Do You Actually Need an Advisor for Your Raise?

In my conversations over the last week, I’m seeing a lot of founders approach the idea of getting help on their raise incorrectly.

They ask "how much will this cost?" when the real question is "what problem am I actually trying to solve?" Because there are only three reasons to hire someone like us, and if none of them apply to you, you're better off keeping your money.

To address the obvious irony of this newsletter post:

• Yes, we are an advisory firm.

• Yes, we obviously want to work with great companies and help them achieve their funding goals.

• No, we are not a fit for everyone, not every company needs to hire an advisor, and this post will be the blatant truth about those two personas

Time Compression. 

If you have six months of runway and you're spending fifteen hours a week on investor outreach, the math gets dangerous fast.

Every hour you spend building spreadsheets of funds or chasing down warm intros is an hour you're not building your business. The question isn't whether you can do this yourself, it's whether you can afford to.

If you have eighteen months of runway and genuinely enjoy fundraising, you probably don't need help. If you're racing the clock and every week matters, you do.

Network Gaps. 

I talked to a European founder last week raising a Series A.

Great business, strong metrics, but he had zero relationships with US funds (which was where he was looking for the investor to be located).

He could either spend four months trying to build those relationships from scratch, or he could work with someone who already has them.

The test here is simple: can you name fifty funds that match your stage, sector, and geography who would take your call this week? If yes, you're probably fine. If no, you're going to waste a lot of time on outreach that goes nowhere.

The network gap is paying for speed. Some people need it, others do not.

Process. 

Most founders treat fundraising like networking instead of sales. They send a few emails, hope for responses, and wonder why nothing happens.

If you've never run a disciplined fundraising process before, you're going to make expensive mistakes. If you don’t have the time or the budget to make expensive mistakes, this can add up very fast.

If this is your second, third, or fourth institutional round and you've already figured out what works, you probably don't need someone to show you. Go to the people who’ve helped you in the past and spend your time there.

There is now pretty strong evidence across the board that working with an advisor DOES help increase funding outcomes (one recent example a friend sent to me), but that still doesn’t mean it’s for everyone.

Here's what I tell founders:

If you have time, strong relationships, and proven playbooks, you should absolutely do this yourself. But if any of those three things are missing, the cost of getting it wrong is higher than the cost of hiring help.

Hope this was helpful in how you evaluate your upcoming rounds. As always, please feel free to message me if I can be helpful in any way.

Ryan Bryden
Breakout Capital Group

If you have a customer LTV over $50k, and want to unlock 6-7 figures of pipeline from a new acquisition channel, check out our Revenue Advisory Offer.

If you’re raising $2-50M in the next 6 months and want guaranteed access to relevant investors to fill your round, check out our Capital Advisory Offer.