PODCAST · business
Seed Money
by Jayla Siciliano
Welcome to Seed Money, this is the podcast for early-stage CPG founders who are looking to raise your first round of funding from angel investors, even with no experience and no connections.If you are at the pre-seed or seed stage and need $100K to $500K to finally go all in on your company, this show is for you. Especially if you feel stuck, under-connected, unsure who to trust, or frustrated by investors who ghost you. Seed Money gives you clarity, confidence, and practical next steps so fundraising stops feeling mysterious and starts feeling doable.Before going on Shark Tank and securing a deal with Mark Cuban, I raised $450K in angel funding as a first-time, pre-revenue, CPG founder. No industry experience. No network. No safety net. All during a recession. If I could do it, I know you can too. The tools and buzzwords may change, but the fundamentals of raising as a first-time founder have not.For the past 15 years, I have helped founders prepare pitch decks, master investor Q&A
Episodes
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99 | How to Reframe Red Flags So Investors Don't Run
Jayla Siciliano explains how founders can turn perceived red flags into clear, confidence-building narratives for investors. The episode focuses on a common fundraising mistake: overexplaining a situation that the founder is already anxious about, which can make a neutral fact sound like a major...
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98 | Why a $10,000 Check Can Open Bigger Funding Doors
Jayla Siciliano breaks down why early-stage founders should not dismiss small checks when raising their first round. The episode focuses on how a modest commitment can create the validation needed to unlock larger angel, strategic, and investor conversations later.In this episode, Jayla explains...
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97 | Fund the Next Milestone, Not the Billion-Dollar Dream
In this episode, Jayla explains why waiting until January to set annual goals can sabotage fundraising plans, and why fall is a better time to map out milestones, funding needs, and investor strategy. And she's sharing practical fundraising advice from her recent Seed Money office hours sessions....
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96 | Stop Pitching, Start a Relationship: Ethan Mayers on What Investors Really Want
In this episode Jayla Siciliano sits down with Ethan Mayers, also known as "The Pitch Destroyer," to unpack what investors actually want, how founders should approach fundraising, and why relationship-building matters more than "the ask". Ethan shares hard-won perspective from years of helping...
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95 | Build Your Angel Investor List Before Fall & Stop Wasting Time On The Wrong Investors
Finding investors can feel like the most intimidating part of raising your first round, especially if you were not born into a wealthy, well-connected network. But the answer is not to pitch everyone with "angel investor" in their LinkedIn bio or assume anyone with money could write you a check....
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94 | 10 Must-Dos Before Asking for Investor Introductions
Warm introductions can open doors, but only if you use them the right way. Too many early-stage founders ask for investor intros before they know whether that investor is actually a fit, which can lead to awkward asks, weak pitches, and getting ghosted. In this episode, Jayla breaks down the...
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93 | 5 Things to Do This Summer So Investors Take You Seriously This Fall
If your fundraising momentum stalled this winter or spring, summer is not the time to disappear. It is the time to fix the gaps before investors start paying attention again in the fall. In this episode, Jayla shares a simple 5-part summer reset plan to help early-stage founders turn customer...
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92 | Announcing Office Hours- Join us monthly
Summer is slow for investors. Don't waste it. Fall fundraising starts now. Use the summer to tighten your deck, build your investor list, fix the gaps, and get clear on your funding strategy—so when investors are ready to talk, you're ready too. Listen for what to do this summer to be ready for...
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91 | You Don't Need "Founder Skills" to Raise Capital—You Need Reps
If you are holding off on raising capital because you think you need to become more confident, better at pitching, stronger at sales, or more "founder-like" first—think again. That advice sounds responsible. Strategic, even. But for many early-stage founders, it becomes a permission slip to delay...
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90 | Can't Even Raise $500K? Ask These 2 Questions Before You Blame Investors
Feeling stuck because you "can't even raise $500K"? Before you decide your startup is doomed, your idea isn't good enough, or investors just "don't get it," take a breath. In this episode of Seed Money, Jayla breaks down why early-stage fundraising often feels more personal and discouraging than…
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89 | Overwhelmed by Startup Funding Advice? Use This 4-Part Filter Before You Raise
Feeling overwhelmed by all the conflicting advice about startup funding? One person says bootstrap. Another says raise venture capital. Someone else swears crowdfunding is the smartest move. Then you hear angels are better, loans are risky, VCs are the only path, or that you should never give up...
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88 | Bootstrapped from $2K to $4M: The Real Founder Story Behind Riptie Hair
Most first-time founders think raising capital is the next big milestone. But what if raising money too early creates more pressure, more distractions, and less control? In this episode, Jayla sits down with Sarah Fox, founder of Riptie Hair, to talk about the real path behind building a startup...
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87 | Pitch Deck Tear Down, Part 4 - What You Learn Pitching a VC and an Angel Investor for the First Time
Raising your first round of capital can feel intimidating, especially when you're not sure if you're ready, who to pitch, or what investors actually want to see. In this final episode of the pitch deck teardown series, Jayla sits down with founder Shane Pope to unpack what he learned after…
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86 | Pitch Deck Tear Down, Part 3 Featuring Angel Jason Butcher and Founder Shane Pope
Welcome to Part 3 of our Pitch Deck Tear Down Series. In this episode, Angel Investor Jason Butcher from Orbit Capital, sits down with first-time founder Shane Pope for a candid, real-time review of his startup (from an angel investor's perspective). If you're wondering how meeting with an angel...
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85 | Pitch Deck Tear Down, Part 2 Featuring VC Brian Bell and Founder Shane Pope
In this episode, Part II of the three part Pitch Deck Tear Down Series, Venture Capitalist Brian Bell from Ignite Ventures, sits down with first-time founder Shane Pope for a candid, real-time review of his startup. You'll hear exactly how a venture investor thinks through an early-stage...
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84 | Pitch Deck Tear Down, Part 1 Featuring Founder Shane Pope
In this kickoff episode of a 3-part Pitch Deck Tear Down series, host Jayla Siciliano coaches first-time founder Shane Pope through the question that keeps early-stage entrepreneurs up at night: Do you chase angels/VCs/accelerators—or keep bootstrapping and stay in control? Jayla and Shane walk...
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83 | Why Most Beverage Brands Fail Before Year 3 w/Sam Anderson
What really kills most early-stage consumer brands isn't a bad idea. It's underestimating how much cash, traction, and market proof it actually takes to survive. In this episode of Seed Money, Jayla sits down with beverage industry veteran Sam Anderson, co-founder of BevAssets and Frontline...
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82 | What Investors Really Think About During Your Pitch w/Diana Wilson
If you're getting ready to raise—or already in the middle of it and not getting the responses you hoped for—this episode will change how you think about pitching. Jayla sits down with Diana Wilson, a seasoned executive who has raised over $100M and taken Deckers, the now-billion-dollar lifestyle...
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81 | Investors Don't Think You're Credible—Here's the Proof You're Missing
It's 11pm and you're tweaking your deck for the gazillionth time. You know your background. You know your level of commitment. You know exactly how much you've sacrificed to get here. But how are investors supposed to know that? If investors don't think you're credible, they won't take you...
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80 | Your 5-Minute Investor Pitch Litmus Test w/Ali Dastjerdi
Most founders think fundraising is persuasion. It's not—it's alignment. In this episode, Ali Dastjerdi (Co-Founder of Raylu) shares the mental models he learned from speaking with 5,000+ founders, raising seed and Series A, and surviving multiple near-death pivots. You'll learn how to diagnose...
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79 | Find Vetted Partnerships Faster w/Kyle Kane
If you're a first-time founder, you're probably feeling it: Cold outreach gets ignored. Paid ads are expensive and unpredictable. And in an increasingly "fake" online world, trust is harder (and slower) to earn. The result? You burn weeks in meetings, chase intros that never materialize, and pour...
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78 | Why Investors Grill You (and How to Handle It)
If you're tired of getting silence after your investor pitch, this episode is your wake-up call. We're breaking down the real reason you're getting ghosted—and it's not your idea. It's how you handle the investor Q&A. Learn how to show up composed, confident, and ready to answer any investor...
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77 | 5 Ways to Project Confidence (Even When You're Broke)
If you're sending investor emails, landing the occasional meeting, but waking up at 2 a.m. gripped with quiet panic—this episode is for you. Jayla Siciliano gets real about the emotional rollercoaster of fundraising and how desperation, even when justified, can tank your chances. Sharing personal...
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76 | Stop Pitching VCs, Start Finding Believers
👇Get The Free Investor Ready Checklist ✅ https://seedmoney.mysamcart.com/free-checklist/ Raising capital but not really sure what investors want? The Free Investor Ready Checklist gives you the exact step-by-step path to get investor-ready and avoid the rookie mistakes that kill deals before…
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75 | Angels vs. VCs vs. the Friend Zone: Who Should Fund You?
You've got the hustle, the product, and maybe even a pitch deck—but if you're talking to the wrong type of investor, you're setting yourself up for silence and wasted time. In this quick episode of Seed Money, I'll help you understand exactly how friends and family, angel investors, and VCs...
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74 | How an Accelerator Makes You Fundable Faster w/ Kevin Nesgoda
If you're stuck between having a startup and having something investors actually want to fund, this episode is for you. Our guest, Kevin Nesgoda—CEO of OutPaged and recent Founder Institute grad—dives into the messy middle of startup life, where great ideas often die without the right pressure,...
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73 | Why Your Pitch Is Falling Flat: The Power of Story
Numbers won't make them care—your story will. In this episode, you'll learn how to grab investor attention with a pitch that actually connects. If you're tired of wasting time and getting minimal responses, this is your wake-up call. Hit play to learn how to stand out. Topics Covered; Why your...
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72 | This Exercise Can Predict If Your Fundraise Will Work in 2026
It's 2026, and it's a good time to refresh your fundraising mindset. Budgets are fresh, investors are considering where to put their money, and LinkedIn is buzzing about how "now is the window." If you position yourself correctly, you could have closed your funding round by June. But no matter…
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71 | The Fundraising Advice Founders Never Hear (But Desperately Need) w/ Shefqet Avdullau
Getting an investor to fund your business isn't just about your idea, industry, team, or even your business model. What can help or tank your efforts often comes down to how you show up in the room. Your mindset, how you handle the power dynamics, and whether you actually see yourself as the one...
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70 | I Listened to 16 Founder Pitches: Here's What Most People Miss
We spend so much time stressing about pitch decks…the formatting, the stats, and the perfect slide order. But honestly, that's not what trips most founders up. The real issue is way simpler: a lot of us just aren't telling investors what they actually need to hear. Not because our ideas are bad,...
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Pitch Battles, Warm Intros and Demo Days Are Dead: The New Way to Raise Capital w/ Robert Harary
For years, there was a formula for raising money from VC's: perfect your pitch deck, polish your twelve slides, practice the elevator pitch, and hope someone in the limited VC circle gives you a shot. But that formula worked in a different era, when venture capital was still a close knit club and...
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This Non-Alcoholic Brand is Winning Investors and Defying the Beverage Odds w/ Vanessa Royle
Starting a beverage brand might be one of the hardest things you can do in CPG. The margins are thin, the logistics are brutal, and most investors will tell you not to even try. But Harvard Business School grad Vanessa Royle and her co-founder did it anyway. They built Tilden, a ready-to-drink,...
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Your Small Brand Could Win Big in CPG Right Now, Here's Why
CPG products are notoriously hard to launch, fund, and get onto shelves. That's why the failure rate is so high. But what if right now is actually the best time to do it? The barrier to entry has never been lower, the consumer has never been easier to reach, and the path from idea to traction has...
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What Every CPG Founder Should Know Before Raising a Dollar w/ Debbie Wildrick
When most people dream about launching a consumer product, they imagine seeing it on store shelves—but few realize what it actually takes to get there. The (painful) truth is, success in CPG isn't about having a great idea. It's about surviving the numbers. Most founders underestimate how much...
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How Much Should You Really Spend on a Pitch Deck?
If you're raising money, one of the first questions you'll run into is whether to DIY your pitch deck or hire someone to help. And trust me, it's not as straightforward as it sounds. I've wasted money on "professional" help that didn't move the needle, and I've also seen founders burn months…
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The Brutal Truth About Scaling Your Business (Things Will Break) w/ Josh Hatter
When you're building a business that appeals to investors, you have to show that you can scale and stabilize at every level. But here's the thing - scaling isn't clean or painless…it's not supposed to be. It almost always means that things will break. Systems will strain, processes will collapse,...
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Why Your Pitch Deck is Important (It's Not About Stuffing in Every Detail)
A lot of founders go into fundraising with the wrong idea about pitch decks. They think the deck has to include everything, every detail about the product, every market stat, every bio. But that's not what a pitch deck is for. The real job of your deck is simple: get you to the next step. It's…
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8 Lessons from Podcasting That Will Make You Better at Raising Capital
Podcasting and fundraising don't seem to have much in common until you've done both. On the surface, each looks shiny and glamorous. But behind the curtain, they're two of the hardest things to stick with, and that's why most people quit before they ever see results. What makes them work isn't...
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This Is What Happens When You Don't Pitch With Passion
When you're getting ready to pitch investors, it's easy to get caught up in saying all the right things. You want to sound polished, credible, maybe even impressive. But in trying to be professional, you might be dialing down the one thing that matters most in the room: your passion. And I don't...
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Risk Tolerance: The #1 Skill Founders Need That No One Talks About
When you're building a company, it's tempting to obsess over tactics. What to put in your deck, who to pitch next, which lever to pull. But that's not what separates the founders who break through from the ones who burn out. It's not tactics, it's tolerance. Your tolerance for risk, rejection,...
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8 Ways To Overcome Rejection And Being In Limbo
You're doing all you can to reach out to investors, showing up, pitching, and doing everything right, but you're still getting no's… or worse: crickets. Like many businesses, fundraising slows down in summer. Feeling in limbo is one of the worst feelings, and can be super discouraging. Investors...
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How to Raise $20M by Breaking the #1 Fundraising Rule w/ Alexander Wulff
If you're walking investors through your pitch deck slide-by-slide. Hiding the biggest risk in your business until the very end or treating meetings like job interviews, you're making the same mistakes that keep founders stuck in the endless cycle of "we'll pass for now." Fundraising isn't just...
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Find Your Who: The Real Reason You're Too Busy to Pitch Investors
You're not "too busy" to fundraise, you just have too much on your plate. If you keep telling yourself you'll start pitching investors "next month," but that month never comes, this episode is for you. Because let's be honest, fundraising isn't something you accidentally find time for. It's...
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Full-Time Entrepreneurship vs. Side Hustle: Paying the Bills While You Pitch
There's nothing that crushes your confidence quite like staring at your bank balance and realizing you might not make your bills in a few months. Your savings are dwindling, you've got a life to pay for, and there's still no funding in sight. At the same time, you still have to step up, sell your...
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Building Your Startup Community: From Zero to Funded w/ Neil Bloom
If you're in the early-stage and struggling to find the right investors and feeling lost in the startup maze, we totally get it, we've been there. It's no easy task to leave that comfortable job with big dreams but zero roadmap. When I first started my entrepreneurial journey, I had no clue how…
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How To Build Investor Relationships Before Asking For Money w/Jay Kriner
Listen as Jay reveals the strategic approach he took that led to a successful pre-seed funding round in just 4 weeks! Jay Kriner, a Shark Tank alum turned tech entrepreneur, shares his methodical 9-month strategy for building investor relationships before ever making an ask. His approach centers…
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Don't Be That Founder w/ Shaun Gold
Want to know the hard truth? Today we have Shaun Gold, a polymath and entrepreneur with extensive experience in pitch decks and fundraising (oh and bonus, he's hilarious). He shares killer insights on the common pitfalls you'll face when making pitch decks and pitching investors to raise seed...
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How to Build a Community Around Your Startup w/ Ash Lonare
In a competitive fundraising environment, traction is everything. Investors want to see proof that people care about what you're building, and few signals are stronger than an active, engaged community. When customers gather around your product, share ideas, support each other, and drive...
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A Founder's Guide to IP Protection: How to Use Patents, Trademarks, Copyright and More w/ Raymond DiPerna
Patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and copyrights: if you're building a startup, these aren't "nice to haves," they're mission-critical. Locking down your intellectual property protects your ideas, your company, your product. And it makes your startup more attractive to investors. Whether it's...
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What Investors Really Look For w/ Mike Sherbakov
Many founders have a killer product, a passionate team, and traction, but they don't realize that investors are really betting on THEM. The truth is, your projections don't need to be perfect, your deck doesn't need to be perfect. But you need to do the things that most people won't do to stand...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Welcome to Seed Money, this is the podcast for early-stage CPG founders who are looking to raise your first round of funding from angel investors, even with no experience and no connections.If you are at the pre-seed or seed stage and need $100K to $500K to finally go all in on your company, this show is for you. Especially if you feel stuck, under-connected, unsure who to trust, or frustrated by investors who ghost you. Seed Money gives you clarity, confidence, and practical next steps so fundraising stops feeling mysterious and starts feeling doable.Before going on Shark Tank and securing a deal with Mark Cuban, I raised $450K in angel funding as a first-time, pre-revenue, CPG founder. No industry experience. No network. No safety net. All during a recession. If I could do it, I know you can too. The tools and buzzwords may change, but the fundamentals of raising as a first-time founder have not.For the past 15 years, I have helped founders prepare pitch decks, master investor Q&A
HOSTED BY
Jayla Siciliano
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Seed Money have?
Seed Money currently has 99 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Seed Money about?
Welcome to Seed Money, this is the podcast for early-stage CPG founders who are looking to raise your first round of funding from angel investors, even with no experience and no connections.If you are at the pre-seed or seed stage and need $100K to $500K to finally go all in on your company, this...
How often does Seed Money release new episodes?
Seed Money has 99 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Seed Money?
You can listen to Seed Money on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Seed Money?
Seed Money is created and hosted by Jayla Siciliano.
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