The New Rules of Raising Money

I helped raise over $1bn under the old rules of money, and the first thing to say about those rules is that most of them no longer exist.

For three decades, the way into an investor's diary was a warm introduction and a fortnight of meetings, city by city. The banker's network was the filter, the roadshow was the ritual, and the document at the centre of everything was the deck. You polished it for weeks because it carried the whole argument: the market, the team, the story of what the money would build. Investors met you early, formed a view across a conversation, and backed a narrative they found credible. The deck did the talking.

Today the deck talks last. The filter has moved from the introduction to the evidence, and investors look for proof of traction before they take the meeting at all: live numbers, a working product, customers who pay and stay, signs that capital will feed something already moving rather than fund the search for it. The conversation that used to happen across a table now happens silently, in advance, across whatever verifiable material exists about your business. By the time you are in the room, most of the decision has been shaped.

I know both sides of that table. I raised under the old rules through Goldman Sachs, Citi and Credit Suisse, and at Goldman Sachs Asset Management I invested under them too, in public equities. Since then I have backed startups and scaleups with my own money, which means I know precisely what the person across the table checks first now, because I am sometimes that person. What gets checked first is never the vision. It is the proof.

So the practical shift, if you are raising this year, is to build the proof page before the pitch. One page. Real numbers, real customers, what the money multiplies. Write it as if the reader will see it with no one in the room to explain it, because that is exactly how it will be seen. If the page comes together easily, you are ready to open conversations. If it is thin, the raise is early, and knowing that before the meetings is worth months of your life, because a premature raise does not just fail, it burns the introductions you will want a year later.

There is a second-order lesson in the shift. The old rules rewarded storytelling; the new rules reward operating. That is uncomfortable for founders who are natural sellers, and quietly excellent news for founders who have built something real and hate pitching. The game has moved in favour of substance, and substance can be prepared.

Preparation starts with an honest map of where the business is strong and where it is exposed before you put it in front of money. The Entrepreneur Gap scan takes about ten minutes and maps the eight roles investors expect a fundable business to have covered, so you can see which chairs are empty while there is still time to fill them. It is free, and built for businesses already past £15k a month.

Continue reading: The Invisible Constraint →

Or check your business first: Take the free 10-minute Entrepreneur Gap scan →