Having a great company and knowing how to raise money are two different skills.
Lucia Mari Sanguino, co-founder and CEO of AIVA TECH, joins Inside Startup Funding to break down the strategy behind her $1.5 million pre-seed raise. Lucia shares how she and her co-founder condensed investor meetings to create urgency, built warm introductions through other founders, refined their pitch from investor objections, and divided responsibilities so fundraising did not stop the company from building.
She also explains the mid-raise strategy change that transformed how she showed up with investors. Lucia became less accommodating and more direct, created fundraising alter egos with her co-founder, and even prompted Claude to rewrite her emails like a “rich white man.”
Her takeaway: “You might be a great player, but if you don’t know the rules and you don’t know the strategies, you will not win the game.”
We also get into how Lucia’s experience growing up in Ibiza and working as a hotel GM led to AIVA TECH, the emotional reality of finally closing the round, and why founders should start building relationships long before they need investor introductions.
SPONSORS:
Aster AI: Aster AI is re-imagining the operating system for recruiting, connecting top Product, Engineering, and Design talent with opportunities through an AI-native recruiting platform.
https://www.asterhq.com/
28th&Park: 28th&Park is a New York-based content and production studio that partners with founders, VCs, artists, and creators to produce podcasts, livestreams, events, and studio salons.
https://28thpark.com/
