Never rely on outside sources to do your fundraising for you
Occasionally in my role As a consultant, I am approached by companies that have a plan for their fundraising where the CEO or a member of the founding team is not involved in the fundraising process. I can understand that from one perspective: VC fundraising looks a lot like selling from the outside, and if you have a good salesperson, why not let them do what they do best?
The problem is that while salespeople are good at selling, the VC fundraising process is very different from landing a client. You are trying to find an alignment between the company and a long-term partner who will have a significant amount of input into the future of your startup. And if there are discrepancies between the sales process and deeper due diligence in the company (and there will be, because the sales team has a different long-term perspective on what success looks like), the whole deal can fall apart.
There are several really good reasons why the founding team should lead the fundraising process in the earliest stages of fundraising. In this article, I break it down and explain why it’s a terrible idea to have someone other than the CEO do the fundraising.
