Iremia Advisory
Raising capital is a craft. It's a learnable, repeatable discipline, not a talent you're born with. Most founders treat fundraising like something that happens to them, a periodic obligation they'll figure out when the time comes. This playbook will help you move from treating a fundraise like a mysterious crisis to a core operational competency that you are fully capable of mastering.
If you are actively raising or about to start, here is where to focus first. This playbook is comprehensive by design, but you do not need to read it cover to cover before taking action.
If you have not started outreach yet, begin with "Fundraising is a Process" to understand timeline and funnel mechanics, then jump to "Your Materials" to make sure your deck, data room, and financials are ready. Use the Fundraise Prep Template in the Resources section to build your operational plan.
If you are already in meetings, go straight to "Your Story and Your Pitch" for how to deliver, then "First Meetings" and "Second Meetings" for what to expect at each stage. If investors are asking hard questions you are not ready for, the "28 Questions" section has the full catalog organized by topic.
If you have a term sheet or are close to one, read "Partner Meeting" for what happens in the room, then "When you Get a Term Sheet” to more deeply understand the game. For Series B and later, "Raising Series B and Beyond" covers the ways the process changes at scale.
Most fundraising problems fall into one of three buckets: you don't have the traction investors expect for the round you're targeting, you're talking to the wrong investors entirely, or you don't understand how the process actually works. The good news is that all three are fixable once you see them clearly.
There is an invisible bar that the market has come to expect at each fundraising stage. Most founders don't see it until they're already pitching. They have momentum, they assume they're ready for the next round, and investors pass. The metrics looked good to them. But "good" is relative to stage, and if you're showing seed-stage traction while asking for Series A capital, no amount of passion closes that gap.
The metric isn't the most important part. The metric is evidence, and what you are building evidence of is what matters. Each stage proves something different.
For current benchmarks on what traction looks like at each stage, don't rely on numbers in a playbook. They go stale. Carta publishes quarterly and annual fundraising reports that are among the best in the industry. For SaaS-specific benchmarks, Tomasz Tunguz and Bessemer's Cloud Index are useful reference points. The stage framework above stays constant. The specific numbers shift year to year.
VCs have bosses too. They are called LPs, and the VCs have told the LPs that they have a thesis: a check size, a stage focus, a sector. That is how they promised to differentiate. They need to live up to that claim. You should know what it is before you walk in the door.
Three characteristics define whether an investor is right for you: their stage, their thesis, and their status. Stage means whether they do seed, Series A, or growth. Thesis means whether your sector fits what they've told their LPs they'll invest in. Status means whether they have dry powder available to deploy right now. Not all VCs will tell you when they're tapped out. They'll still take a meeting.