In this newsletter edition I’ve got a little gift for you.

You see, most founders have poor fundraising preparation.
I've seen this back as a VC and I see it now.

This is exactly why in my thesis about a successful fundraise, PREPARATION is the foundation, the cornerstone which makes your effort of raising money 10-20x easier.

There’s a ton of things you can’t control during fundraising, but one of the few things which you can control in the process is how well you prepare before you kick-off the campaign.

With every 1-1 consulting client (founder) I work with, we spent a big chunk of our time together on preparation.

We prepare the company - fix any red flags, get a good trajectory on the traction, align with the team, build our narrative and generally, as a mentor of mine used to say “get the house in order”.

We prepare the materials - imagine investor deck, elevator pitch, a well structured data room with a financial model, market and competitor deep dives, product information, past performance numbers and so on.

We prepare the investor outreach campaign - a defined Ideal Investor Profile, investor lists to match this profile, well structured outreach emails, Superconnector and warm intro lists, a CRM to track the process, etc.

The alternative is to jump into investor conversations without good preparation which will cost you lots of stress, wasted time and you’ll most likely fail at raising money.

To make your process of fundraising prep a bit easier, I’ve got a little gift for you:

I’m sharing with you the exact “44-Item Pre-Raise Prep Checklist” which I use with my 1-1 consulting clients.

You can grab it totally free as a subscriber of my newsletter.

Two versions. Whichever works best for you.

I hope this checklist helps.

That’s all for this week.

See you again on a Thursday soon.