The Access Game: How Outsider Founders Get in the Room and Raise Venture Capital

A memoir and playbook by Mat Sherman

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Cover of The Access Game by Mat Sherman: a gold path rising through a branching network of navy nodes on a cream background.

I spent years building in Phoenix and hearing no from YC and the coastal funds.

The gap was never talent or traction. It was access.

Context can be taught.

Most of Silicon Valley’s rules are unwritten. They get passed down through private group chats, apprenticeships, and insider institutions. This book translates them for founders who cannot text a tier-one investor today.

Chapters One and Two

From Phoenix to the room

How a Phoenix native found Silicon Valley through the internet: a first startup, Y Combinator's early influence, landing Jason Calacanis as a first investor, and the company Eric Ries helped seed. It is optional reading, but it shows what moving inward actually takes.

Chapters Three and Four

The reality check

A warning before you start. The facts about raising venture capital are sobering, and proximity matters more than most founders admit. Then the real currency of tech, social capital: who knows you, who will vouch for you, and what every introduction costs.

Chapters Five and Six

Before the raise

The fundamentals: whether to raise at all, how much, how to price it, SAFEs versus priced rounds, the one-liner and the deck. Then node stacking, a way to build a network of advocates through accelerators, events, Twitter, and time in SF.

Chapters Seven and Eight

Running the raise

What to do and how to talk once you are in the middle of a process: mapping your network, managing intros, winning the meeting, getting the wire. Includes a one-year timeline from zero to a closed round, and the mistakes first-time founders make most often.

Chapter Nine and the Conclusion

The missing node

My take on what is actually broken about breaking in, why the obvious fixes did not work, and why I built MatCap the way I did. The book ends with a request: once you are in, hold the door open for the next outsider.

Contents

  1. Prologue
  2. Introduction: Little Did I Know4 sections
    • Why Me
    • How This Book Is Structured
    • Don't Skip Ahead
    • This Book Is a Time Stamp
  3. Chapter One: Know Thy Maximum6 sections
    • Seek the Global Maximum
    • Starting From Phoenix
    • My First Startup Idea
    • Y Combinator's Early Influence
    • Down the Rabbit Hole
    • My Second College Startup: Schmooz
  4. Chapter Two: Finding the Global Maximum13 sections
    • Quitting My Job
    • Getting My First Customers
    • Bringing Y Combinator to Arizona
    • Lightning in a Bottle
    • Startup School and Pioneer
    • Landing Jason Calacanis as My First Investor
    • Silicon Valley Royalty
    • How to Burn $100,000
    • Slipping Through YC's Window
    • The Invisible Scout
    • Prenda and COVID
    • Learning From Eric
    • Seedscout
  5. Chapter Three: Read This Before You Raise6 sections
    • Your First Warning
    • Profitability Is Not a Strategy
    • The Paradox of Conforming (and Standing Out)
    • Proximity Is King
    • The Best Time to Plant a Seed Was Ten Years Ago…
    • Don't Hate the Player (or the Game)
  6. Chapter Four: Intro to Social Capital8 sections
    • The PayPal Mafia
    • The Outsider Tax
    • Don't Be a Project
    • The Anatomy of an Introduction
    • Not All Intros Are Created Equal
    • Every Intro Costs Social Capital
    • When Direct Outreach Is Okay
    • You Are a Pawn
  7. Chapter Five: Fundraising Fundamentals12 sections
    • Should You Be Raising Money at All?
    • The Players: Angels and VCs
    • Understanding Rounds
    • Raising After You've Bootstrapped
    • What Happens When You Ignore Rounds
    • How Much Should You Raise?
    • How to Price Your Company
    • SAFEs, Convertible Notes, and Priced Rounds: How Do You Actually Raise?
    • AngelList, RUVs, and Syndicates
    • Create a Good One-Liner
    • Get a Well-Designed Pitch Deck
    • The Components of a Great Deck
  8. Chapter Six: Node Stacking8 sections
    • Accelerators and Programs
    • Events
    • Twitter
    • Build a Media Asset
    • Spend Time in SF
    • Work Somewhere That Compounds
    • Turn Contacts Into Nodes
    • When You're Ready to Raise Money
  9. Chapter Seven: Fundraising Tactics8 sections
    • Mapping Your Network and Making the Ask
    • Managing Intros
    • Winning the Meeting
    • Getting the Wire
    • Keep the Pressure On
    • Closing the Round
    • Zero to Closed: A One-Year Timeline
    • When the Raise Stalls
  10. Chapter Eight: Fundraising Mistakes Every First-Time Founder Makes10 sections
    • Setting Arbitrary Minimum Check Sizes
    • Holding Out for a Lead You Don't Need
    • Ignoring VCs' Ownership Targets
    • Taking More Money by Default
    • Stacking SAFEs Without Doing the Math
    • Making Traction the Headline
    • Asking Why When an Investor Says No
    • Bragging About a $0 CAC
    • Fudging the Numbers
    • Who's Telling You to Think Bigger, and Why?
  11. Chapter Nine: The Missing Node6 sections
    • Access Is the Constraint
    • Why the System Works This Way
    • The Fixes That Didn't Fix It
    • The Capital Paradox
    • A Social Capital Bank for Outsiders
    • Why MatCap Is Built This Way
  12. Conclusion: Hold the Door Open
  13. Appendix: 100 Accounts to Follow

Also inside: Glossary, Resources, Acknowledgments, About the Author, and Notes.

About the author

Mat Sherman is the founder and general partner of MatCap, an advisory-first pre-seed venture firm. He has spent more than a decade in the startup ecosystem, and since 2020 has worked to bring the advantages of the Bay Area to founders everywhere else.

He has made thousands of founder and investor introductions and works with more than 100 funds. Before MatCap he founded PubLoft and Seedscout, and worked at Product Hunt. He hosts the Forward Thinking Founders podcast.

A Phoenix-area native and Arizona State graduate, he lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.

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