Fundraising and investor readiness
The finance workstream behind a raise: valuation, the model, the data room, and diligence. I have run it end to end on a US$8M Series A with diligence by EY.
Raising money is a finance project before it is an investor conversation. Most companies find that out in the middle of diligence, which is the worst time to find it out.
The situation this usually starts from
You have a business that works and a story you believe. What you do not have is the evidence in the shape an institutional investor expects:
- Historic numbers that were built for tax and management, not for a data room.
- A model that goes three years out on assumptions nobody has stress-tested.
- A valuation someone arrived at, but cannot defend line by line.
- No clear answer to the questions diligence always asks: revenue recognition, related-party transactions, working-capital cycles, and whether the controls behind the numbers exist.
None of that means the business is not fundable. It means the raise will take longer, get repriced, or stall on a diligence finding that could have been fixed in advance.
What I do
I run the finance side of the raise so the founders can run the story.
Before the process opens
- Clean the historic numbers and get the accounting policies defensible under IFRS.
- Build the long-range model as an actual operating model, not a spreadsheet that grows revenue by a percentage.
- Set the valuation and be able to defend it: method, comparables, assumptions, sensitivities.
- Run a diligence dry run against the questions the buyer's advisers will ask, and fix what it turns up while there is still time.
During the process
- Own the data room, its structure, and its version control.
- Prepare the investor materials and the financial narrative that sits under the deck.
- Answer diligence queries directly, which is faster and more credible than routing everything through the founders.
- Keep the company running its month-end while the process is live, because that is where deals usually slip.
After it closes
- Wire the reporting the new investors expect into the monthly cycle, so the first board pack is not a scramble.
- Put in the controls that were promised during diligence, rather than leaving them as a commitment.
The proof
I led the finance workstream on a PKR 1.2 billion, about US$8 million, Series A for a logistics group. I owned the valuation, the five-year model and the investor materials, presented alongside the leadership, and coordinated diligence from our side while EY ran it.
It closed on numbers that held up under a Big 4 review, and the operating KPIs went into financial planning off the back of the model that was built for the raise.
Who this fits
A good fit if: you are raising a first institutional round or a growth round, you have a real business with imperfect finance, and you want one senior person accountable for the numbers from preparation through to close.
Not a fit if: you want an introduction service or a broker. I do the finance work; I do not place the round.
How it works commercially
Fundraising support runs as a fixed-scope project, quoted after a short scoping call, or as part of an ongoing fractional CFO engagement if the raise is one of several things you need. You see the number and what it covers before anything starts.
Questions
How early should a CFO get involved in a raise?
Earlier than most founders think. The work that decides how a raise goes, cleaning historic numbers, building a defensible model and running a diligence dry run, takes weeks and has to happen before the process opens. Bringing someone in once term sheets are circulating means fixing problems in front of the investor rather than before them.
Do you work on the raise itself or just the finance?
The finance. Valuation, modelling, the data room, investor materials and diligence. I present alongside the founders and answer diligence queries directly, but I am not a broker and I do not place rounds.