The Biggest Quality Killing Your Raise as a Founder

As founders / leaders / owners of a company, we pride ourselves on being resilient, scrappy, and hard-working to get things done.

In the world of early-stage teams, this comes with having your hand in lots of departments, and wanting control over every part of the business.

I had a conversation with someone yesterday looking to raise their seed round and this was his situation:

• Been “passively” fundraising for 2-2.5 years

• Company is finally in a good spot traction-wise (contracts lined up, partnerships built)

• Wants to have the full round raised by end of November

• Great momentum, has had good intro conversations, but network is tapped out

• Has budget to get help with the round

But despite all of this, the founder is still thinking about doing it themselves.

“I can just put in a few more hours after my work day and that way I can save on paying someone to do it.”

The biggest threat to getting your round raised properly, and on time, is your need for control in your business.

That’s the trap.

You tell yourself you’ll “just carve out a few hours a night” to run your fundraise. You want every email written in your tone. Every list reviewed. Every call vetted. You move slowly, because it has to be your way. You make decisions on feel, not data.

And instead of building a real pipeline, you end up piecing together one-off intros and half-finished decks that drag on past your close date, and you wonder where it all went wrong as your runway shortens right in front of your eyes.

Being able to build a proper investor pipeline requires full-time attention and focus.

And one of the biggest problems I’ve seen from early stage founding teams is not trusting anyone else but themselves to help.

You have a team to lead.
A product to develop and improve.
Customers to serve and provide for.

It likely isn’t the best use of your time to be focused on how to automate an investor follow-up email.

But it might be ours.

I hope this makes you reflect a little bit on how you’re approaching your raise and if you might be in your own way. It takes a great founder to realize their time could be spent best on other areas.

Thanks for reading,

Ryan
Founder @ Breakout

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