Q: We have steady customer and revenue growth over 2 years, but not fast. How do we avoid this being a red flag for a raise?

Click here if you'd like to watch the full response from Elizabeth Yin.

This is a great question because investors are really interested in funding growth.

So the question you have to answer is: If you had capital, how can you expedite that growth? Do you have the right unit economics to encourage that growth?

You don’t need to spend a ton of money. It could be as simple as picking up some ad credits from Google/Facebook and experimenting with those channels. Will that reliably increase your growth?

Or you can use an outbound sales strategy and try to validate that channel. Your goal is to tell investors, “I’ve proven this growth channel. If I invest (or hire somebody) X dollars per month, our startup would grow Y amount.”

In simpler terms, “If I did more of this, which takes money, then it will lead to much faster growth.”

This is much easier said than done. But that’s the story investors want to hear before backing high-growth startups.