Can I be honest with you about something?
A lot of you have subscribed to The Founders Corner, and I’m grateful for every one of you. But I’ve barely spoken to any of you. I don’t know what you’re building, where your raise has got stuck, or what’s keeping you up at night. That’s always bothered me.
So we’re going to fix it.
On Thursday 29 October at 4pm GMT, Paul (GTM expert), David (fundraising expert) and I are hosting a live onboarding call for paid subscribers and anyone on a free trial. It’s a proper conversation, not a webinar you sit through with your camera off. You bring whatever you’re wrestling with, and we dig into it together.
We’re also planning further calls on 25th November and 10th December.
Why I wanted to do this
I’ve been on the investor side of the table for the best part of two decades, and I’ll admit something. The standard rejection email says almost nothing. “Loved meeting you, not quite right for us at this stage, keep us posted.” You’ve probably had a few. You read them three times wondering if it was the traction, the deck or the valuation, and you never find out.
On this call, you can ask. I’ll tell you what I’d really be thinking if your deck landed in my inbox tomorrow, including the bits that aren’t comfortable to hear.
Who you’ll meet
A quick word about me, since you’ll be putting up with me for an hour. I joined MessageLabs in 1999 when it was a tiny team and stayed through to its $700m sale to Symantec. Then I co-founded Notion Capital. So I’ve been the operator trying to hit the number, and the investor deciding whether to back the person trying to hit it.
Paul Watson is our go-to-market person. If people like your product but sales won’t move, Paul will help you work out who to sell to, what to say and how to make it repeatable before you spend money scaling.
David Levine raises money for early-stage founders for a living, as CEO of Glenluna Ventures and Principal at Manchester Angels. First angel cheque or seed round, he’ll help with your story, your valuation and who to approach. Fair warning: David is wonderfully blunt.
Getting all three of us on your problem would normally take three introductions and a lot of diary juggling. Here, it comes with your subscription.
The tools we’ll show you
We’ll also walk you through the tools in your subscription, because there’s no point paying for something you never open. These are examples of tools that we can go through:
📈 How Investors Decide If You Are Ready to Raise Tells you how ready you are for Seed, Series A or Series B+, and what to fix first.
📋 The Pitch Deck Test Investors Use in 30 Seconds Upload your deck and get slide-by-slide feedback before an investor sees it.
🎯 The Quiet Filter That Decides Your Entire Fundraise Checks more than 2,500 investors against your stage, sector and cheque size, so you stop chasing people who were never going to reply.
Before you come
Places are limited so everyone gets a proper chance to ask something. Have a think about the fundraising question you’d ask an investor if you knew they’d answer straight, and the go-to-market problem that’s been on your list for far too long. The more specific, the better.
Not a paid subscriber yet? Start a 7-day free trial and the invite is yours too.
I’m really looking forward to meeting you.
Chris
