Everything I'd tell a founder the night before their first VC call

Hey all,

One of the most important and challenging experiences you’ll have as a founder is fundraising.

I pitched VCs across London and San Francisco. Some spent 15 seconds on my deck. Some took the call just to diligence a competitor. One told me to ask for more money. Oh, and I found out your pitch is probably being recorded and run through AI.

This is the high-impact version of all of those lessons to save you time, energy, and emotional damage.

Please comment anything missing from your experience?

OK, here we go...!

Mindset: you are the prize

This sounds weird, but it’s true.

You have to remember that they are getting the opportunity to invest in your company. The company that, in your mind, will become a major success.

Don’t use that energy to become belligerent or arrogant.

The point is to set the table correctly in your own head.

Use DocSend

Put your pitch deck into DocSend.

When you send it, you’ll be able to see who opened it, what they spent time on, and how long they read for.

That data is useful.

If someone spends four minutes in your deck, great.

If they spend 15 seconds, prepare to be underwhelmed.

It won’t tell you everything, but it gives you some signal.

The first call is not just for pitching

Most VCs will start the first call by explaining who they are, their investment thesis, and how they work.

Don’t just politely wait for your turn to talk.

Ask questions.

Do they invest in your market?
Do they lead or follow?
Etc.

You can learn very quickly whether the meeting is worth your energy, or where to double down in your pitch.

A lot of founders treat the first call like a performance. It’s also discovery.

Understand the game you’re playing

VC is a game of big bets.

They are looking for outliers. Companies that can return the fund. That means they care about very large markets, very large outcomes, and the potential for non-linear growth.

When you choose to raise venture, you are choosing that game too.

The game has changed

Pre-seed used to be called the ‘party round’.

It used to be enough to show some signal of demand. Some early energy. A small fire that needed gas poured on it.

That’s not really what I saw.

Now, even at pre-seed, the bar is much higher.

Revenue matters. Growth matters.

Capital is consolidating

There’s evidence that there is more venture money than ever.

But it’s concentrating into fewer bets.

So yes, capital exists. But access to it feels tighter. Which means you are often competing in smaller, more competitive pools, against companies with stronger metrics, stronger pedigrees, or stronger momentum.

Investors use heuristics

Ironically, investors use heuristics all the time to make fast decisions.

What school did you go to?
Stanford? Harvard? Carnegie Mellon?

What company did you come from?
Meta? Palantir? OpenAI?

Are you a first-time founder or a repeat founder?
Do you have a co-founder?
Is your cap table clean?

And the irony, of course, is that if you only fish in the same ponds, you’re less likely to find the true outliers. The next Jeff Bezos. The next Elon.

Founder-market fit helps if your CV doesn’t

If you don’t have the famous school or big company background, then your insight into the problem becomes the gateway.

What do you see that other people don’t see?

Why are you unusually well placed to solve this?

What access, understanding, network, or lived experience gives you an advantage that would be hard for someone else to replicate?

Be ready for the moat question

You will get quizzed on your moats.

Personally, I find this question harder than it used to be. Software can be generated by typing now.

So increasingly, when people say moat, what they really mean is some combination of unique data, distribution, speed of learning or brand.

It helps if the category is growing

It doesn’t have to be a giant category today.

A lot of investors are looking for categories of the future.

You can be small now, but aligned with something that is clearly expanding because of changes in the world - lower inference costs, changes in behaviour, better infrastructure, robotics adoption, whatever it may be.

Where you’re incorporated has consequence

If you want to raise from US VCs, it helps a lot to be located there, incorporated there, or have a history of building companies there.

There are also structural reasons for this, including tax efficiency and familiarity. Delaware C-corps are simply easier for many US funds.

There is growing interest in the Euro stack too, but usually that works best when you are already an outlier.

If you are not an outlier yet, like most, geography is a strategic choice.

Raise early and more than you need

This is one of the biggest lessons I learned.

I only ever wanted to raise as much as we needed. That felt disciplined to me.

But it’s actually an unpopular founder decision. And interestingly, VCs often told me to ask for more.

Raising earlier is also a strong tactic.

Why? Because when you’re still in vision mode, people are buying the story, the ambition, the possibility.

Later on, you’re not just pitching the future. You’re defending the past.

Not every VC is your VC

Every firm has a different thesis. Different taste. Different incentives. Different value-add.

Before you reach out, build a proper list.

Look at what they invest in.
Look at the stage.
Look at the geography.

Don’t pitch a B2C company to a B2B specialist.

Outreach should be coordinated

Once you’ve spent serious time building a thoughtful target list, think hard about how you reach out.

Warm intros are best.
Shared contacts on LinkedIn can work.
A short, well-written note that someone can easily forward is incredibly useful.

If you don’t have a warm lead, get the email or use the website form.

Then pick a window. Maybe a month. Maybe tighter.

But try to cluster your outreach.

VCs are a bit like dating

If they like you, you’ll usually know.

If they don’t, you’ll be confused.

You’ll get vague warmth. Soft maybes. “Stay in touch.” “Too early.” “Interesting, but…”

My advice: do one follow-up max.

After that, move on.

There are plenty more fish in the sea.

Use VCs for insight and intelligence too

One underrated part of fundraising is that it’s also a feedback loop.

Practice the pitch.
Notice when eyes light up.
Notice when someone leans in.

Pay attention to which anecdotes connect universally, and which ones don’t.

Sometimes VCs see patterns you don’t. They’ve seen hundreds or thousands of pitches. They might notice a competitor trend, a market framing, or a weak point in your narrative before you do.

Assume they haven’t read the deck

Even if you sent the deck in advance, assume they haven’t read it.

And even if they did open it, assume they haven’t absorbed the key points.

So be ready to tell the story cleanly and quickly.

Some meetings are really diligence for another company

This one is painful, but worth knowing.

VCs are curious by nature. They are constantly trying to build a picture of a category.

So yes, sometimes you will get a meeting because they genuinely want to invest.

And sometimes you will get a meeting because they are diligencing another company in the space.

I’ve had calls where they were hyper-engaged, deeply interested, asking all the right questions - only to see a few weeks later that they invested in something adjacent.

And then you realise: ah. I was helping them think.

Be prepared for the second act

The first pitch is really just about getting to the second and third.

Usually, you’ll meet one person from the team first. They’ll gather information, form an initial view, and present the deal to their investment committee - often on a Monday.

If the team likes what they hear, the diligence steps up quickly.

Be ready for a deeper round of questions, and keep your business model and unit economics close at hand.

They’ll want to know exactly how you’ll use the funds, how that capital gets you to Series A, and even what the Series A story will be that you start building together.

AI diligence

I can’t prove this, but I’m fairly sure it’s true.

Your call may well be recorded with tools like Granola, and your pitch deck may be run through AI to assess you against a firm’s founder and company heuristics.

So make sure your unique strengths come through clearly.

Final thought

Fundraising is hard. It can mess with your confidence.

But above all, remember this:

Focus on winning the customer.

If you do that, the metrics do the talking…