Equity fundraising advisory
Six stages, from thesis to term sheet.
Thesis, materials, investors and negotiation, run from the first contact to signing. Every stage ends in a concrete deliverable, and none starts before the previous one is in place.
Who it’s for
Every company is measured by a different yardstick.
Pitching the wrong investor burns the contact for the moment it would have made sense. The first step is knowing who your investor is and what they need to see.
Pre-seed, seed and Series A
Startups
“Does this repeat without you pushing it?”
- Proof required
- Team, traction, retention and unit economics that show the model scales.
- Who invests
- Angels, accelerators and venture capital funds.
- Where it weighs most
- Storytelling and pitch, unit economics in the model and active outreach to venture capital funds.
Expansion, new markets, acquisitions
Growth companies
“Where do I put in $1 and get $3 back?”
- Proof required
- Consistent revenue, healthy margins and a clear use-of-proceeds plan.
- Who invests
- Growth equity, family offices and minority private equity.
- Where it weighs most
- A financial model with a clear use of proceeds, the expansion thesis and governance negotiation with the new partner.
Mid-market, succession, new partners
Established companies
“Do these results hold without the founder?”
- Proof required
- Auditable results, governance and a business that runs beyond its owner.
- Who invests
- Private equity and strategic investors.
- Where it weighs most
- Due diligence readiness, governance and structuring the shareholders’ agreement with private equity or a strategic investor.
The process
Charm opens the door; process closes the deal.
Open each stage to see what happens and what you take away at the end of it.
01Diagnosis and landscape
What’s the real bottleneck: capital, channel, product or team? We decide whether equity is the right path, whether now is the time to raise, from whom (angels, venture capital, private equity, family offices, strategics) and by which yardstick you’ll be judged.
02Strategic planning and numbers
Market sizing without made-up numbers, competitive positioning, business model and KPIs with a source for every figure. Investors don’t want “we’re unique”; they want proof.
03Storytelling and pitch
Numbers inform, stories persuade. We build a narrative with the customer at the center and the thesis in four sentences, plus three materials, each with a different job.
04Active outreach
From cold list to term sheet: investors mapped and qualified before first contact, warm introductions, a follow-up cadence and a funnel measured stage by stage.
05Due diligence and data room
Due diligence doesn’t uncover problems; it uncovers surprises. We prepare everything so it confirms exactly what you already said, with liabilities disclosed and explained before they’re found.
06Term sheet and shareholders’ agreement
Two columns, one negotiation: economics (valuation, liquidation preference, option pool, anti-dilution) and control (board, reserved matters, tag, drag, vesting). Negotiate without burning the relationship.
The funnel
Fundraising is a sales funnel with a committee on the other side.
An illustrative round: from 250 investors mapped to 2 term sheets. If you don’t know these numbers, you discover the “no’s” in the dark.
Raw list · 250
Funds, angels, family offices and strategics whose thesis and ticket fit, mapped before the first email.
Qualified · 120
Filtered by thesis, stage, sector, ticket and portfolio. Anyone backing your direct competitor comes off the list.
Replied · 60
Warm introductions whenever possible and a follow-up cadence. The response rate tells you whether the message works.
First meetings · 35
Where the narrative is tested. Every “no” becomes data: three identical objections are a diagnosis.
Due diligence · 8
Where the numbers are tested. With the data room ready beforehand, diligence confirms what you already said.
Term sheets · 2
Two term sheets give you negotiating power. With only one, you accept the other side’s terms.
Illustrative numbers for a two-term-sheet target. On the home page you can adjust the target.
Deliverables
What you walk away with.
Materials that stay yours after the raise and shrink the risk discount investors would otherwise apply to you.
Thesis and numbers
- Fundraising diagnosis
- The right source of capital, investor profile, raise size and use of proceeds.
- Financial model and KPIs
- Projections with explicit assumptions, margins and cash generation; for startups, CAC, LTV, payback and cohorts.
Narrative
- Teaser, deck and appendix
- A teaser to get the meeting, a deck for the second meeting and an appendix for due diligence.
- Four-sentence pitch
- The pain, the solution, the proof and the ask, plus answers to the objections that will come up.
Outreach and relationships
- A/B/C investor map
- A list qualified by thesis, profile and ticket size, with an introduction path to each.
- CRM and funnel metrics
- Response rate, stage conversion, average time and reasons for each “no”, updated weekly.
- Monthly investor update
- Highlights, metrics, cash, challenges and asks: the best fundraising channel there is.
Diligence and negotiation
- Six-folder data room
- Corporate, financial, legal and tax, people, product and technology, commercial, with a Q&A log.
- Cap table and term sheet
- Pre- and post-money modeling, dilution across future raises and a clause-by-clause term sheet review.
Next step