Service 01
Startup investment facilitation
Most founders who cannot raise are not un-fundable. They are illegible: the story does not match the numbers, the numbers do not answer the question an investor is actually asking, and the list of investors being approached was assembled from a search rather than from knowledge of who is writing cheques this quarter.
What the work covers
Four things that decide whether a raise moves
Investment readiness
An honest read of whether the company can survive diligence today: the cap table, the corporate structure, the contracts that actually exist, the metrics that can be evidenced and the ones that cannot. Where something will not stand up, we say so before an investor finds it.
Positioning
The same company can be presented as infrastructure, as a product or as a financial instrument, and each framing attracts a different investor with a different bar. We choose the framing the business can defend for the next two years, not the one that sounds largest.
Materials that answer questions
A deck, a model and a data room built around the questions your specific investors ask, in the order they ask them. Length is not the point; a founder should be able to defend every slide without a footnote.
The right room
A shortlist of funds and individuals who are active at your stage, in your sector and in a jurisdiction that can hold your structure, and warm introductions where the relationship supports one.
Fit
Who this is for, and who it is not for
Facilitation multiplies whatever is already true about a company. It cannot substitute for a product nobody wants or a structure nobody can invest into.
- A good fit Blockchain or fintech companies with a working product or a credible path to one, a defensible reason to exist, and a raise that is blocked on access, framing or readiness rather than on substance.
- A good fit Founders who have raised once informally and now need the next round to be structured properly, with a cap table and a jurisdiction that will not embarrass them in diligence.
- Not a fit Ventures where the regulatory position is unresolved in a way that makes the product illegal as designed. That is a compliance question first, and we will route it there.
- Not a fit Anyone looking for a guaranteed outcome, a specific valuation, or an introduction to an investor who has already declined. None of those are things an adviser can honestly sell.
Sequence
How a facilitation engagement runs
1
Diagnostic
Two or three sessions on the company as it exists: product, traction, structure, cap table, jurisdiction and everything already tried with investors. The output is a written list of what must change.
2
Repair
Blocking items are fixed in order of how badly they would fail in diligence. Some are documents, some decisions, occasionally one is a restructure that belongs before the raise rather than during it.
3
Narrative and materials
Positioning is settled, then the deck, model and data room are built against it. Everything is written so that you can defend it in a room without us.
4
Targeting
A shortlist by stage, sector, cheque size and jurisdiction, with the reason each name is on it. Investors who have publicly stopped deploying come off the list rather than padding it.
5
Introductions and follow-through
Warm introductions where the relationship justifies one, then support through the meetings: what was asked, what it revealed, and what to change before the next conversation.
Questions
What founders ask about facilitation
Do you introduce us to investors immediately?
Not usually, and that is deliberate. An introduction is a finite resource: an investor who passes on a company because it was not ready rarely looks again at the same round. Readiness work first protects the introductions that matter.
How long does a raise take?
It varies with sector, structure and market conditions, and any adviser quoting a fixed number is guessing. What we can commit to is a sequence and a set of milestones, so you can tell whether the process is moving or stalled at any point.
Do you write the deck for us?
We build it with you. A deck written entirely by an adviser tends to collapse in the first meeting where a founder is asked a question outside it. The positioning is joint work; the drafting is ours; the defence is yours.
What if the diagnostic says we are not ready?
Then you get that in writing, with the specific reasons and what would change them. It is the most useful outcome an early engagement can produce, even though it is rarely the one founders hope for.
Can you help with a token raise?
Only alongside regulatory compliance advisory. A token raise is a securities question in most jurisdictions we work in, and treating it as a marketing exercise is how promising projects end up unable to operate.
Start with the diagnostic
Tell us what you are raising, what you have already tried and where conversations have stopped. The first reply comes within 24 hours and will name what we would look at first.