| Move to the Bay Area. The actual financial EVs are strongly in your favor starting here over anywhere else. Your family might be far more open to the idea of moving here than you think. Ask them. A lot of people, including kids, have been properly convinced by the media that California is kind of awesome. I think Oakland is the best place to actually build a company while raising a family here right now, by a long shot. The Oakland hills are fantastically livable, and the city of Oakland desperately wants you to start a successful company that will eventually want a waterfront corporate campus in the redeveloped area around 5th Avenue east of Jack London Square. However, your initial fundraising will happen in San Francisco and Mountain View, so San Mateo is the cheap, nice, developed, delicious, urban core halfway between San Francisco and Mountain View. Befriend the leaders of companies that are leading angel and venture funded companies. Instead of asking for money, ask for advice. Sign up for https://angel.co, fill it out, follow your friends and people you're a fan of. Apply to incubators, including YC, for the experience of getting rejected from incubators while psyching yourself up for the experience of getting rejected by angel investors and honing your short form pitch. Does your business school ever invest directly in companies founded by startups, or is there a group of alumni investors? Ask. Do any of your well-paid coworkers and bosses from your previous job want to invest and live vicariously through you? I like 1.5 million as a totally arbitrary amount you should raise. |
Also, 'liking' 1.5 million isn't the way to go about raising funds. you need to know what the money is for and how it will be used. I suspect anybody who went to an angel/vc and said '1.5 million will do as an arbitrary amount' would get laughed out of the room.