How To Ask Family For Money

Your friends-and-family fundraising round doesn't have to be scary and awkward. Here's advice from one of the world's leading investors.

- JASON FEIFER

If you want to raise money from friends and family, then know this: Your job isn't just to pitch them a great business. It's to lower their risk.

That's advice from Mike Maples Jr., one of the most celebrated investors in Silicon Valley and coauthor of a book about why startups succeed called Pattern Breakers. He's a cofounder of Floodgate, a leading pre-seed and seed-stage fund whose investments included Twitter (long before it was known as X), Twitch, and Lyft. And although he's not investing in mom-and-pop shops, he says that the fundamentals of fundraising remain the same. Here, Maples takes you into the mind of any investor-even if it's your dad or sister-and how to make them comfortable.

Let's imagine someone can't afford to open a bakery on their own, but they don't know how to ask loved ones for money. What's their first step?