Welcome to Founding Journey 👋
I'm Michael Houck, the founder.
So what is Founding Journey about?
I'm here to help you build, grow, and raise capital for your startup.
You’ll get two emails from me each week:
Tuesdays
My favorite finds of the week:
Startup opportunity
Framework
Useful tool
Emerging trend
Quote
Curated links
Saturdays
Tactical deep dives on:
Fundraising
Growth / GTM
Leadership
Founder psychology
Finding PMF
Scaling
Plus I’ll occasionally share interviews with founders like Tyler Denk from beehiiv, Sam Corcos from Levels, and Steven Galanis from Cameo over on my YouTube channel (I also post some other startup-related videos there, like this one):
Each are all signal and no noise.
I share the exact learnings, tactics, and strategies that actually help founders build successful startups.
You’ll get value no matter whether you’re venture-backed, bootstrapped, or just looking to learn about startups.
Founding Journey’s mission is to make you a smarter founder in 5 minutes or less.
It’s the newsletter I wish was out there when I first became a founder.
Why should you trust me?
I founded Launch House — we raised $15 million, including a Series A led by a16z, and grew the company to over $3 million in revenue.
Simultaneously we raised a venture fund where I made over 50+ investments in early stage startups.
Now I run Rye Valley, a holding company that includes this newsletter and also…
Fundraising Case Study Library | Get Them Here
There’s no better way to learn about fundraising than to read what actually worked, and what didn’t, from founders who’ve done it successfully.
But most founders don’t share the insider story of their fundraise publicly.
Until now.
I’ve interviewed over 100 founders who’ve collectively raised $500 million from investors like Y Combinator, a16z, and Sequoia — and I’ve turned those conversations into case studies with new ones being added every week.
You’ll get lifetime access to:
Every case study & weekly deep dive
My takeaways from each podcast episode
My private founder community (300+ members)
My database of over 1,800+ pitch decks
Workshops & firesides
$60,000+ in software perks for your startup
My course on how to set the right valuation
Megaphone
Megaphone is how we help founders build their influence, audience, and revenue for their startup through LinkedIn, X, and newsletters.
After building my own audience to over 100k, I realized success with audience building comes down to a combination of quality content and timely, relevant engagement.
Megaphone helps with both:
Have big creators from our network engage with your content and amplify it to their audiences
Work directly with me and my team to build a content strategy and produce weekly batches for your accounts
Talk soon,
— Houck
