Is VC funding right for my startup?

Only if your goal is to build a category-leading company in a very large market. VC is not passive capital; it’s a commitment to a race where someone else will raise $20M from Sequoia and try to outpace you. If you’re not prepared to run that race, VC is the wrong fit. A profitable, founder-owned business that gets acquired for a meaningful sum is a legitimate outcome, but it’s a different one. The two paths are incompatible, and your investors will know if you’re not fully committed.

When is the right time to raise a pre-seed or seed round?

Two questions determine timing: do you have enough to tell a compelling story at your target stage, and is the calendar on your side? At pre-seed, you need founder-market fit, a prototype or early MVP (minimum viable product), and 2–3 design partners giving active feedback. At seed, you need a product in market, early MRR (monthly recurring revenue), and proof that at least one growth channel is working. On the calendar, avoid July/August and December - the market is largely dead. The best windows are September–November and February–June. If you’re approaching a blackout period and can’t close in four weeks, wait. A stalled process signals weakness.

Does fundraising make sense if I already have another company?

Only if you fully separate them. Investors want a clean story, one entity, one cap table, no legacy revenue muddying the picture. If you have a consultancy, management company, or other revenue stream in the same entity as your startup, separate it before you go out. One founder we worked with had significant consulting revenue flowing through the same company as his SaaS product. It confused every investor conversation. The fix is straightforward, but it must happen before the investor roadshow.

Is it harder to raise VC funding if you’re over 40?

No, it’s often an advantage. Many of the fastest-growing VC-backed companies are founded by people closer to 40 than 25. Age brings network depth, the ability to hire senior talent, and genuine pattern recognition in your market. Lead with your experience as founder-market fit, not despite it.

Is it harder to raise as a solo founder?

Investors generally prefer co-founding teams. You'll get pushback, and some investors will keep asking when you're going to hire a VP of sales or a technical co-founder. Every investor has their biases. But the practical upsides of solo founding are real, particularly now. You can keep your full equity pool to hire an exceptional founding team rather than split it 50/50 on day one. You can move faster with a single decision-maker. And with AI, the traditional "you need a technical founder and a commercial founder" pairing matters less than it used to.

Should I meet VCs when I'm not actively raising?

No. You're either raising or building - it's a binary choice, and mixing the two creates problems in both directions. When you're not raising, your time is too valuable to spend in exploratory VC coffee chats. More importantly, investors who meet you regularly will form opinions about your business before you've given them your best pitch. They'll see the messy middle - the hire that didn't work out, the customer who churned, the product direction that changed - and make up their mind before you're ready for them to. Save the first impression for when it counts. There's also a competitive intelligence risk.

What do investors look for at pre-seed stage?

Pre-seed is a bet on your team, more than your product. Investors are asking one question: Are these the right people to solve this problem? What you need to have in place: A prototype or early MVP 2–3 design partners actively using the product 40–50 structured customer interviews, documented with quotes and pain points A clear sense of pricing, rough CAC, and LTV (not a full model - a directional view) A founder story that ties your background directly to the problem The last item matters most. If you can’t answer “why you?” compellingly in the first ten minutes, nothing else compensates.

How do I document customer research for investors?

Don’t just say “I’ve spoken to customers.” Record your interviews with an AI note-taking tool, feed the transcripts to an LLM, and extract structured insights - recurring pain points, exact quotes, current workarounds. Build a Notion database that an investor can click through. The difference between describing your customer research and showing it is significant. It signals rigour, gives investors something to reference internally, and demonstrates you’ve done the work properly.

How much money should I raise at pre-seed?

Work backwards from your next milestone - usually raising a seed round in 12-18 months. Calculate the hiring and runway you need to reach that milestone (live product, early MRR (monthly recurring revenue), initial GTM (go-to-market) proof), then raise that amount plus a 6-month buffer. In the UK and Ireland, that typically means £/€1-3M at pre-seed. Two mistakes to avoid: Asking for too little (under £500K signals you’re targeting angels, not institutions, and implies a low valuation) Anchoring too high and having to scale back mid-process (VCs talk - changing your number signals a struggling round). Instead, use a range. “We’re targeting £3–5M. £3M is what we need; we’d deploy £5M faster.”

What should a pre-seed pitch deck include?

Under 10 slides, and the first 10 minutes should be your story - not your product. At pre-seed, investors are answering one question: why is this team the right team? On the team slide, don’t list CVs or bios. Give each founder 3 keywords that connect their background directly to the mission. The investor should see in seconds why you are the right people.

Do I need to include a valuation?

Valuation is something investors propose. What you include is your ask - investors reverse-engineer the valuation from that. If you’re raising £2M and investors want 15% ownership, they’re pricing you at ~£13M post-money. Understand that arithmetic before you go out.

When should I hire a startup lawyer, and who?

Before you go out. Do not negotiate a term sheet without legal infrastructure in place. Avoid large law firms for early-stage work, they’re too slow, too expensive, and not specialist enough. Find a lawyer who has done at least 20-50 deals at your stage, as they’ll have template docs and know the right questions and can benchmark which terms you can negotiate and which ones you can’t.

Do I need revenue or an MVP to raise pre-seed?

No hard and fast rules. We raised our pre-seed off a six-page Notion document - no product, no MVP, no full-time employees. We raised our seed round before we had revenue. What you do need is an outlier on at least one of three things: team, traction, or TAM - and ideally a compelling story that connects all three. At pre-seed, investors are almost entirely betting on the team. If the founder has an exceptional background and a credible right to win in a large market, that can be enough. The earlier you are, the more the narrative has to do the work. What's your unfair advantage? Why you, why this market, why now? → See our full guide for a breakdown of what investors expect at each stage.

How much runway should I have before starting my roadshow?

At least six months. The roadshow itself can take up to six weeks, and once you have a term sheet, closing takes another six to eight weeks. You do not want to be in a live roadshow with no runway buffer - it puts you in a position of desperation rather than leverage. The best time to raise is when you've hit the milestones that unlock the next round - not because you're running out of cash.

How do I find the right investors for my stage?

Start with the portfolio, not the brand. Every VC says they do pre-seed. What matters is whether they actually do. Look at their last 20 investments: how many were pre-seed? What were the cheque sizes? What sectors? Their portfolio is their strategy. A fund that has made 2 pre-seed investments in 3 years will probably not make an exception for you. A fund where 70% of the portfolio is early-stage is built for you. By tier: large multi-stage funds are almost certainly too early - take meetings if you can get them, but for the wave strategy reason below, not as primary targets. Pre-seed funds and solo GPs (writing £100K–£250K cheques) are your primary targets. Angel syndicates let you bring in a dozen angels through one relationship at SAFE (simple agreement for future equity) terms.

How do I get warm introductions to investors?

Be specific and give a deadline. Don’t ask “can you introduce me to some VCs?” Ask: “I’m starting my roadshow on Monday. Can you introduce me to [specific names] by Friday?” Work every angle: your angel investors, enterprise customers, fellow founders who’ve recently raised, advisors. Check LinkedIn for second-degree connections to each investor on your list. And don’t be blocked by the absence of warm intros. Cold outreach has a lower conversion rate, but it can occasionally be a viable path. A cold LinkedIn message with specific research on the partner’s stated investment thesis might convert better than you’d expect.

Is it worth going to the US to fundraise as a European founder?

At pre-seed, getting a US cheque is difficult. Most US VCs want proximity. But a week in San Francisco has a powerful secondary effect: US and European VCs talk constantly. When a US investor calls a European peer asking, “Have you seen this deal?”, the European investor pays attention in a way no email can replicate. One founder we know couldn’t close a US cheque but came back from San Francisco with three times the European inbound interest. Telling a UK investor “we’re in the Bay Area this week” signals live deal energy. It’s not spin - it’s true, and it can work.

Should I exclude investors who have backed my competitors?

For direct competitors, exclude anyone who led a round. They've already made their bet on who wins the space and are unlikely to back a second horse. But don't make the definition so broad that you exclude every investor with adjacent portfolio companies. In most sectors, any fund with real domain expertise is going to have portfolio companies in related spaces. If you exclude all of them, you cut out the investors with the most conviction in your market. Identify three or four truly direct competitors, exclude the funds that led those rounds, and leave everything else open.

How long does a fundraising roadshow take?

Budget 4–6 weeks of near-total focus. Founders should be full-time on this - not building the product, not managing customers, not doing anything else. A realistic picture for a seed round: 40–80 first meetings, 20–30 second meetings, 2–5 term sheets. At Seapoint, we did roughly 40 VC meetings and had three term sheets in three weeks. It could easily have been 70 meetings. Plan for more than you think, and don’t stop until the term sheet is signed. Fire all your intro emails at once; do not drip-feed over weeks. You want a compressed period where investors hear about you simultaneously, which creates natural urgency and allows you to control timing across the pipeline.

How do I create urgency with investors without lying?

Be direct about your timeline. At the end of every meeting: “I want to ask about your process - how long does it typically take you from first meeting to term sheet? I ask because we’re hoping to close in 3–4 weeks.” That’s professional transparency, not pressure. It communicates that this is a live deal, not an exploratory conversation. The organic FOMO comes from the mechanics of a compressed roadshow. VC associates talk constantly. When your deal is circulating with energy, it spreads. You don’t manufacture it; you create the conditions for it.

How do I know if an investor is actually interested?

Speed is the only reliable signal. An investor who wants to invest follows up within 24–48 hours, pushes hard for a next step, and tells you explicitly how fast they can move. Anything slower is almost certainly a no. VCs have 100 ways of saying no without saying no - most of them involve being pleasant and non-committal. Don’t track progress by how good the meetings felt. The meeting where you felt great may result in a pass. The awkward, challenging meeting may result in a term sheet. Track response speed, not vibes.

What does “come back when you have more traction” actually mean?

It means no. “Come back with more traction” is an optionality-preserving exit. If an investor genuinely wanted to invest but needed more traction, they’d set a specific check-in date and ask to stay in touch with clear milestones. The real reasons VCs pass are almost never communicated: a conflicting portfolio company, a partner who couldn’t get conviction internally, wrong timing, better deals elsewhere. None of this will be told to you. Don’t rebuild your deck based on rejection language.

How do I manage a pipeline of 50+ investors at once?

Prioritise by speed of response, not quality of meetings. Investors who are interested move fast because they don’t want to lose the deal. Slow-moving investors who ask for lots of materials and schedule far out are almost always gathering market intelligence, not building conviction. Keep everyone in the pipeline until you have a signed term sheet - you don’t want to burn a bridge and find yourself without backup. But allocate your time ruthlessly toward fast movers, and fill gaps with new first meetings rather than chasing the slow ones. Someone needs to be running the backend: CRM, data room, follow-up emails, and scheduling. The founders on the calls cannot also be operating the machine.

What do VCs actually want to hear in a pre-seed pitch?

In rough priority order: 1. Founder-market fit. Have you lived in this problem? Does your background make you the obvious person to solve it? This is why the first 10 minutes should be your story, not your product. 2. Exceptional background. The best signal that you’ll do extraordinary things is that you’ve already done extraordinary things - a prior exit, world-class domain expertise, and building critical infrastructure at a leading company. Lead with it. 3. Ambition. Investors need to be able to imagine a billion-dollar outcome. Founders who dial back ambition - often after deflating feedback from the wrong investors - pitch a smaller story than they should. The investors you want are looking for founders who intend to win a large market. 4. Market insight. What do you know about this market that others don’t? What unfair advantage does your background give you?

How do I handle impostor syndrome when pitching investors?

Connect the pitch to your mission, not to yourself. You’re not bragging - you’re explaining why you are the right person to solve this specific problem. The more specific and genuine that connection is, the less it feels like boasting. One mentor stopped a founder mid-pitch and said: “Are you serious? That was your founder story? I know ten more interesting things about you that you didn’t mention.” That gap - between how founders see themselves and how others see them - is almost always in the founder’s disfavour. Turn off the humility filter for the duration of the pitch.

How do I answer the “TAM isn’t big enough” objection?

Two things to understand. First: “not a big enough TAM” is almost always a polite no about something else. It’s not a request for a bigger spreadsheet - it’s a door closing. Don’t rebuild your market sizing slide based on this feedback. Second: when investors genuinely want to understand market size, the right structure is launch ICP + the larger market it unlocks. You’re starting with dental practices, but the vision is the operating system for all healthcare. You’re starting with pre-seed startups, but the vision is financial infrastructure for the European mid-market. The launch market is achievable. The total market is why it could be a billion-dollar company. You need both.

How do I stay consistent when investors keep pushing different narratives?

Write down your core narrative before the roadshow - founder story, market insight, product thesis, GTM - in a single document. Review it before every call. Investors will project their own version of your company onto you. A fintech specialist will push financial data angles. A marketplace investor will push network effects. It’s tempting to adapt. Resist it. The test: does this investor’s lens actually change what you’re building, or just how you’d describe it? If it’s the latter, note the language, but don’t restructure your thesis after every meeting.

Should I close angels or institutional investors first?

If you have angels and institutional investors closing in the same round, close the institutional investors first. They have legal teams, they move on fast timelines, they wire money reliably. Once your institutional lead is confirmed, carve out a tranche - typically 15–20% of the round - and close angels over the following six months at the same terms. Trying to close both simultaneously means herding dozens of people across the finish line at once. Sequential is dramatically easier. This also means you always have angel allocation open, and often great angels appear after the round closes off the back of the news.

How do I choose between multiple term sheets?

Don’t optimise purely on terms or brand name. The best investors are the ones who walk in with genuine conviction - who’ve done their research, spoken to your customers, and have a network that can actually help you hire and grow. Reference check thoroughly. Speak to founders they’ve backed through difficult periods. How an investor behaves when things aren’t going well is when their quality becomes visible. Would you call this person at 11pm when something breaks? If the answer isn’t yes, think carefully. Term sheet specifics matter - pro-rata rights, board composition, option pool size - and your lawyer should walk you through all of them. But relationship quality matters more than almost any individual term.

What are the most common fundraising mistakes early-stage founders make?

In rough order of frequency: Going out too slowly. Drip-feeding investors over months destroys momentum. Run a compressed, simultaneous roadshow. Taking rejection language literally. “Not enough traction” and “TAM too small” are polite exits, not product feedback. Starting with the wrong investors. Small local VCs passing on the deal or other wrong-fit funds first can create negative signals before you reach the right investors. Undershooting the ask. Sub-£500K asks signal angels, not institutions, and implies a low valuation. Mixed entities. Legacy revenue and complex structures confuse every investor conversation. Treating the roadshow as part-time. Four to six weeks of full-time focus from both founders. Anything less loses momentum. Tracking vibes instead of speed. Investor enthusiasm in the room means nothing. Track follow-up speed. Lowering the number mid-process. Going out at £5M and landing at £3M signals a struggling round. Use a range from the start.

How much equity should I expect to give away per round?

Lead investors will typically want 15-20% ownership. In some cases, 25% is normal and fine. Plan for it. Don't offer 5% - investors won't be interested. And don't be surprised when the option pool top-up is factored in on top. Understand the full dilution picture before you negotiate.

Should I use a SAFE note or priced equity?

If you're raising less than £/€1M, a SAFE note is a reasonable option - it's simpler, faster, and cheaper to execute. But as soon as you're working with institutional investors, expect them to want priced equity. Most funds, particularly larger ones, want to know exactly what they own.

FAQ: How to raise a pre-seed and seed round in Europe

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Part 1: Deciding whether to raise

Key Takeaway

VC is a commitment to a race, not just a source of capital. Make sure you want to run it before you start.

2

Part 2: Preparing to raise

Key Takeaway

Get your legal structure right before the roadshow. A term sheet is not the time to be hunting for a lawyer.

3

Part 3: Building your investor list

Key Takeaway

A trip to San Francisco is valuable; the information US VCs share with Europeans VCs can have a big impact.

4

Part 4: Running a fundraising roadshow

Key Takeaway

Speed is the only reliable signal.

5

Part 5: Pitching VCs

Key Takeaway

At pre-seed, you are the product. Everything else in the pitch supports the case for you.

6

Part 6: Closing a term-sheet

Key Takeaway

Most fundraising failures aren’t caused by a bad business. They’re caused by a badly run process.

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Additional resources

Fundraising guide: What to know about fundraising: A founder's guide to running a tight process.

Office hours: Our whole team offers 1:1 office hours, virtually. Whether you're preparing pitch materials, building your investor list, setting up financial processes after a round, or working through something else entirely, book time with whoever on the team can help most. Fundraising is one of the most common topics founders bring to these sessions, but it's far from the only one.
Book a Session

Part 1: Deciding whether to raise

Is VC funding right for my startup?

When is the right time to raise a pre-seed or seed round?

Does fundraising make sense if I already have another company?

Is it harder to raise VC funding if you’re over 40?

Is it harder to raise as a solo founder?

Should I meet VCs when I'm not actively raising?

Part 2: Preparing to raise

What do investors look for at pre-seed stage?

How do I document customer research for investors?

How much money should I raise at pre-seed?

What should a pre-seed pitch deck include?

Do I need to include a valuation?

When should I hire a startup lawyer, and who?

Do I need revenue or an MVP to raise pre-seed?

How much runway should I have before starting my roadshow?

Part 3: Building your investor list

How do I find the right investors for my stage?

How do I get warm introductions to investors?

Is it worth going to the US to fundraise as a European founder?

Should I exclude investors who have backed my competitors?

Part 4: Running a fundraising roadshow

How long does a fundraising roadshow take?

How do I create urgency with investors without lying?

How do I know if an investor is actually interested?

What does “come back when you have more traction” actually mean?

How do I manage a pipeline of 50+ investors at once?

Part 5: Pitching VCs

What do VCs actually want to hear in a pre-seed pitch?

How do I handle impostor syndrome when pitching investors?

How do I answer the “TAM isn’t big enough” objection?

How do I stay consistent when investors keep pushing different narratives?

Part 6: Closing a term-sheet

Should I close angels or institutional investors first?

How do I choose between multiple term sheets?

What are the most common fundraising mistakes early-stage founders make?

How much equity should I expect to give away per round?

Should I use a SAFE note or priced equity?

Additional resources

Get your full financial picture in 10 minutes.