Shaun Gold is a true polymath, recognized for his broad expertise and diverse accomplishments across multiple industries. He is an entrepreneur, investor, and top 1% Ghostwriter for VCs and founders whose career spans startups, venture capital, entertainment, and media. A 2x Amazon Best-Selling Author and international speaker, he blends storytelling and strategy to elevate the voices of today’s top founders and investors.

Known early as The Nightlife Ninja for his inventive approach to media, luxury, and events, Shaun has since built a reputation for combining wit and wisdom with a sharp ability to connect people, capital, and ideas. His work at OpenVC reaches 40,000+ monthly readers, and as a General Partner at Improve Ventures, he backs emerging market founders while also running a joint venture with Point Capital focused on startup secondaries ($10M+ SPVs).

Shaun is also the creator of But Shaun, a “venture comedy” brand that blends humor with hard truths about startups, VCs, and the technology ecosystem. His viral posts bring levity and perspective to the often-overhyped world of tech, giving founders and investors a reason to laugh while learning.

As one of the most sought-after ghostwriters in tech and VC, Shaun crafts high-impact content for B2B executives, startup founders, and venture capitalists, generating millions of impressions monthly and helping clients stand out in noisy markets.

Highlights:

Featured as a case study in Contemporary Entrepreneurship (Routledge Press)

Startup mentor and speaker at Founders Institute, the world’s largest pre-seed accelerator

Guest lecturer at top universities including Georgetown, Columbia, Notre Dame, and Miami

Speaker at panels hosted by StartupGrind, Cofounders Lab, and Founder’s Network

Author of four books, including the bestsellers Promoter Mind Hustler Heart and Better Be U

Beyond business, Shaun is developing original creative work, including a screenplay (currently in pre-production) and an animated series featuring household names in sports and business.

If you’d like to connect, please include a quick note on what you do and how we might collaborate.

There are four equity journeys in startups. But only one of them explains why founders age 17 years in 18 months.

“But Shuaaaannnnnnn why can’t I just raise $10M based on my idea for AI for hashbrowns?”

Because you, my sweet summer child, must choose your path.

And each path comes with its own special flavor of chaos.

Let’s break down the 4 Startup Journeys with this chart from Stephane Nasser and OpenVC that has ruined more founder group chats than term sheets.

Bootstrapping: The “I don’t need investors, I have grit and a dangerous level of optimism” route.

This is where you:

Fund everything yourself.

Own 100 percent.

Live on Lululemon returns and black coffee.

Tell everyone you’re “lean” when you really mean “broke.”

Most startups follow this path. Or at least many do after realizing no investor is going to take them seriously.

Seedstrapping: This is where you raise one small round. Just one.

$250K to $2M. The financial equivalent of a protein shake.

This is the “I WILL NOT BECOME A VC PUPPET” model.

You raise once, get to breakeven, and then spend ten years telling founders, “I don’t know why you give up so much equity, we didn’t need to.”

This is also the moment every VC quietly puts you on mute.

Bootscaling: This is the path for psychos.

The ones who say, “We’ll bootstrap until PMF, THEN raise.”

So what you’re really saying is:

“I want to suffer alone until I find traction, then I want to suffer with investors once scaling gets expensive.”

Congrats. You’ve unlocked the GitHub path.

High pain tolerance, low bank account, massive exit potential.

Classic VC Route:  The alphabet soup pathway.

Pre-Seed → Seed →Seed Plus → Post-Seed → Almost-A → A → A2 → A2 Turbo Edition → B

Your cap table becomes a modern art piece titled “Chaos.”

You raise every 18 months like it’s a gym membership.

You stop explaining what round you’re on.

You just whisper, “We’re somewhere between letters and vibes.”

Your board meetings begin to feel like quarterly performance reviews with a very disappointed family.

So which path should you choose?

The one where:
 
You keep your sanity

You keep enough equity to matter and you don’t wake up one day realizing your startup owns you

Every founder thinks they want the VC rocket ship. But the chart forgets the fifth journey:

The “I saw my dilution and immediately needed therapy” route.

Choose wisely.

#startup #founders  #venturecapital

Shaun Gold

Shaun Gold is the true definition of a polymath. He is a lifelong entrepreneur, 2x best-selling author, international speaker, advisor and super connector to start-ups and standouts, Jeopardy contestant, and screenwriter/executive producer.

A leader and  impact evangelist, Shaun is recognized for his expertise in creating value and cross-pollination through the cultural drift of the new connection economy. As a super connector with a large and varied network, he is a top-tier company collaborator and seasoned startup champion and VC connector.

Formerly known as “the nightlife Ninja,” Shaun has been recognized for his non-traditional strategies to promote and enhance nightlife, superstar performances, media events, and luxury product launches with major brands and companies. Shaun consults and advises CEO’s, entrepreneurs, executives, and founders of startups and stand outs, people who are hacking the concept of work, pursuing their own definition of success. This experience has led Shaun to create the YouTopian Journey. The YouTopian Journey is the first essential graphic novel with compelling storified art to help readers become mentally stronger and more inspired to make their dreams a reality.

Shaun is also the author of four books including two #1 Amazon Best Sellers, “Promoter Mind Hustler Heart,” and “Better Be U,” He is an inspiring and engaging speaker, whose wit and wisdom has made him an invited speaker to university students, young professionals and business owners on marketing that matters, motivation, entrepreneurship, and the changing world of disruptive acceleration.

He is currently executive producing a screenplay which he wrote and that is currently attaching talent. 

If connecting, please include a short sentence regarding what you do and how I can possibly help. Solicited messages and connections without a message will be ignored.

Specialties: Consulting, Pitch Deck Review, Coaching, Writing, Speaking, Marketing, Business Development, Business Strategy, Entrepreneurship, Fundraising, Social Networking, Super-Connector, Stimulating the local economy.

Raise from 10,000+ tech investors on OpenVC.app. Functional nerd. I share incredible tools and terrible insights for VCs and founders. 🫡

OpenVC

VC (Venture Comedy) | Top 1% Ghostwriter for VCs & Founders | Best-Selling Author | Speaker | Ex-Nightlife Ninja

Paul Moutray

PSA: Once you take VC money, you are on their treadmill. You raise until you exit or you die.

“But Shuaaaannnn I only need one million for my AI for potato salad idea. We will hit $100k MRR and then never raise again.”

I kind of doubt that, champ.

Raising VC isn’t a one time boost. It’s The Long Walk.

Once you start, you keep moving. There is no stopping. There is no sitting down. 

There is no “we are good now.” 

You raise until you exit or you get metaphorically shot on the side of the road while other founders sprint past you screaming about CAC and LTV.

If you take VC money, you sign up to grow to one hundred million plus in annual revenue in seven to ten years.

To do that, you raise again. And again. And again.

Series A. Series B. Series C. Series D.

Like checkpoints in a dystopian survival game, except the prize is dilution and an ulcer.

If you didn’t know this, you are uninformed and need to read literally anything about venture capital before cold emailing investors with “we only need one round.”

If you did know this, then you are claiming you can sustain hypergrowth on your own cash flows.

Very few companies in history have done that. 

Hypergrowth needs fuel. Fuel costs money. 

And money usually comes from rounds you swore you would never raise.

VC money isn't a victory. VC money is the starting gun.

The moment the check clears, someone whispers in your ear, “great, now run faster.”

VC backed founders sleep like players in The Long Walk who hear footsteps behind them and wonder if they are next.

So before you DM every investor in the city, ask yourself the same question every VC is silently asking you:

“Do you really want to enter this race?”

Because once you do, there is no pause button.

You walk until you exit or you get your ticket punched.

#startup #founders  #venturecapital

Founders. If at first you don’t succeed with your cold outreach to an investor, take the hint and move on.

"But Shuaaannnnn I am just following up. They can’t afford to miss out on my AI for smoked salmon app."

Sure. Absolutely. Because your entire TAM is every single person who has ever eaten a deli sandwich before, right? 

A trillion dollar category if you squint hard enough and ignore reality.

Founders think that persistence is the only way to get an investor’s attention.

But usually no response is the response.

Sophisticated founders understand this and move on, knowing they gave it their all and that investors carefully evaluated their email before passing.

I am joking, of course.

Instead, they continue to send follow ups weekly.

Just checking in.

Just circling back.

Just floating this to the top of your inbox like a dead goldfish.

Here is our recent update that you did not ask for but will LOVE.

Spoilers. They won’t.

Investors don’t want to be on your startup chain letter.

They don’t want seven updates before a conversation.

They don’t want your pitch deck in seventeen slightly improved versions.

They don’t want a reminder that your AI salmon app has pivoted into AI for tilapia.

If an investor wants to talk to you, they will appear out of thin air like a Hogwarts character.

If they don’t respond, they are not testing your persistence. They are living their life.

The best founders don’t chase.

They build something interesting enough that people chase them.

So if your outreach fails, do the healthy thing.

Move on. Build something great. Prove them wrong.

And please, let the smoked salmon rest.

#startup #founders  #venturecapital

Your pitch deck should raise money. Most raise blood pressure.

“But Shuaaaaannnnn my AI for chewing gum app is so awesome investors will ignore the graphics and see the opportunity!”

No, they will see an optometrist.

Founders keep sending out decks that look like the left side of this image and then wonder why investors suddenly “got busy” for the rest of the decade.

Let me break this down for you.

Bad deck:

A wall of text that looks like a Stephen King novel.

Ten point font that will make your reader blind.

Paragraphs so dense they create their own gravitational field.

Bland titles like “Market.”

Design that looks like you built it during a Zoom meeting where someone was screen sharing tax software.

Good deck:

Twelve clean slides.

Big fonts.

Clear takeaway in the title.

Professionally designed.

Uploaded to OpenVC like someone who respects the concept of modern file sharing.

If your deck requires zooming in, zooming out, scrolling left, scrolling right, and whispering “what am I looking at” under your breath then you’re not getting funded. 

You are giving investors a migraine.

And please, for the love of all things holy, stop password protecting your deck like it contains nuclear launch codes.

It’s a pre-seed startup, not the Dead Sea Scrolls.

VCs don’t read decks. They scan them.

If they can’t understand your slide in two seconds, they are gone.

Not “gone for now.” Gone forever.

Your deck has been moved directly to the “Nope” archive.

So here is the rule:

If your deck looks like the image on the left, you are raising confusion.

If your deck looks like the image on the right, you might actually raise capital.

Clean slides close rounds. Messy slides close laptops.

P.S. OpenVC is your one stop shop to test your fundability, assess your deck, host it, and reach actual investors. Oh and it’s free. Link in the comments.

Thanks to Stephane Nasser for the image as always. 

#startup #founders  #venturecapital

Early traction does not guarantee funding. If it did, every Shopify store with three sales would already be a unicorn.

“But Shuaaaannnnn my AI for pretzels app has interest just from our MVP. We are ready for a seed round.”

No, champ. You are raising good intentions, not capital.

Here is what a real seed startup looks like.

Marketplace doing two hundred fifty thousand a month in GMV.

SaaS doing thirty thousand a month in MRR.

Your version of “seed ready” is a Notion page, a half working Figma prototype, and three beta testers who are actually your roommates clicking buttons while asking if you want anything from the kitchen.

This is why founders stay confused about funding stages. So let me make it simple.

Pre seed is a dream with a deck.

Seed is a functioning business.

Series A is a machine.

Series B is a machine that prints money.

And your “seed round” right now is a Google Drive folder labeled FINAL_FINAL_REALLY_FINAL_DECK_7.

Founders love to believe stages are about vibes.

“I feel like a seed company.”

If funding stages were based on feelings, every founder in the world would be a Series C unicorn before bedtime.

So here is the real test. Ask yourself one honest question.

“Would I invest in me?”

If the answer is no, congratulations. You are raising hope equity.

#startup #founders  #venturecapital

PSA: Your weirdest experiences will outperform someone else’s perfect résumé every time.

"But Shuaaaannnn that can't be true. My background looks like random career generator output from ChatGPT’s earlier model."

Good. That means you are already ahead.

In startups the straight line people melt the moment something unexpected happens, which is usually around 9:13 AM every single day.

Your unfair advantage is almost always the thing you hesitate to list on your résumé because you think it will confuse recruiters or possibly trigger HR.

Mine?

Nearly two decades in Miami nightlife without drinking.

Try explaining that to potential LPs while they politely smile and hope you are not about to tell a story that violates SEC guidelines.

Founders love to ask how my experiences translated into startups and VC.

Easy.

Nightlife is the PhD program nobody applies to on purpose.

You sell a story with zero time to rehearse.

You fill a room with people who all think they are the main character.

You manage egos so large they require their own country.

You create urgency that actually matters because if you fail you don’t eat.

You build a network from scratch using nothing but charisma and questionable decisions.

You survive chaos that should have its own documentary.

Show me a seed stage founder who doesn’t need these exact skills.

Most already act like nightclub promoters.

They just pitch investors instead of bottle service and call it a go to market strategy.

That is what we discussed on the Team Ignite Ventures Podcast. 

We talked about how unconventional paths create sharper founders and operators.

We talked about why storytelling still beats ten slides of TAM math.

We talked about why founders need to stop posting AI slop that reads like rejected horoscope copy.

We talked about how humor reveals startup truth faster than any deck ever could.

And we talked about why your strangest career detours are often the only real moat you have.

If your background makes no sense on paper, congratulations.

You are in the perfect position to win in a world where everyone else keeps trying to look normal.

Link in the comments.

#startup #founders  #venturecapital

Why is it so hard to hop on a call with investors? Because time is money and investors do not want to waste it by talking to every founder who slides into their DMs.

"But Shuaaaannnnn that's their job. They are just waiting for a founder like me whose AI for chicken marsala idea is going to change the world."

No, champ. They are not.

Most investors take fewer than five percent of inbound calls.

Some funds admit they get over one thousand cold pitches a year and invest in maybe five.

That's a hit rate of zero point five percent. 

That’s worse than lottery odds.

Investors have to filter. 

If they said yes to every meeting request, their calendars would look like a CVS receipt.

Back-to-back calls from 7 a.m. to whenever their soul leaves their body.

And every call is not the same cost.

A thirty minute call kills the fifteen minutes before it, the fifteen minutes after it, and at least one hour of mental bandwidth.

When VCs say no, they are not rejecting you. They are protecting their last three brain cells.

So what actually gets you a call?

Traction. Warm intros.

Something that proves you are playing the game, not writing fanfiction about it.

Show that customers exist. Show that the market cares.

Show that you are not asking for a call because your roommate said your idea is worth twenty million.

VCs are not waiting for you. They are waiting for evidence.

Until then, your odds are simple.

One thousand founders go in. Five come out.

The rest keep yelling "But Shuaaaannnnn" at their laptops.

#startup #founders  #venturecapital

PSA: Investors rarely fund startups at the idea stage, especially if those ideas are from you.

“But Shuaaaannnn I have a killer team for my AI for apple pie app. All those VCs will love it! 

Sure. And while you are at it, go ahead and challenge Floyd Mayweather to a friendly slap boxing match.

Most founders think they can skip the process and go straight to VCs.

Wrong.

This is the actual fundraising funnel for 99 percent of startups:

Step 1: You.

Step 2: Your mom.

Step 3: Your friend who still owes you fifty dollars.

Step 4: A grant you found at 2 a.m.

Step 5: An accelerator that gives you twelve thousand dollars and emotional trauma.

Then, maybe, if the stars align and your MRR grows faster than your burn rate, you graduate to micro VCs, angels, and scouts.

If you try to jump straight to VCs, you are speed-running your way into the delete folder.

VC inboxes have three buttons:

Archive. Pass. Delete

And a special one for people who pitch too early:

Auto delete before the email even loads.

VCs are not evaluating your startup.

They are evaluating whether your email shows basic awareness of how fundraising works.

If you have no traction, no track record, no revenue, and your only qualification is “I watched one Shark Tank episode,” you aren’t raising from VC firms. 

You are raising from people who love you enough to lie to your face.

The only exception?

You’re an exited founder, FAANG royalty, or your last name is the name of a building at Harvard.

Founders want to jump straight to Tier 1 VCs.

Tier 1 VCs want founders who already survived five levels of capitalism before they show up.

Now you know.

Thank you to Stephane Nasser and OpenVC for the graphic. 

#startup #founders  #venturecapital

Just because a VC says they will be the first check in doesn't mean they will.

“But Shuaaaannnnnn it says right there on their LinkedIn headline that they invest in the earliest stages of startups just like mine.”

Cool. Red Bull also gives you wings but you don't see too many people flying around the city, do you?

Founders love when an investor says, “We want to be the first check in.”

Sounds magical. Pre revenue. Pre traction. Pre everything.

Wrong.

In most cases it translates to: “We want to sound cool on Twitter.”

Investors say they invest super early the same way people say they “love to read” while owning one book they never finished. 

It’s PR puffery with a term sheet.

They tell founders they are early stage hunters, but what they really hunt is CRM activity.

Nothing fills a CRM faster than telling every founder on earth, “Send the deck, we invest early.”

It looks great for LPs.

“Look at all these deals we saw.”

Yes, you saw them. You didn’t invest in any of them, but you definitely saw them.

And it is not just that line. Here are a few others that funds love to plaster across social media.

“We are responsible investors.”

“We back outliers.”

“Let me know how I can be helpful.”

These are not promises. These are the VC equivalent of horoscopes.

They sound inspiring and tell you nothing about what is actually going to happen.

So here's the rule.

Believe checks. Not catchphrases.

Everything else is VC marketing. 

#startup #founders  #venturecapital

If you are a U.S.-based founder and you are working today, congratulations. You have officially turned Thanksgiving into ThanksGrinding.

“But Shuaaaannnnnn I need to finish the pitch for our AI-powered cranberry optimization engine.”

No you don’t.

You barely finished the pumpkin pie last year and that was before you discovered it could be enhanced with AI.

For most people, Thanksgiving is food, family, and falling asleep on a couch halfway through explaining what they actually do for a living.

For founders, Thanksgiving is just Thursday with better carbs and 40 percent more lying about “just checking something real quick.”

Normal people take the holiday to slow down.

Founders take the holiday to run “a tiny experiment” that somehow requires a full dashboard rebuild and three new automations.

VCs spend Thanksgiving posting about gratitude while quietly praying their founders still feel guilty enough to work through dessert.

And startups love to glorify the grind.

The skipped dinners. The muted family group chats.

The belief that “true focus” means answering investor emails with mashed potatoes on your trackpad.

But Thanksgiving exists for a reason.

Rest is not a luxury. Rest is how you avoid writing a memo titled “Why Q4 Imploded.”

Clarity does not come from one more frantic Notion page.

It comes from stepping away long enough to remember you are a human being and not a walking KPI.

The best founders know when to close the laptop, grab a plate, and pretend to enjoy small talk from relatives who still think you “sell apps.”

Your startup will survive one meal without you.

#startup #founders  #venturecapital

Want to raise money from VCs? Then you need to be VC fundable. And the vast majority of startups are not.

“But Shuaaaannnn we are totally fundable. Our AI for Dubai Chocolate will be worth billions.”

Sure. And because I once went 32 and 4 in Call of Duty, I am obviously qualified to brief the Joint Chiefs of Staff on national security strategy.

Let me break it down.

You are not VC fundable if:

You have low scalability. 

If your startup requires more than vibes, a dream, and a Stripe account, good luck. VCs want infinite scale. They want theoretical world domination. If your business cannot be explained with a hockey stick chart, you are basically running a neighborhood lemonade stand.

Your market is small.

Anything under a billion dollars is considered a cute hobby. Something to show your parents at Thanksgiving, not institutional investors. If your TAM cannot swallow an entire industry whole, VCs start checking their phones.

You have the wrong legal structure.

Founders be like, “We incorporated as a Delaware C Corp-ish thing on LegalZoom and we think it is fine.”

Meanwhile VCs are wondering why your cofounder’s cousin owns equity and why your LLC agreement looks like it was written during a blackout.

Your cap table is broken.

If your cousin, ex-roommate, neighbor, and dog each own five percent because they "believed in you early," you are cooked. By Series A, founders are supposed to own half the company, not half the emotional trauma.

You have no traction.

Seven beta users that you acquired organically does not move the needle. Especially when three are your friends, two are your parents, and the other two signed up by accident while trying to unsubscribe from an email.

You reject the VC game.

You want a peaceful life where yoga is more important than MRR. Beautiful. Enlightened. Spiritually mature. But VCs are not backing anyone who schedules daily meditation between standups.

If you want VC money, your startup must have infinite scale, perfect paperwork, a trillion dollar market, zero red flags, flawless storytelling, and ideally already be profitable despite not launching yet.

Easy.

Thanks to Stephane Nasser and OpenVC for the graphic.

P.S.-You can take a free fundability test at OpenVC. My link to sign up is in the comments.

#startup #founders  #venturecapital

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