30 useful tips if you're considering raising venture capital: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/10/what-i-learned-from-raising-venture-capital.html

Here are my favorite three.

1. Raise when you hit a significant milestone, to get to the next milestone.

"If you try to raise between significant milestones, unless you can show other reasons why you're killing it (the nice graph in our case), you're risking getting hit on valuation (or lack of funding) because your momentum is unclear and/or people can't perceive the real progress your making. On the other hand, after just reaching a milestone people care about, your momentum is large and people generally extrapolate what you're doing in your favor."

2. Be confident.

"Another reason I messed up my early pitches is I was a bit wishy-washy on how much I wanted to raise and what I would do with the funds. Bad idea. People like confidence. Perhaps it is a good idea to have those exploratory meetings ahead of time, but I learned they should not be combined with a pitch because it is just communicating either you're not serious or you're not ready."

3. Employ AngelList.

"I got significant value out of AngelList. Most importantly, I got high quality inbound requests from people I would have never gotten to otherwise."