Billion $ Story

Founder

SPRYNT

Sold workshops led by professionals from Amazon, IBM and Google to corporate clients and startups.

Co-Founder

June Fund

$100M VC firm headed by Google's Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler

Principal

Heilemann Ventures

Investment Team

iZettle

Operations & Business Development

Deloitte

Made pretty slide decks and spreadsheets very few people ever looked at.

Consulting

I help startup founders raise $1-10 million from VCs with a Billion $ Story | ex-VC at $100M firm by Google board member

Fundraising can be brutal.

After talking to 4,000+ founders over the last 10 years,

I’ve discovered three core problems most of them face (and how to solve them):

1/ You can’t book enough investor meetings
2/ Investors don’t see the potential of your business
3/ They pass on you with bullsh*t feedback or ghost you

Each of them alone could end your run.

If these sound familiar it’s likely because you’ve taken fundraising advice from the wrong people.

And that has resulted in an absolute grind of a fundraise.

Something you don’t care to repeat.

I get it because I’ve been there.

And it’s not your fault.

The internet is a noisy place, and those with no experience often speak the loudest.

Why should you listen to me then?

Because I’ve experienced fundraising from all angles:

→ I was a VC
→ I’ve raised money myself
→ I’ve helped 100+ founders raise $1-10 million rounds

And I can tell you why it’s been a grind for you…

Because venture capital isn’t like most markets.

It’s top-heavy.

It’s feast or famine.

I was a VC for a $100M firm led by one of the most powerful men in tech

…and I’ve seen the reality:

A few outliers get more money than they could ever spend. The rest fight for table scraps.

Because VCs only look for one thing:

Future billion $ companies.

Outliers.

They want founders who can bend reality to their will.

Ordinary pitch advice, generic deck templates, and cookie-cutter narratives won’t cut it.

If you follow the ordinary path, will that make you look extraordinary?

Never.

You’ll drown in a sea of sameness with 90% of pitches.

To create something unique you need an intense approach.

That’s why my help is tailor-made for founders:

1/ I’ll show you how to get 80-100 warm investor connections and book meetings

2/ Together we’ll craft your unique Billion $ Story that will make investors chase you

3/ You’ll learn how to apply my tactics and investor psychology to create conviction and FOMO and close your round

Does it work?

Here’s what my client Frank Gu - currently building his second billion $ business - says:

"Uli is an amazing storyteller, period.

If you're anything like me and tend to overthink things with that extra critical and logical voice in your head, do yourself a favor and book a session with Uli immediately.

He will make your story shine, you won't regret it!"

Interested?

Just DM me “billion$story” and let’s have a chat

Uli Kuenzel

I’m an entrepreneurial growth leader that has sold more than $25M of software, services, and physical products. Over the last decade, I’ve raised money, started and sold a company, built and led teams, and led revenue growth for companies in several industries.

Jon Caldwell

Might be obvious, but before you raise VC, really ask yourself: Do I need VC?

Most founders assume they need venture capital. It's the default path. But it's also the most demanding path: in time, in equity, and in expectations.

VC makes sense if you're targeting a massive market and need millions in capital to scale fast. But if you're building something profitable in a niche? You probably don't need it.

The alternative: bootstrap or do a small angel round and grow with profits.

A lot of companies are not VC investable because they're just not targeting a big enough market. And that's fine. It doesn't mean the company isn't valuable. It just means VC isn't the right fit.

Before you spend six months fundraising, ask what the capital is actually for. Is it for software? AI can do most of that now. Is it for growth? Early enterprise sales is just sweat equity: pounding the pavement, working your network.

What do you actually need capital for?

Founder @ 3Victor | 1x Exit | Fractional growth operator for tech & services founders | $25M+ in sales of software, hardware, and services

We found that agencies closed at the same speed as brands. But at 10 times the price.

I was working with a SaaS company selling to physical product brands, CPG companies that sold in retail and online. They also had a few agency customers who worked with those brands.

We pulled the historical data into a spreadsheet. Columns for industry, company size, buyer title. Rows for each customer. Added contract value, sales cycle length, time to payment.

The agencies stood out immediately. Same number of touchpoints. Same time to close. Ten times the revenue.

Why? Each agency dealt with 5 to 20 brand customers. Closing one agency was the equivalent of getting multiple brands on board with no added complexity in the sales cycle.

We rebuilt the entire outbound strategy around agencies. Messaging. Targeting. Even the packaging.

Sometimes the answer is already in your data. You just haven't organized it to see the pattern.

The terrain dictates the strategy.

Your terrain is your market. Who you're selling to. What you're selling. The channels you're going to use to reach them.

There's a huge difference between spinning up 10,000 SEO pages for organic traffic and building an enterprise sales team with $300K-a-year sellers.

Your economics are different. Your timeline is different. Your capital needs are different.

A lot of founders copy strategies from companies in completely different markets. They see what worked for someone else and assume it'll work for them.

But the terrain is different. The strategy has to be different too.

Before you build your playbook, understand your market. TAM. Deal size. Sales cycle. Channel economics.

Then let the terrain dictate what you do next.

Hiring more BDRs isn’t the solution. 
It’s a shortcut that rarely works anymore.

Fifteen reps cost at least 75 grand a month, plus management overhead. 
Most will underperform in six months. 
You end up cycle after cycle of hiring, training, replacing.

The real shift? 
It’s about the tools, not headcount. 

I worked with a client whose SDR was wasting 15 hours a week on manual research: copying from LinkedIn, hunting down tech stacks, updating spreadsheets. 

We threw in some automation. 
Built an AI agent that handles all that in hours. 
It identifies decision-makers, verifies tech, ranks prospects. 
Accuracy? 90 percent (equal to a human).

Two years ago, I paid a dollar for a personalized first line. Now, AI generates them for half a penny.

That’s the game changer. 

One skilled person plus the right tools can outperform a team burning through cash.

Before you ask for more bodies, ask yourself: 
Is this a people problem or a tools problem?

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Uli Kuenzel

Jon Caldwell

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The Battle

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