The Ultimate Fundraising Checklist
The ultimate guide to help you get ready for fundraising.
Before you fundraise, there are lots of preparations and documents you need to get ready.
This fundraising checklist will act as a guide to help you get ready and not panic the day before (we all know how it’ll feel)
Preparation
Before anything, ask yourself why you want to fundraise. Fundraising is a long and challenging process, you will experience a lot of nos before a few yesses. Are you ready to fundraise? Is your business idea working? What are you looking for in an investor?
These questions will help give you a better idea of whether you actually need to fundraise or not. If the answer is yes, then move on to the next step.
Check the technical details
Who is going to be in charge of the fundraising? How much are you going to raise? How are you going to raise? Make sure you and the team are ready, and discuss how much equity you’re willing to give to your investors.
Get your documents ready
This is probably the longest time you’ll be spending. The most important one is your pitch and your pitch deck. Practise pitching in front of friends, family, founder friends etc. Practise in different scenarios and be prepared to get roasted by VCs. To get you ready, practise with this common investor question google sheet.
You would also need to finalise your financial model. If you aren’t sure how to create one, check out this article for a step-by-step guide.
Your fundraising process
Create a list of possible investors and an investor CRM. Create a contact strategy for each investor - personalise your intro instead of mass sending generalised emails. Ask for advice from previous founders and warm intros if possible.
Term negotiation
When negotiating, you need to mentally change the role to understand what investors are looking for. Go through your term sheet with lawyers, other founders or public examples. Model your cap table and potential exit scenarios with current terms.
Closing the deal
The final step! Choose the investors you want to work with. Prepare the contracts and get the legal documents signed. Celebrate with your team 🎉 You deserve it after all the hard work!
Click here for the interactive fundraising checklist. Created by Max at BaseTemplates.
Conclusion
Here is a Linkedin post I wrote about, which summarises the key areas necessary in preparation leading up to fundraising👇
Download the pdf version here 👇
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