The first 30 days of a capital raise go on building everything investors will ask for, before any of them are contacted: the amount and what it’s for, the numbers, the company’s records, the valuation and terms, the business plan, the pitch deck, the data room and the list of investors to approach. Each piece draws on the one before it, so the order matters as much as the work.
A raise that goes out before these are ready tends to stall. An interested investor asks for the projections, the share register or the use of funds, and the conversation loses momentum while the founder produces them.
The First 30 Days of Raising Capital: What to Build Before Reaching Out to Your First Investor
The Order of the Work
The pitch deck is the part many founders want to start with, because it’s the part investors see first. It’s also the last thing that can be finished properly. The deck summarises the business plan, the plan is built on the numbers, and the numbers depend on how much is being raised and what it’s meant to achieve.
Working in that order means each document is written once. A deck written first gets rewritten when the numbers behind it change, and investors who saw the first version have seen figures the founder no longer stands behind.
The Amount and the Milestone
The amount comes from the plan. It’s the cost of everything the business needs to pay for to reach its next milestone, such as a finished product, a first major contract or a set level of revenue, plus runway to keep the business going after it gets there and a margin in case things take longer or cost more.
The founder adds up those costs: the people being hired and what they cost in full, product development, stock, sales and marketing, premises and equipment, the working capital that covers the gap between paying costs and being paid by customers, and the legal and adviser fees for the raise itself.
The total is the round. Picking a round size first and working backwards to justify it produces a use of funds that falls apart when an investor asks what each line pays for.
The Numbers
The numbers come in three parts. The historical accounts go back as far as the business has existed. The management accounts, the monthly figures the business produces for itself, show where it stands today. The financial projections show how the money turns into growth over the next few years.
Every assumption in the projections needs to be written down and traceable: how many customers, at what price, at what cost to win each one, how long they stay and what it costs to serve them.
Many investors test projections by changing those assumptions, so a model where the assumptions are visible and the outputs follow from them gets a better hearing than one where the revenue line is typed in.
The figures also need to match what’s already on the public record. In the UK, a company’s filed accounts are free for anyone to read, and an investor who finds a difference between the filings and the projections will ask about it.
The Company’s Records
Investors buy shares, so they check who owns the company and on what terms. In the UK, every company has to keep a register of members showing each shareholder and when they became one.
The register, the record of every past share issue, the articles of association and any shareholders’ agreement need to agree with each other and with what’s been filed.
The same check covers contracts with major customers and suppliers, employment contracts for key staff, and who owns the brand, the website, the software and any other intellectual property.
Where something is missing, such as a co-founder who left without a written agreement about their shares, the fix is a document, and the time to draft it is before the raise goes live.
The Valuation and Terms
The founder sets the valuation, which is what the business is worth before the money goes in, known as the pre-money valuation, and needs the reasoning to back it.
That reasoning usually draws on comparable businesses that have raised or sold, multiples of revenue or profit, and the growth the plan shows. The investor’s share follows from it: a business valued at £2m that raises £500,000 is worth £2.5m afterwards, and the investor owns 20%.
The founder also settles the structure. A priced round sells shares at an agreed valuation. An early business with little to value it on might instead use a SAFE or an advance subscription agreement, where the investor pays now and receives shares later, at the price set in a future round. Deciding this before approaching investors means the founder tells them the terms, rather than asking what they’d like.
Tax Reliefs and Filings
Some countries give investors tax relief for backing early-stage companies, and investors in those countries often want to know whether a deal qualifies before they commit.
In the UK, a company planning to raise under SEIS or EIS can apply to HMRC for advance assurance, a view that an investment would meet the scheme’s conditions.
It’s optional, but it lets the company show investors that their investment may qualify. The application needs a business plan, financial forecasts and the latest accounts, which is another reason to finish those first.
In the US, a company raising under Regulation D files a Form D with the SEC within 15 days of the first sale, counted from the day the first investor is irrevocably committed to invest.
Australia, Singapore and the UAE have their own reliefs and rules, and the check is made in each country where the company and its investors are.
The Business Plan and the Pitch Deck
The business plan is the full case for the investment: the problem the business solves, how it makes money, the market, the competition, the traction so far, the team, the numbers and what the money will achieve. It’s the document an investor reads once they’re interested.
The pitch deck is the short version that gets the investor interested enough to take a meeting. With the plan and the numbers finished, the deck is a matter of choosing what goes on each slide, and every figure in it can be traced back to the model.
The Data Room
A data room is an online folder holding everything an investor will want to check in due diligence. Building it before the raise goes live means an investor who asks for a document gets it the same day.
A typical data room holds the business plan, pitch deck and financial model, the historical and management accounts, the register of members and records of past share issues, the articles and any shareholders’ agreement, key customer, supplier and employment contracts, proof of ownership of intellectual property, and any tax relief correspondence, such as advance assurance.
The Investor List
The list is the last piece because it depends on everything else. The amount decides the cheque sizes, the stage decides which investors will look at it, and the sector narrows it further. Each name on the list needs to have backed businesses like this one, at this stage, with cheques of this size.
For each investor, the founder notes who could introduce them, what they’ve backed before and why this deal fits. That’s the basis of the first email, and it’s what lets the founder approach many investors at the same time when the raise goes live, rather than one after another.
When the Raise Goes Live?
At the end of the first 30 days, the business has a costed amount, numbers that hold up, clean records, a valuation it can defend, a plan, a deck, a data room and a list of investors who back that kind of business.
The approach can then go to the whole list together, and the weeks that follow go on meetings, questions, follow-up and term sheets.
Done-with-you capital raising services such as Capital Raiser of Matt Haycox are built on this timetable: the first 30 days make the business investable and build the materials and the investor list, the raise goes live on day 30, and the following weeks run the outreach towards term sheets.
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