If you want to raise money from friends and family, then know this: Your job isn't just to pitch them a great business. It's to lower their risk.

That's advice from Mike Maples Jr., one of the most celebrated investors in Silicon Valley and coauthor of a book about why startups succeed called Pattern Breakers. He's a cofounder of Floodgate, a leading pre-seed and seed-stage fund whose investments included Twitter (long before it was known as X), Twitch, and Lyft. And although he's not investing in mom-and-pop shops, he says that the fundamentals of fundraising remain the same. Here, Maples takes you into the mind of any investor — even if it's your dad or sister — and how to make them comfortable.

Related: The Right Way to Ask Someone for a Million Dollars, According to a Fundraiser Who Does It For a Living

Let's imagine someone can't afford to........

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