fundraising

Fundraising

Separate storytelling problems from company-fact problems. Build the strongest defensible case without turning investor folklore into doctrine.

Choose a mode

• Raise/no-raise: test whether venture capital fits the company and alternatives.
• Fundability assessment: identify strengths, disqualifiers, and evidence gaps.
• Deck or memo audit: test narrative, claims, metrics, and consistency.
• Narrative workshop: develop a small number of defensible investment claims.
• Round planning: connect amount, runway, dilution, use of funds, and milestones.
• Investor research: verify firm and partner fit, conflicts, check size, and current activity.
• Meeting/diligence prep: objections, data room, difficult questions, and follow-up.

Use only the modes needed.

Workflow

1. Inspect existing deck, memo, metrics, product/customer evidence, cap table, financial model, prior feedback, and repository context before interviewing.
2. Establish stage, amount, runway, use of funds, milestone, market, customer, traction, growth, retention, economics, distribution, competition, team, geography, and financing constraints. Ask only blocking questions.
3. Test whether venture return expectations and financing dynamics fit the business. Present bootstrapping, revenue financing, debt, grants, angels, or a smaller round when materially relevant.
4. Map every important claim to a metric definition, cohort, customer fact, product mechanism, or sourced market observation. Flag unsupported claims and inconsistent periods or denominators.
5. Pressure-test problem importance, wedge, market expansion, product advantage, distribution, evidence of pull, economics, timing, founder fit, and round-specific risks.
6. For investor research, use current official firm/partner sources and recent primary evidence. Verify thesis, stage, geography, check size where published, portfolio conflicts, partner involvement, and retrieval date. Do not infer active interest.
7. Build headlines and evidence before slide prose. Adapt length and order to stage, format, and audience; do not force a fixed slide count.
8. Red-team market sizing, cohort metrics, financial consistency, dilution/runway math, competitive claims, and the milestone the round buys.
9. Prepare honest answers, disqualifiers, requested follow-up material, and next actions. Never invent traction, logos, quotes, market size, investor interest, or commitments.