💵 Fundraising doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
The best raises start months before the round opens. Preparing diligence materials, tightening your metrics, and engaging with investors early ensures you hit the ground running instead of scrambling under pressure.
🔥 Strike while the iron is hot.
Timing matters. Align your raise with a strong growth month, customer wins, or a big product milestone to create urgency and FOMO—investors move faster when they see momentum..
🥱 Don’t passively raise.
Treat fundraising like a campaign, not a side project. Go all-in while you’re in market, and if you’re not building momentum, pause and reset rather than burning time and energy on a stalled process.
📊 Efficiency > “growth at all costs”
The bar has shifted. Investors now prioritize healthy CAC payback, gross margins, and burn rates. Demonstrating discipline shows you can scale sustainably and protect your runway.
🙆🏽♀️ Customers are now diligence resources.
VCs are talking directly to your users. Line up customer references in advance and remove churned or unhappy logos from your site so that diligence calls reinforce, not contradict, your story.