![]() ![]() We both strongly believed that the company had a unique market opportunity and was capable of being a genuine venture-backed profile–previously, we had focused on bootstrapping and received very little institutional funding. Nailing our pre-raise alignmentīefore we decided to raise our Series A, my CEO and I made sure we were perfectly aligned on our motivations. This is where I came in: I met with portfolio companies to get unfiltered opinions while our CEO focused on building the relationships. Investors provide a set of references, of course, but it’s always a good idea to do your own due diligence. They’re so busy being the public face of the company that they may not have time to chat with other founders and CEOs to get honest feedback on the investors they’re pitching. During a raise, CEOs have to focus on taking lots of investor meetings and building relationships. In addition to this financial storytelling, I also worked behind the scenes to backchannel references on investors by talking to their portfolio companies. CFOs tend to have pointed views about how target operating metrics will be hit, what the splits between the different levels of headcount are, and the guiding ratios that will drive planning. I also had to speak in detail about the “use of funds”–how we planned to use any capital raised to hit the next set of milestones. This also involved drawing careful comparisons to peers about the benchmarks we had met. One of my most important tasks was to build a compelling financial narrative based on the company’s metrics over time. The role I played during our raise was complementary to, but different from, the role of our CEO. My role as Head of Finance during our raise ![]() This up-front work kept things running smoothly throughout the 11 weeks: it helped us stick to our schedule, anticipate investor questions, and keep everything polished and organized. At first glance, this might look like a fairly straightforward timeline, but a lot of detailed preparation went into planning the raise and determining what it would look like. From kickoff to close, Rewind’s $15m Series A raise took 11 weeks, and we spent about three weeks preparing for the raise. ![]()
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