How To Fundraise Venture Capital

How to run a strong fundraising process

Phase 1: Prepare Deal Information

2-4 Weeks

Gotta start somewhere (seriously, this is where you start)

Ok, so you’ve gone from the ideation stage to having an actual product, and you’re engaging with potential customers on a meaningful level. You’re starting to see a long-term vision that involves market disruption and billion-dollar value caps. Surely, investors are going to want to take that journey with you, right?

Listen to us: don’t jump ahead. Startup investors get thousands of emails a week and look at hundreds of pitches each month, so if you want to get their attention, you have to be very strategic. And that starts with planning.

Founders must dedicate themselves to preparing quality underlying documents at the very outset of the fundraising process. This is not an administrative step. It’s a vision quest, and it’s going to take at least somewhere between weeks and months to get it right.

Start by building a financial model, and think of it as a data-based and forward-looking business plan. The model is a summary of the future in numbers, from pathway to market to product pricing, and it is chock full of information that you absolutely must know. Crucially, it will lay bare the amount of money you need to raise, and the specific purpose of that cash.

It will also lead into the pressing question of terms. How much equity are you willing to sell, how are you determining the value of that equity and how do you set yourself up to raise more in the future? You have to understand both the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of fundraising before you hit the negotiating table, and we recommend you nail down these answers before you start any formal discussions with potential investors.

That’s just the beginning. You need a clean, defensible table of the existing equity owners in your company. You must develop a pitch deck that you’re prepared to deliver/defend on a moment’s notice. Finally, we recommend building a plan around marketing and business development. Who’s doing it and what is the message they’re trying to convey?

From building your data room, creating a strong financial model, understanding acceptable terms for a round at your stage, cleaning up your cap table, crafting your pitch deck, to storytelling, and more. Strong preparation is the best precursor to a successful fundraising process. Our checklist will ensure your company's fundraising process is set up for smooth sailing.

Think of this as the context or the scaffolding of the eventual ask. Our software tools drive motivated entrepreneurs toward preparedness. Our experience suggests they’ll lean on every ounce of that initial proactivity.

Phase 2: Prospecting the right investors

1-2 Weeks

Fundraising is about cultivating personal relationships, and this is the exact moment where existing CRMs go from inefficient to actively damaging your raise. If you simply create an email list with automated follow-ups and then spam every investor in the known world, you’re guaranteed to lose people’s interest.

Fundraising is about establishing and then leveraging personal relationships, which means founders need mechanisms for warm introductions but also a scalable process that supports them through hundreds of conversations.

That starts with a robust and targeted list that includes people in your existing network and investors that share common interests and connections. It continues with managing those conversations as you turn prospects into commits.

Remember, nobody invests in someone they met yesterday. But when you have a procedural sense of direction, then you’ll be ready for the moment that email hits your inbox, and someone’s saying to you “We’d like to learn more.”

Finding the right investors for your company, market, and stage can make all the difference in your fundraising journey. We will use the Finta Investor tracker as your investor CRM to provide mission control for research and investor outreach, all in one place.

Phase 3: Running a deal outreach process

8-12 Weeks

Sticking to an 8-12 week window, you will start your investor outreach using warm introductions, the best way to actually get meetings. Most founders need to take over 100 meetings to close their round of financing, so remember to keep going after your first few objections! In fact, we will learn how to systematically track your objections to ensure each successive pitch is even better than the one before it. No deal is done until the money is in the bank. We will work to maintain momentum with your round using a condensed schedule of meetings to close your round.

Finta

At Finta, we are committed to improving how founders find, connect with, and secure the resources they need to bring their ideas to life. By leveraging our cutting-edge technology and AI-powered fundraising copilot, we aim to make the fundraising process more efficient and accessible to all. As you embark on your fundraising journey, we hope the knowledge shared in this article will help you find the right investors and successfully navigate the complex world of venture capital.

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