
- you're an investor who likes patents, why is that and when o you think it makes sense to patent an idea/technology?
- you've recently closed your own raise for your 3rd fund - how did that go? How does that experience compare to fundraising for your own company?
- are there any deep tech investments that you've recently made that excite you the most?