What do VCs look for? 13 Point Startup Fundraising Checklist
To find venture capital funding for your tech startup, it helps to have a current roadmap.
Pete Flint, a Managing Partner at NFX, a seed-stage venture firm, offers an excellent 13 Point Startup Fundraising Checklist that can help guide startup founders through a successful seed stage financing.
He suggests that the game has changed in the last 10 years. The hurdles are now higher for founders seeking seed and Series A funding for tech ventures.
Today startup founders need to understand:
- Series A rounds have gotten bigger and are being done later on in a company’s lifecycle.
- To fill this gap and help companies in this formative early stage, seed funds have also grown bigger and more established as well.
- Alongside the expansion of capital into each Series A financing, the expectations on companies looking to raise their Series As have heightened.
- With a growing number of startups in many different sectors, raising a top series A has become a growing challenge.
It's worth noting that in general, having product-market fit and a minimum amount of scale are usually prerequisites for raising series A funding.
But here are 13 additional proof points that investors look for in startup investments, so you can evaluate your startup's readiness for fundraising.
- Show Traction
- Demonstrate Product-Market Fit
- Prove Scalability & Unit Economics
- Have a Big Vision (but OK to Start Small)
- Build a Clear, Compelling Narrative
- Build Out Your Team
- Chart a Path to Defensibility
- Create Scarcity
- Build VC Relationships Early
- Project Momentum
- Climb the Ladder of Proof
- Make a World-Class Pitch Deck
- Build Social Proof
Visit the full blog post here for valuable explanations of each of these points.
And, get The Fundraising Checklist emailed to you here.
Thanks to Pete Flint of NFX (@PeteFlint) for this information and the graphic. NFX is a seed-stage venture firm that also builds free software tools for Founders. This includes Signal - the fastest way Founders find their intro paths to top VCs.