Most Founders Can’t Run an Auction
But what if the ecosystem could?
There’s a popular piece of advice founders hear when raising capital: run an auction. Stack your meetings. Build competitive tension. Drive your price. It sounds powerful—strategic, even. And in the right environment, it works. But only if you’re already in the room. Only if you’re surrounded by warm intros, circling VCs, and a capital-rich ecosystem that knows how to play the game.
For most founders, that’s not the reality. Telling them to run an auction is like telling someone to host a sold-out concert with no venue, no mic, and no guest list. It assumes infrastructure that doesn’t exist.
The truth is, most founders don’t lack ambition or fundable businesses—they lack access. No density of capital. No reliable critical mass. No easy way to be seen by the right people, at the right time, in the right frame of mind. So instead of a fast, high-signal fundraising process, they get scattered meetings, long silences, and the sinking feeling that they’re just one warm intro behind where they need to be.
What we’ve been building with VC Immersions is a response to that problem—but also a challenge to the idea that auctions are only for the connected few.
Because if you strip away the performance aspect, what’s an auction really?
- A high-quality, high-velocity set of meetings with decision-makers who are actually ready to move.
- A compressed process that lets founders calibrate demand and pick the right partner—not just the first one who says yes.
- A moment in time where attention, capital, and conviction converge.
We didn’t try to recreate that dynamic through a pitch competition or demo day. We built it as infrastructure—on purpose, and at scale.
Over the past year, we’ve run this play with more than 200 startups from across the country. Dozens of VCs have traveled to Northwest Arkansas to participate, not because we asked nicely—but because the pipeline was real. The process was efficient. And the founders were ones they wouldn’t have met otherwise.
Because if you’re a founder in a place like Arkansas, or Kansas City, or Nashville, you don’t get to run an auction. You’re lucky if you can get five conversations with funds that even invest at your stage. And if you’re building something slightly non-obvious, forget about it.
That’s not a knock on founders. It’s a knock on the system.
The problem isn’t that people are giving bad advice. It’s that the advice is built for a different topology. Running an auction is a power move in a market where relationships are dense and capital is abundant. But most of the country doesn’t look like that. Most of the country is still trying to build the on-ramps.
So we built something else.
We built a system that creates those conditions, even in places that have historically been off the radar. Because that’s the reality for most early-stage founders in the middle of the country. It’s not that they lack ambition, traction, or even fundable businesses. It’s that they lack the dense infrastructure—of capital, community, and connectivity—that makes an auction even possible.
Since launch, VC Immersions has:
• Facilitated 500+ founder–VC meetings
• Diligenced 200+ early-stage startups across 30+ states
• Helped VCs deploy $14M in first checks—many into companies that would’ve never made it onto their radar otherwise
This isn’t just matchmaking. It’s infrastructure.
It works because we don’t just optimize for heat—we optimize for fit. Unlike the traditional auction model, which rewards the most connected and polished fundraisers, VC Immersions rewards the most fundable businesses, regardless of zip code. Auctions are zero-sum. Infrastructure compounds. This isn’t just a better experience. It’s a better model.
The part most people miss is this: founders don’t just get stuck because they lack capital. They get stuck because they lack surface area. You can’t manufacture demand if no one knows you exist. You can’t run a process if you can’t get a foot in the door. The auction model only works once the machine is already warm. We’re building the part that gets it there.
At VC Immersions, we’ve stepped in—not just to convene, but to coordinate. We play the role of analyst and associate for the funds, and investor relations for the founders. We curate for fit, deliver early memos, and structure conversations to happen all at once—so the burden of creating momentum doesn’t fall entirely on the founder.
Because the current system is inefficient. Founders are pulled out of their business for months at a time. Investors spend too much energy chasing low-signal meetings. Rounds drag on longer than they should. And promising companies raise later than they need to—or not at all.
We believe there’s a better way. One that’s built for speed, signal, and shared conviction. One that helps founders get back to building—faster. We didn’t start out trying to redesign the system. But now that we’ve seen what’s possible, it’s the only thing worth building.
