Scaling Trust Is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage

Welcome to The Good News Newsletter—proudly serving over 4,094 founders! Here, we break down the latest insights from our weekly Investor Office Hours sessions and equip you with tools to help you secure capital for your business.

Missed the live session? Listen to the recording here.
Want to join the next session? Check out the full list of investors here.
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Support this newsletter by learning about Masterworks. Click below ↓

Someone just spent $236,000,000 on a painting. Here’s why it matters for your wallet.

The WSJ just reported the highest price ever paid for modern art at auction.

While equities, gold, bitcoin hover near highs, the art market is showing signs of early recovery after one of the longest downturns since the 1990s.

Here’s where it gets interesting→

Each investing environment is unique, but after the dot com crash, contemporary and post-war art grew ~24% a year for a decade, and after 2008, it grew ~11% annually for 12 years.*

Overall, the segment has outpaced the S&P by 15 percent with near-zero correlation from 1995 to 2025.

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Shares can sell quickly, but my subscribers skip the waitlist:

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_{*Per Masterworks data. Investing involves risk. Past performance not indicative of future returns. Important Reg A disclosures: masterworks.com/cd}

🌟 Building In Public - MeetAnyone.co

This week, I doubled down on momentum and kept shipping. MeetAnyone is still early, but the response has been strong — and each new feature teaches me something valuable about what founders and investors actually need.

Quick reminder of what we’re building:
MeetAnyone is a platform designed to make high-quality introductions simple. Our first product, The Directory, connects vetted founders and investors who are open to meeting. No cold outreach. No guessing. Just real people ready to help each other win.

Progress This Week:

• Refined the onboarding flow to make verification smoother

• Added more investors + founders to the Directory

• Facilitated several new introductions directly through the platform

• Continued user interviews to tighten the value proposition

Key Lessons:

• Speed beats everything. Tools like Lovable let me build, test, and ship features in hours that used to take weeks.

• Real users > perfect features. Every conversation uncovers a new insight, and the product gets better because of it.

• Tiny steps add up fast. When you build daily, the compounding effect is wild — and the upside is unlimited.

Right now is the best time to be a builder. I’ll keep sharing the journey in real time so you can learn with me — and hopefully get inspired to build your own thing too.

Try MeetAnyone Today →

🙏🏽 The Good News - Investor Office Hours

Office Hours Recap:
It’s been a month since we started using Chatter Social for Office Hours and it as been incredible. Being able to see founders and our VC guests via video has been a game changer for authentic relationship building. Be sure to join us on Chatter for the next session.

💼 Session #1 - Madison Faulkner, Partner at NEA

Stage: Seed through Series B (typically leads early and reinvests through later rounds)

Industry: AI, developer tools, infrastructure, enterprise SaaS, data, cybersecurity, and technical tooling

Check Size: $1M - $3M + Follow On Capital

How to Apply: Madison primarily sources founders proactively (not through cold inbound), the best path is to build in public where she spends her time — especially LinkedIn, GitHub, and X.

Connect with Madison through our Directory on MeetAnyone.

Key Takeaways from Session:

1. Technical Depth Is the New Moat: Madison emphasized that NEA values founders who pair strong market insight with deep technical understanding. Companies building in AI, infra, and developer tooling need real expertise — not just hype — to create durable differentiation in a crowded space.

2. Thesis-Driven, Not Trend-Driven: NEA proactively researches emerging opportunities before they become mainstream. Madison’s own sourcing is powered by internal data/AI agents that scan GitHub, X, and other channels to identify founders solving real problems — not just chasing the latest wave.

3. Why You, Why Now: The strongest founders can clearly articulate why they are uniquely positioned to build this company and why this moment in time creates the opening. Madison encouraged entrepreneurs to deeply understand their market, their customers’ pain points, and the timing dynamics that make their solution inevitable.

💼 Session #2 – Jesús Salas, Principal at Slauson & Co.

Stage: Pre-Seed & Seed

Industry: SMB Tech, SMB SaaS (product-led growth), and Culturally-Aligned Consumer

Check Size: $500K – $3M

How to Apply: The best way to get on Jesús’s radar is to build a warm relationship before you pitch. Engage with his posts on LinkedIn, study Slauson & Co.’s thesis, and make sure your business clearly fits either SMB Tech or Culturally-Aligned Consumer.

Connect with Jesús through our Directory on MeetAnyone.

Key Takeaways from Session:

1. Investing Where Culture + Opportunity Meet:
   Slauson & Co focuses on SMB Tech and “culturally aligned consumer” — companies serving overlooked or underserved communities that traditional venture firms ignore. Their investment thesis is rooted in economic mobility, cultural insight, and scalable tech that improves real lives.

2. Founders With Lived Experience Stand Out:
   Jesús emphasized that the strongest founders deeply understand the problem from personal experience — whether serving small businesses they grew up around or building tools they wish existed in their own careers. Authenticity, clarity of purpose, and domain insight matter more than polish.

3. Coachability + Market Ambition Are Essential:
   Early-stage success requires founders who can adapt. Jesús highlighted that Slauson & Co wants founders who are humble enough to pivot, disciplined enough to hit milestones, and ambitious enough to build venture-scale outcomes — not incremental businesses.

Funding Resources:

💰 Resources of the Week:

Elbow Grease AI Accelerator - $300K | AI Founders | Deadline: 11/27/2025

The Fifteen Percent Pledge Sephora Beauty Grant - $100K | Beauty Founders | Deadline: 11/28/2025

AI Ventures Accelerator - $10K | Women Founders | Deadline: 11/30/2025

HBS Africa Business Club Competition 2026 - Up to $55K | Founder Serving the African Market | Deadline: 12/5/2025

Momentum Grant by CHASM - $25K | Female Founders | Deadline: 12/8/2025

The WIN AI Challenge - $2.5M - $5M | Startups Innovating the Workplace | Deadline: 12/11/25

D-Prize Challenges Global Competition - Up to $20K | Founders Addressing Poverty | Deadline: 12/14/2025

Visible Hands VHNYC 2026 Fellowship - $10K | Overlooked Founders in NYC | Deadline: 12/31/2025

AI Unleashed: Industry Disrupters Challenge - $10K | AI Founders | Deadline: 12/31/2025

The Sage Impact Entrepreneurship Program - Up to $50K | Deadline: 1/5/2026

Google Play Apps Accelerator - Early Stage App Companies | Deadline: 1/7/2026

NewSchools 2026 Grant - Up to $250K | Edtech Founders | Deadline: 1/8/2026

Tulsa Remote - $10K | Rolling

💸 Alternative Funding Sources:

Access up to $2M in non-dilutive debt financing. Request information here.

Raise up to $5M in equity capital through a Community Round. Request information here.

Interested in 1 on 1 support from Darrel? I am opening my schedule to meet 1 on 1 with a select group of founders. Interested founders can book time here.

🎙️ Podcast of the Week: How a $200 Doorbell Became a $4B Company | My First Million

Summary:
Jamie Siminoff, founder of Ring, breaks down how he turned a simple garage problem into a billion-dollar exit. He shares the wild story of selling to Amazon, nearly going bankrupt mid-deal, getting sued by ADT, surviving on pure grit, and the mindset that helped him scale Ring from $400M to $4B in revenue. The hosts dig into his “snowball method,” how he spots overlooked trillion-dollar problems, why invention starts with real problems not tech, and what it takes to keep going when you're completely underwater.

Why I recommend it:
This episode is a masterclass in founder mindset — Jamie’s honesty about stress, setbacks, and obsession is rare, and his frameworks for idea generation, momentum, and hiring are directly applicable to any entrepreneur trying to build something meaningful. You can listen here.

✨ Inspiration

💬 Tweet of the Week

🎵 Song of the Week

🙏🏽 Scripture of the Week

That’s all for this week’s edition of The Good News Newsletter. We hope you found these insights valuable as you continue your journey to securing funding.

What’s next?

We are off next week for Thanksgiving but will be back the following Friday with more investors!

For session #1 we have Damian Murray, Investment Analyst at Level Up Ventures

​Level Up Ventures invests in tech-enabled, early-stage startups led by founders who have traditionally faced barriers to accessing capital.

For session #2 we have Arian Ghashghai, Founder & Managing Partner at Earthling VC

​Earthling VC is a pre-seed VC Firm investing in the next paradigm of digital technology with a focus on AR/VR, AI, & robotics.

If interested in joining and/or pitching, please register here.

You can see the full list of past and future VCs on this Calendar.

Be on the lookout for our newsletter next week where we’ll bring you more actionable advice, resources, and success stories.

Let’s All, spread ‘The Good News’

Best,
Darrel Frater
Co-Founder
The Frater Family Foundation
Linkedin | Twitter/X | 609-804-5999

P.S. - If you enjoyed this newsletter, forward it to a founder you know who could benefit from these insights!

P.S.S. - Fundraising and need intros to investors? Try our new tool, MeetAnyone.co.

About TFFF: The Frater Family Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the family office of Darrel and Roselly Frater, dedicated to promoting human prosperity through entrepreneurship. To learn more, reach out to Darrel Frater directly.