How to raise a seed round

Raising a seed round is your first “official” experience securing capital from institutional investors. I fully appreciate how intimidating this can feel: you’re pitching your company to professional investors who’ve likely been doing deals for years, while you’re probably doing this for the very first time. Having sat on both sides of the table—as a former venture capitalist (VC), and as someone who has raised money from VCs alongside the founders at Northflank—I wrote this post to demystify the seed-round process.

Rather than just offering generic definitions, I’ve tried to provide a clear, opinionated guide on the topics you actually care about: how much money to raise, how to handle board seats, how to construct a compelling narrative, understanding the investor landscape, running the fundraising process, and more. My goal here is to cut through the noise, clearly lay out what matters (and why), and leave you more confident about how to raise a seed round.

Think of seed funding as the first “real” money you raise after maxing out credit cards, ramen budgets, and maybe a few angel checks. It’s typically the first encounter with institutional investors — the official term for venture capitalists (VCs) who invest in startups for a living.

In theory, you should raise enough to reach your next milestone, plus some padding (we’ll talk milestones shortly). In practice, the amount you raise and how much dilution you accept is largely driven by market norms. Whether you raise more or less, or take more or less dilution, depends heavily on factors like category heat (yes, AI is hot hot hot), the category itself (defense or security startups typically have bigger upfront costs), founder backgrounds, and honestly, what everyone else around you is doing.

Fortunately, markets are generally efficient enough that you’ll usually get the capital you actually need. This is all a long way of saying that whether you’re raising seed capital in the US or Europe, it’s market forces—more than your spreadsheet—that shape your seed-round dynamics. Speaking of spreadsheets, skip the detailed financial model. At this stage, you’re deep in fairy-dust territory, so don’t burn calories stacking predictions on top of assumptions, on top of guesses. Seed investors won’t rely on detailed forecasts—and neither should you.

Yes, I’m sure you’ve read about the splashy AI rounds where founders raise tens or even hundreds of millions at seed. While these rounds are typical for the news cycle, they're atypical in a fundraising context.

Price round vs SAFE/Convertible

There are two main ways you’ll raise your seed round: a priced (equity) round or a convertible round (SAFEs or convertible notes). Both SAFEs and notes convert into equity at a future financing round, but notes are technically debt instruments with maturity dates and interest, while SAFEs are simpler and cleaner—largely thanks to our friends at Y Combinator (aka YC).

As a rule of thumb: if you’re raising less than $3M, stick with a non-priced round (usually a SAFE). Between $3M and $5M, it’s more of a coin toss, and above $5M, an equity round starts to make sense.

One quick gotcha: convertible instruments typically have a discount (often around 20%) that kicks in upon conversion. This means your actual dilution can be higher than you’d initially expect. For example, if your SAFE converts at a Series A priced at $20M, a 20% discount means your seed investors convert as if the valuation was only $16M, giving them more ownership than you might have anticipated.

Yes, I did say your raise size is largely driven by market norms, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have your own hypothesis on how much capital you’ll actually need. Especially as a first-time founder, it’s important to remember that the more you raise, typically the greater dilution you’ll face.

The market doesn’t have a single fixed price (remember, I shared ranges earlier), and there’s a meaningful difference between raising $3M versus $6M. Your goal at seed is to secure enough funding to reach the next milestone: your Series A.

At that next stage, investors want evidence of product-market fit — that you’re building something people clearly want. The best way to demonstrate this is by showing that customers are willing to pay for your product and invest their time adopting it.

So the real question becomes: what does it actually take to prove your thesis about market demand for your solution?

At the seed stage, nearly all your capital goes toward talent. Separately, keep in mind that momentum matters—a lot. Sure, you could theoretically raise a tiny seed round, hole up alone in your spare bedroom, and spend six years building the perfect product, but investors would quickly raise eyebrows at your lack of momentum.

Your goal should be meaningful, visible progress within 12–18 months. So, deciding how much to raise boils down to figuring out exactly who you’ll need to hire to ship a compelling product and land your first paying customers within that timeframe.

Add extra runway for safety, because you definitely don’t want (or need) your bank account balance anywhere close to zero, consider the VC market dynamics for a company like yours, and that’s your raise calculation.

Milestone-backwards math

1. Write down the next proof-point that unlocks Series A (e.g., “$1M ARR” or “first 10 enterprise logos”).
2. Estimate the burn to get there and add 30% “oops, I gotta pivot” margin.
3. Make sure that buys 18–24 months of runway so you’re not fundraising in panic mode.

Dilution sanity check

• 10 – 20% dilution at seed keeps enough equity for later rounds.
• If investors want >20%, push back: either raise less or find a different investor.

Three common scenarios

Bottom line: Raise just enough to hit the milestone that makes the next check obvious, keep dilution in the ~15% range, and pick the fundraising instrument that matches the amount of capital you’re raising. If your roadmap doesn’t actually need $5M, don’t raise it. Cash is never free—every dollar has dilution and expectation strings attached.

This could easily be its own blog post, and every investor has their own criteria. Like an orchestra, the quality of the team depends on its composition. Each founder needs to have a role that directly aligns with the company they want to build and the market they aim to dominate.

Before joining Northflank, I was actually one of its investors. Northflank is a deeply technical product that’s creating a category where none previously existed. Category creation is uniquely challenging because there aren’t clear reference points for incremental improvement—instead, you’re crafting a new definition of what’s possible. This places significant importance on being product-minded: the ability to clearly identify core problems and translate those insights into innovative solutions that stand out due to their novelty and effectiveness.

Building a technical product aimed at a technical audience demands exceptional expertise. In Northflank’s co-founders, I saw this balance perfectly. Will Stewart (CEO) brings deep intuitions about the problem space, while Frederik Brix (CTO) has the technical acumen to bring these insights to life. While their roles naturally overlap—as both actively shape and develop the product—it was immediately clear to me how well these two complemented each other.

Investors ultimately try to forecast your likelihood of success in a world where most startups fail. They need to believe you’ll validate your hypothesis around a widespread problem that customers desperately need solved. They want proof you can build early momentum. And they need to believe you’ll evolve into the CEO and leaders your company requires at each stage, because running a 5-person startup is vastly different from managing 50 or 500 people.

While exceptions exist, the sweet spot is typically 2–3 founders (usually two), complemented by at least 2–3 strong early hires. Those early hires signal that you’ve convinced talented people—who could easily opt for safer, more cushy jobs—to risk their livelihoods alongside you. Ultimately, startups are talent acquisition and activation games, and demonstrating you can recruit great talent gives investors confidence you can win these games again and again.

Being a solo founder isn’t a deal-breaker. It just raises the bar. You’ll overcome most investor concerns if you demonstrate that you can recruit top talent. Like I mentioned earlier, proving you can win the talent game matters.

That said, don’t rush into adding a co-founder just because you think it’ll help fundraising. Your responsibility as CEO is to feed your company what it needs, so only bring on a co-founder if you believe doing so meaningfully improves probability of success.

And don’t overlook the human side: it really is lonely at the top. A co-founder gives you someone to argue with at 1 a.m., celebrate surprise wins, and commiserate over the inevitable “we-just-lost-our-biggest-logo” moments. That emotional ballast alone can be worth 20 points of equity.

Hot take: most seed-stage “advisory boards” are presentation glitter. Unless you’re working on deep tech (e.g., robotics, semiconductors, biomedical LLMs), a marquee advisor granting you two hours a month won’t meaningfully move the needle—or impress VCs who’ve seen the same faces recycled across decks.

If you do have a genuine skills gap you can’t hire for yet, then fine—bring in a hands-on advisor with a clear, time-boxed deliverable. Otherwise, pour that energy into hiring or contracting real contributors and let your slide real estate showcase the team that’s actually shipping product.

Your seed round is almost entirely about narrative. VCs will assess your ability to distill unique insights about a market into a clear, credible plan for capturing value. Doing this effectively requires understanding the fundamental difference between how founders and investors think.

Founders naturally gravitate toward tactical execution: deciding what to build next, figuring out how to sell it, and navigating real-world constraints.

Investors, on the other hand, think in broader themes: Which market forces indicate this is a valuable problem to solve? What do these founders see that others overlook? How durable are these trends, and are the founders uniquely positioned to tackle them?

Your tactics alone don’t form the narrative. Your job is to explain why this category matters and why your team is uniquely poised to dominate it.

A strong narrative clearly answers three questions:

1. What specific problems exist, and who exactly has them?
2. Why are these problems urgent and painful enough that people are desperate to solve them?
3. What does winning look like if your company successfully solves these problems?

Features matter, but they’re implementation details, not the story itself.

Instead, weave these three elements into a clear, linear narrative. Highlight any observable or impending market shifts that strengthen your case, and avoid vague or empty abstractions.

When I invested in Northflank, the narrative was clear: Kubernetes is powerful but unusable for most teams. Developer platforms promised solutions but became bloated toolkits and internal science projects.

Northflank’s insight is that infrastructure shouldn’t be fully abstracted. It should be synthesized with more powerful and usable primitives. The entire post-commit process—building, deploying, scaling, and monitoring—should feel like one seamless system, not a patchwork of tools. Unlike platforms like Heroku that attempt to remove complexity, Northflank absorbs it. It’s not “Heroku but better,” it’s more like “Kubernetes without tears.”

Most platforms have an expiration date: workloads scale, needs evolve, and teams eventually outgrow them. Northflank is explicitly designed to avoid that graduation. It scales with you, enabling workload complexity without infrastructure complexity. And since it runs in your own cloud (managed or on-premise), Northflank delivers better economics without added complexity. It’s the anti-graduation platform, the one you’ll never outgrow.

Notice how it grabs you. The co-founders of Northflank presented this narrative with such clarity that we knew their vision of the future was worth betting on.

It’s easy for founders to assume that what’s obvious to them is also clear to investors. But even if investors know your space well, they rarely share your precise vision of the future you’re aiming to build. Sure, some categories feel familiar and straightforward, yet even those require you to demonstrate why your approach creates a unique advantage and why your team is uniquely positioned to capture market share.

Ultimately, your startup represents a bet on the future. Your job is to show investors clearly why that future is worth betting on.

Start with a narrative and work backwards. Whether you write a memo or create a slide deck should depend entirely on what helps you best tell your story:

• Memo (Rippling, Amazon style): when depth beats design
• Slide deck (more common; here’s Front’s and Airbnb’s): keep it fewer than 10-slides

First things first: your sales deck isn’t your fundraising deck. With that out of the way, let’s put ourselves in a VC’s shoes—they care most about understanding how investing in your company will generate a meaningful financial return for their fund. Investors hunt for patterns that signal non-linear growth potential.

Beyond answering the three questions in the previous section, make sure your narrative also covers why you, why now, and what’s happening.

• Why you? What makes your company uniquely positioned to tackle this problem?
• Why now? What recent changes or developments make it possible to solve this problem now?
• What’s happening? Are there macro trends that will accelerate your company’s growth and success?

Your answer to “why you?” should focus on three core elements: your team, your specific approach or product, and the broader context of your market. Explain clearly why existing solutions fall short, why a potentially large market hasn’t yet emerged (but now could), and why previous attempts to solve this problem have failed. Whether you address this across multiple slides, in a detailed memo, or distill it down to a single slide is entirely your call—it’s your story, and telling it convincingly is your job.

In Northflank’s case, they provided both. They wrote a memo AND a deck for their seed round and let investors choose their own adventure.

You might be wondering: “Isn’t this blog about seed rounds, why mention much larger funds?” Because big funds regularly invest at seed, too. Even funds managing $40 billion or more (assets under management, or AUM) happily write seed checks.

So, how do you choose? The simplest answer is: choose the individual investor rather than the fund. But there’s an important caveat. One valuable “feature” of a VC fund is the brand it lends your company. Certain VC brands act as strong positive signals for future investors, talent, and customers. In my experience, this brand value mostly matters to other VCs (who care a lot), somewhat to talent (who care sometimes), and barely registers with customers (who might hear about your company from your VCs).

But make no mistake: a prestigious VC brand doesn’t guarantee your company’s success. Be careful about assuming that just because a large VC could theoretically fund your company from seed through IPO, they actually will. While these investors will likely participate in future rounds, they often won’t lead them. In the short term, VCs are measured by their markups—valuations that look far more credible when set by other investors. This dynamic creates a signaling risk: if your seed investor doesn’t invest meaningfully in future rounds (especially their core stage, like growth), other investors will immediately wonder, “What do the insiders know that I don’t?” Although signaling risk isn’t fatal and can be overcome, it’s real enough to factor into your decision-making.

Larger funds often provide platform teams—specialists who can help you with recruiting, developing your sales playbook, PR, executive hiring, customer introductions, M&A, and more. These teams typically include highly talented individuals. But keep in mind, while they can support you, you’re ultimately responsible for doing the work. They can’t build your company for you. In my experience, these platform resources become increasingly valuable from Series A onwards.

Angel investors are usually high-net-worth individuals who invest personal capital into early-stage startups. They typically write smaller checks—anywhere from a few thousand up to a few hundred thousand dollars—and invest very early, often before or alongside institutional VCs.

Broadly speaking, angels come in three flavors:

• Operator angels: These are individuals who’ve built, scaled, or exited companies themselves. They’re founders, senior engineers, growth marketers, or product leaders. Operator angels can be genuinely valuable because they’ve been in your shoes recently and can provide tactical advice or introductions based on direct, relevant experience.
• Celebrity angels: These angels carry significant name recognition—think professional athletes, entertainers, or famous tech executives. They typically provide less operational support but can lend credibility, generate media buzz, and sometimes unlock access to networks outside typical startup circles. Their value is usually more about signal and PR than day-to-day help.
• Angel syndicates: Syndicates are groups of angels who pool their capital together, often led by one or two respected investors. Platforms like AngelList popularized syndicates, enabling angels to write larger combined checks. Syndicates simplify your fundraising by reducing the complexity of managing many individual investors, though you often lose the personal connection you’d have with individual angels.

Ostensibly, angels provide mentorship, industry introductions, or operational advice. But here’s a former investor’s hot take: the main value angels offer is validation. In other words, their decision to invest signals credibility. For example, if you’re building an AI company, an angel check from Yann LeCun, Fei-Fei Li, Demis Hassabis, or Sam Altman acts as a powerful stamp of approval.

Yet for every founder who tells me their angels are indispensable, there are a dozen who barely recall who their angels are. As spicy as it sounds, my advice is usually to skip angel investors and keep your cap table clean. Each additional investor adds overhead—more signatures to chase, more data requests to answer, and greater complexity as your shareholder list expands. While I genuinely respect the pay-it-forward mentality many angels embrace (especially considering most angel investments go to zero), the reality is that most founders don’t effectively activate or engage their angels. Unless you have a clear plan to leverage specific angels, it might be simpler—and smarter—to skip them altogether.

Should you bring angels onto your cap table anyway, here’s how I’d suggest activating each type effectively:

• Operator angels – Put them to work helping you hire. For example, if you’ve raised from a well-known CRO, ask them to help interview your first sales hire. If you’ve got a notable engineer, tap them for your first engineering hire. Operator angels know firsthand what great talent looks like, and they can help you avoid costly early mistakes.
• Celebrity angels – Leverage their audience and personal brand for distribution. Ask them explicitly to promote your product—ideally on social media, podcasts, or at relevant events. Their primary value is visibility and validation, so make sure you capture and amplify it.
• Angel syndicates – Similar to celebrity angels, try to tap their reach and audience. Syndicates often boast large networks, which can help with visibility or introductions. However, in practice, syndicates typically create distance between you and individual members, making direct asks harder to land. You’ll need to rely heavily on the syndicate lead, so set clear expectations upfront about promotion or distribution help.

At Northflank, we opted for operator angels, including David Cramer (Co-founder & CPO of Sentry), Scott Johnston (former CEO of Docker), Oskari Saarenmaa (Co-founder & CEO of Aiven), and Alexis Le-Quoc (Co-founder & CTO of Datadog). Their experience building companies for technical buyers has made them exceptionally valuable resources. We also have one “celebrity angel,” Ian Livingstone, who hosts a podcast and has notably helped us secure multiple customer introductions.

Accelerators and pre-seed programs are structured cohorts designed to quickly move you from early idea to a business with meaningful traction. They typically bundle mentorship, networking, and resources alongside a modest investment (usually $100k to $500k) in exchange for equity—typically 5–10%. Most accelerators run for about 3–6 months, wrapping up with a “Demo Day” where you pitch your company to a roomful of investors. The big-name programs you’re probably familiar with include Y Combinator, Project Europe, Arc, and Entrepreneur First.

Should you consider accelerators? Hot-take time: probably not. The main selling point for accelerators is their network—particularly in the case of Y Combinator. YC genuinely creates momentum and opens doors through a stellar alumni network that actively helps each other grow—adopting each other’s products, facilitating warm intros, and generally providing a supportive founder community.

But here are two big reasons why I’d recommend skipping accelerators:

1. Equity cost: Giving up 5–10% equity is expensive, especially for a network you’ll likely struggle to fully leverage. Networks can be powerful, but founders often find it harder than expected to meaningfully activate those connections.
2. Curriculum value: While accelerator programs generally offer thoughtful, structured guidance, their curriculum won’t be what prevents your company from failing. Realistically, founders succeed or fail based on execution—not classroom-style guidance, however well-intentioned. That’s not to say all accelerators are equal. The good ones won’t push a curriculum on you, they’ll act more like partners. Here’s the cash, we’re here if you want to consult us on anything.

That said, if you’re starting with zero network, no ties to tech hubs, no friends in startups, no investor intros, then a top-tier accelerator can be a legitimate unlock. In those cases, go for prestige. Ones like YC will open far more doors than second-tier programs ever could.

Northflank went through The Family, a Europe-based accelerator, and it made a huge difference early on. Without it, they wouldn’t have raised their $250k angel round or $2M pre-seed, the team at The Family made all the intros. Will and Fred had been building infrastructure since they were teenagers, spinning up game servers and writing custom tooling before most people their age had touched a VPS. But they’d never raised money before.

The Family didn’t teach them how to build Northflank—they already knew what they wanted to build—but it gave them the early exposure to investors, helped them figure out how much to raise, and made sure they didn’t walk into rookie traps. It made their first round thoughtful and well-supported.

Like I said earlier, the single most important rule in fundraising is pick the partner, not the firm. The partner you choose will represent 90%+ of your interactions with the fund, greatly influence governance—especially if they take a board seat—and play a critical role in future fundraising rounds. VC is an exceptionally networked community, and the first call future investors make when considering your company is usually to the person who led your last round. In other words, you’ll inherit your investor’s reputation—both good and bad—as well as their network.

That said, there are a select few firms whose money you should take regardless of the partner, simply because the firm’s brand is so strong it overrides individual reputation. At the risk of raising eyebrows (and offending my VC friends), I won’t name them publicly here—but drop me a LinkedIn message and I’ll give you my candid take.

So how should you actually build your investor list?

First, prioritize investors who specialize in your category. Investors tend to focus on specific sectors like infrastructure, AI, fintech, security, consumer, healthtech, defense, and so on. Working with someone who doesn’t understand your space will just cause unnecessary brain damage.

Second, identify investors who can help you level up as a founder and reach the next milestone. If you need help with go-to-market strategy, seek out investors who’ve publicly shared thoughtful content about sales and marketing. Need guidance on scaling management practices? Find investors who’ve helped founders evolve as leaders. You get the idea. But tread carefully here: investors won’t (and can’t) build your company for you. Don’t mistake their advice or wisdom for actual execution.

Lastly, some people dismiss career investors because they lack direct operating experience. While operating experience can be valuable, I’ll take the opposite view: there are plenty of investors who’ve spent most or all of their careers as VCs who you’d be lucky to have on your cap table. Again, if you want recommendations, just reach out on LinkedIn—I’ll happily share their names.

The absolute best way to get introduced to a VC is through their network. The highest-quality intros come from other founders, followed by talented operators (which is VC-speak for anyone who isn’t a VC), and finally, other investors. When you ask for an intro, keep the request simple and clearly highlight why you’re reaching out specifically to them. For example:

“Hey [Name], would you mind passing this along to [partner at VC firm]? Looks like they’re actively investing in our space, and I really enjoyed their recent piece about XYZ. I’ve attached a short deck, and included a quick overview of the business and team below.”

A few common outreach tactics that you should absolutely avoid:

• Automated campaigns: Even though I left VC over a year ago, I still regularly receive automated pitches through LinkedIn and email. VCs easily spot these mass emails, and almost always ignore them—it’s a signal that you didn’t do your homework.
• Repeated outreach without response: Don’t DDoS prospective investors. If you got a warm introduction, one gentle follow-up is completely appropriate—messages can easily slip through the cracks. But repeatedly pestering investors sends a clear anti-signal: it instantly makes you look desperate.
• Fake urgency: It may seem counterintuitive, but you’re far more likely to get genuine interest from a VC if they believe they’re early in your fundraising process rather than late. If your deal has been on the street for weeks or months, investors will inevitably wonder why their peers passed. Yes, VCs love to say they look for opportunities that are “non-consensus and right,” but in practice, the primary metric VCs are graded on by LPs (their own investors) is getting consistent “up-rounds”(aka “consensus”)—meaning later-stage investors confirm the company’s value every 12–18 months. If your round seems stale, it’s harder for investors to build the necessary conviction.

Fundraising is a grind—you’ll hear “no” far more often than “yes.” Don’t let that discourage you. The average investor writes one check for every hundred companies they meet, so rejection is the default. That’s fine. Remember, it only takes one “yes.” Realistically, expect to speak with 30+ firms before landing a commitment.

My biggest piece of tactical advice is to keep everyone moving at roughly the same pace. You want investors entering their second and third meetings simultaneously. The absolute worst scenario is being deep into partner meetings with a firm you’re only moderately excited about, while you’re just kicking off with someone you’re genuinely enthusiastic about. Once you’ve built fundraising momentum, it’s nearly impossible to slow things down without raising eyebrows or losing leverage.

Unless the investor you’re pitching is a dream pick, do your first meetings remotely. Video calls help you stay efficient, establish a consistent rhythm, and quickly figure out who’s genuinely interested. For those investors who show real interest after an initial video call, I’d strongly encourage at least one in-person meeting later in the process. You’re entering a 10+ year relationship with your lead investor, and they’ll have significant influence on your company’s trajectory. You’ll want to be confident you can trust them and collaborate comfortably over the long haul.

That said, if an in-person first meeting is convenient and you think you’ll make a stronger impression that way, absolutely do it. Whether Zoom or face-to-face, remember you only get one first impression—pick whichever format helps you shine brightest.

In Northflank’s case, both institutional rounds were raised entirely remotely, over Zoom. It wasn’t until the Series A that the founders flew out to SF to deepen relationships in person, ultimately leading them to select BCV as their Series A lead investor. You absolutely can build trust over Zoom. I invested in Northflank without ever meeting the founders face-to-face. In fact, my wife met them before I did, but that’s a story for another time.

Short answer: the Bay Area. Period. For all the talk of rising tech ecosystems elsewhere and the endless rebranding of various cities as “Silicon This-or-That,” the Bay Area remains the undisputed center of gravity for venture capital. If you’re a European founder, prioritizing European investors initially is totally fine—but do yourself a favor and sprinkle in a few Bay Area VCs to maximize options down the road.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t excellent VCs in places like New York or Austin—there certainly are—but their ecosystems still can’t compete with Silicon Valley’s sheer scale and density. And no, Miami still isn’t really a thing.

Before pitching the investors you care most about, I highly recommend starting with a few conversations you’re less excited about. This gives you a chance to refine your pitch, find your rhythm, and reveal the most common questions you’ll face.

Remember: VCs think in “themes” and not “tactics.” For example, if an investor asks, “Why will buyers choose your product?” a bad answer would be something tactical like, “Because we have these features and they work this specific way.” A much better answer would be:

“We’re seeing a fundamental shift in buyer expectations, driven by factors X, Y, and Z. We’re building from the ground up to match these new expectations, whereas incumbents are constrained by legacy technologies and business models, making it hard for them to adapt.”

VCs want evidence you’re taking a systematic view of the market landscape around you—how shifting technologies, changing buyer demands, evolving competitive dynamics, and emerging market forces all influence your decisions around building the company. Your ability to thoughtfully frame these forces signals maturity and gives VCs confidence in your judgment.

“We’re still figuring out pricing. Our hypothesis is that structuring our pricing around XYZ, with target annual contract values in the $X–XXk range, aligns with buyer expectations and lets us build a viable business. Here’s why we think that. But we haven’t tested this yet, so it’s an open question we’ll need to address before bringing on our first sales hire.”

Answers like this reassure investors you’re pragmatic, thoughtful, and aware of the challenges ahead—exactly the signals you want to send during a pitch.

Here’s how I’d run a clean fundraising process:

1. Build your investor list and kick off outreach

Focus on VCs who specialize in your category and invest at your stage. Figure out warm intros—ideally through other founders or credible operators in your network. The introducer doesn’t have to be the VC’s best friend, but they should at least be a known entity.

2. Track everyone in a Google Sheet or Notion

You absolutely need a structured way to manage outreach, meeting schedules, and follow-ups. Here’s a Notion Template we’ve created to help you organize your fundraise effectively.

3. Book meetings and work your magic

Make investor meetings conversational rather than transactional. The investor’s questions should help demonstrate (or reveal otherwise) their understanding of your space. Don’t walk into the Zoom call, say hello, and then launch straight into a one-way presentation. Use your deck as a conversation guide, not a script you power through slide by slide. The best meetings are engaging dialogues, not monologues.

4. Follow up promptly with your deck or memo

The decision to invest (or lean in) usually happens when you’re not in the room—you’re relying entirely on the investor’s ability to pitch your story internally to their partners. Make their job easier by sending a clear follow-up item (deck or memo) that lays out the core themes of your pitch in a concise, linear way. Make it effortless for them to advocate for you.

5. You don’t have a term sheet until you have a term sheet

It might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how often founders prematurely mention “imminent” term sheets that never materialize. That said, once you actually have a term sheet in hand, it’s completely appropriate—even advantageous—to notify other investors you’ve met with, saying something like:

“Hey, we’ve really enjoyed getting to know you and could genuinely see ourselves working together. We just received a term sheet and wanted to be transparent about that, but we’d like to keep the door open if you’re still interested. What’s left in your process?”

6. Term-sheet expiration dates are myths (kind of)

A savvy VC will typically put an expiration date (usually a week later) on their term sheet to create urgency. A truly confident VC might offer one without a hard expiration, signaling strong conviction in their value as an investor. In my five years as a VC, I never saw a firm pull an active term sheet simply because it hit its expiration date. If they were genuinely excited enough to offer you a term sheet, they won’t change their minds two days after an artificial deadline passes.

That said, the expiration date does matter practically—don’t ignore it or ghost investors. Instead, communicate transparently:

“Thank you for believing in us—it means a ton. We’re excited about the possibility of partnering with you. However, we’d like to see our process through with a few other investors, which feels like the prudent move as founders. Could we extend your expiration by a few days?”

Transparency here is key. If you go radio silent and return weeks later hat-in-hand, the term sheet will absolutely be gone.

Yes, ChatGPT can decode any piece of legal jargon in your term sheet on demand. But there are a handful of terms you need to know cold, without a lifeline—because they drive your dilution, control, and downside protection. These are the ones to commit to memory:

1. Price mechanics – Pre/post-money, cap, discount, option-pool expansion.
2. Investor control – Board seat, protective provisions.
3. Downside protection – Liquidation pref, anti-dilution.
4. Administrative stuff – Info rights, pro-rata, ROFR.

1. Price mechanics

2. Investor control

3. Downside protection

4. Administrative stuff

First, it’s important to understand the legal role of a board member. They have a fiduciary duty to act in the company’s best interest—not the founders’ and not even their own VC fund’s. Practically, this means board members oversee governance: approving major decisions (e.g., financings, acquisitions, large expenditures—typically anything above six figures) and holding leadership accountable. Yes, that includes potentially hiring or firing the CEO. But in reality, replacing a CEO at an early-stage startup is extremely rare. If the company’s in trouble, a new CEO typically isn’t going to magically fix things at that stage.

Whether you need a formal board at the seed stage depends largely on your company’s maturity. If you’re still ideating, building an MVP, and have a team of fewer than five, a formal board meeting probably won’t add much value (“Yup, still figuring it out!”). Once you establish a regular operating rhythm—meeting customers, shipping features, hiring consistently—that’s when a board starts to become genuinely useful.

Typically, your board at seed stage consists of the founder(s)—usually two founders, and definitely no more than three—and the partner from your lead investor. The primary benefit of having a board early is that it forces a quarterly pause, pulling you out of daily firefighting and providing space to reflect strategically. Board meetings at this stage are typically informal, collaborative discussions, rather than rigid formalities.

In general, boards can be helpful, and you shouldn’t be concerned if your seed investor wants one. Conversely, if they aren’t pushing for one, there’s no need to demand it. Keep in mind, however, that board members are extremely difficult to remove, and boards quickly become bloated if you add new members every time you raise another round.

While this is unlikely, watch out for clauses requiring early independent board members—this reduces your control prematurely.

“Round construction” is just VC-speak for deciding how many investors to include in your financing round. You’ll inevitably hear from follow-on investors—those who aren’t leading the round but want a piece of it anyway. As someone who’s raised capital and also been an investor, let me say clearly: less is more.

First, there absolutely are exceptional follow-on investors out there who can add genuine value. However, remember this: VCs are generally reactive, not proactive. It’s entirely up to you as the founder to activate them and put them to work, such as asking them explicitly for customer introductions or tapping their network for hiring help.

What you definitely don’t want is investors sitting passively on your cap table, only resurfacing at the next financing round to lobby aggressively for their pro rata rights—especially at a time when you’re already stressed about making room for new investors.

A well-structured seed round typically has the lead investor providing roughly 80–90% of the capital, complemented by just one or two carefully selected follow-on investors (or angels) whom you deeply trust and believe you can actively leverage to help your company grow. If you’re not confident they’ll actively contribute, skip these extra investors altogether. Otherwise, you’ll just end up with more paperwork, more signatures to chase, and painful pro rata negotiations down the line.

Your lawyers should catch most governance gotchas and lobby to keep terms standard and founder-friendly. That said, if you understand the following key concepts, you can confidently handle many of these negotiations yourself, saving time and legal fees (although, they always find a way). Here’s what you need to know:

Here are the core fundraising commandments I’ve seen founders consistently benefit from following:

#1: Thou shalt not spam investors

If an investor is interested, they’ll naturally lean in. Bombarding them with repeated follow-ups won’t build genuine excitement and sets a bad tone for what should be a trusting, decade-long partnership. Remember, a forced yes today can quickly become a “why did we do this?” tomorrow.

#2: Thou shalt raise the optimal amount

There is a Goldilocks zone for fundraising. Raise too much, and you’ll dilute your ownership unnecessarily. Raise too little, and you’ll find yourself scrambling to hit the milestones needed to unlock the next financing. Your job is to find the sweet spot—enough capital to comfortably reach the next proof-point, but no more than that.

#3: Thou shalt do investor references

Always talk to other founders your prospective investor has backed, and ask candid questions:

• How does the investor handle conflict or disagreement?
• Do they show up to meetings prepared and engaged, or do they just dial in and multitask?
• Where have they been most helpful?
• If the founder could change one thing about their investor, what would it be?

Critically, don’t just ask the investor to connect you with a single cherry-picked founder. Instead, request their full portfolio list (or research it yourself) and then independently select who to speak with. You’re trying to uncover potential red flags or hidden frustrations; having investors handpick a reference won’t help you find where the bodies are buried.

#4: Thou shalt keep your slide decks short

Long decks dilute your message. Be concise, clearly articulate your vision and core themes, and skip any unnecessary filler. Investors prefer clarity and brevity—make every slide count.

#5: Thou shalt master your narrative

This might be the single most important thing you do during fundraising. Your narrative is the engine behind every investor’s decision to invest—it clarifies why your company matters, why it’ll win, and why you’re the ones to make it happen. Investors invest in compelling narratives, not spreadsheets or features. Own your story, practice it repeatedly, and make sure it’s both authentic and memorable.

#6: Thou shalt not pick an investor solely because they offered the highest valuation

Yes, valuation matters—ownership is important, and dilution impacts your long-term incentives. However, selecting the investor who proposes the highest valuation, without considering fit, can be counterproductive or even harmful to your company’s future. Prioritize picking the right person, not just the firm or the biggest check. Choose someone aligned with your vision, values, and operating style, and negotiate a fair, market-appropriate valuation. The investor you select will shape your journey in profound ways—so don’t trade long-term value for a short-term valuation win.

I started my career on the sales side of two early-stage startups: Box (IPO in 2015) and Segment (acquired by Twilio in 2020 for $3.2B). After those two rides, I spent five years as a venture capitalist, meeting thousands of companies and investing in several along the way.

In May 2024, I joined Northflank—a company I originally invested in during their 2022 seed round—as Chief Operating Officer. My venture experience was entirely B2B, so the advice in this post is primarily tuned for B2B founders, though the core principles apply broadly to any founder navigating their early-stage fundraising journey.