Things to do before you go out to raise
Your fundraise starts months before you actually raise
When you're building a company, everyone talks about fundraising like it starts when you send your first pitch deck.
That’s what I used to think and I was absolutely wrong.
Our $2.8M raise took about a year from start to close. Looking back, I think the real work started at least six months before we took a single meeting. And if I could do it all over again, that's exactly where I'd focus my energy.
Build the story before you tell it
Before we ever raised, we spent months focused on one thing: growing our user base.
We weren't thinking about fundraising yet. We were thinking about what would make the numbers impossible to ignore by the time we did.
That meant asking ourselves every month: are we still growing? Is the growth clear? Will an investor look at this and not need convincing? We were aiming for 30% MoM growth.
By the time we walked into our first meetings, the growth spoke for itself. We didn't have to sell momentum. We just had to show it. If you're planning to raise in six months, start there. Figure out which number will make this an obvious yes, and prioritize it.
Your relationships matter before you need them
Some of our best investor introductions came from other founders. Not from current investors or advisors as people would think.
Our lead investor intro came from another founder I'd reached out to on LinkedIn. I didn't ask him for an investor intro. I asked him to be an advisor. We built a relationship over months. When the time came to raise, he made the introduction that changed our entire raise.
That's how the best intros work. They come from people who already know you and believe in what you're building.
If I were doing it again, I'd build my dream VC list first. Then I'd figure out which founders are already in their portfolios. And I'd start building those relationships long before I needed anything from them.
Your personal brand is fundraising
By the time you start fundraising, investors have already Googled you. They've looked at your LinkedIn. They've looked at your company. They've probably formed an opinion before you ever walk into the meeting.
What surprised me was how much our social presence actually mattered during the raise. Multiple investors told us they felt like Frich was "everywhere". That wasn't because we had a massive marketing budget. It was because we had been consistently showing up on social media, sharing what we were building, what we were learning, and what we believed in.
That doesn't happen overnight. If I could go back, I'd start sharing company updates, lessons, and milestones even earlier. Not because it raises money directly. But because by the time you're in the room, investors already feel like they know you.
Get your data room done before anyone asks
Don't build your data room while you're fundraising. Build it before.
One of our biggest mistakes was delaying too many things until we were deep in the fundraising process. We were scrambling to organize financials and pull together docs while also trying to run the business and take investor meetings.
We ended up using DocSend, which made organizing everything much easier and gave us tracking visibility into who was actually reviewing our data room.
Looking back, I would've had the entire thing ready before the first meeting.
Practice on investors you can afford to lose
Your first few pitches won't be your best. Mine definitely weren't.
I'd intentionally take meetings with investors who weren't at the very top of my list. By the tenth meeting, you start hearing the same questions over and over again. That allows you to rewrite your pitch in a way that actually closes investors.
Then when you're in the room with your top targets, you actually feel confident and ready.
Make sure your business can handle what you're asking for
By the time you have a team of 10 or 100, investors aren't just evaluating growth. They're evaluating whether your company can actually handle more of it.
Looking back, I would've invested earlier in the operational stuff that makes growth easier instead of waiting until growth exposed the gaps. Internal workflows, standardized processes, reliable business tools like T-Mobile for Business Internet. The things that don't make it into investor updates but quietly determine whether your team is ready for scale.
I hope these lessons help you walk into your next fundraise feeling a little more prepared than I did.
