Harrison brings a rare perspective to the fundraising conversation as both a repeat founder and one of the few CTO-titled partners in venture. He's spoken to roughly 4,000 companies over the past four or five years, and his advice is grounded in seeing both sides of the table. One of his most practical suggestions is around pitch deck structure: he gravitates toward the appendix first, looking for deep technical detail that reduces the number of follow-up meetings needed. For founders building anything with a technical edge, he recommends investing in that appendix section to answer the first round of questions proactively, rather than sticking to the standard seven-to-ten slide formula.
His most memorable framing is around the cap table itself. Harrison pushes back hard on founders who optimize for ownership percentage at the expense of strategic composition. He frames it as "growing the pie" versus "getting a larger share of the pie," and encourages founders to think about what each investor on the cap table uniquely brings, whether that's distribution, technical support, or something else. He also warns that the end of a fundraise is where founders most often reveal character flaws. He's walked deals where a founder suddenly became difficult once they had leverage, which is a red flag for a relationship that's supposed to last years.
On the process side, Harrison is candid about the constraints VCs operate under. He schedules 30-minute calls with 30-minute breaks to clean up notes, and he's explicit that founders who drag their feet on follow-up materials will lose priority fast. He talks to around 20 companies a week, so responsiveness matters. He also flags a specific credibility killer: claiming you're closing by end of month when you have no commits. He says you only get to play the FOMO card once, and burning it on a bluff can end the relationship entirely.
