Raising investment feels like a marker of success, but that’s not the finish line. It’s the start of more hard work, here’s how to get it right, according to Conor Lyden, the founder and CEO of Trustap, a fintech firm helping to build trust with online transactions.
I’ve been through the process of raising multiple times and then trying to expand the company on the back of it. I learned a lot along the way, none of this is groundbreaking, and you’ll have heard versions of it before, but there’s a difference between hearing advice and feeling it, and I wish I’d properly felt some of this earlier. Here are the lessons I’d hand to a founder about to go down the same road:
1. The raise starts long before you actually raise
The biggest mistake I see founders make is treating fundraising as an event, something you switch on when the bank balance starts looking uncomfortable. By then you’re already on the back foot. The worst possible time to meet an investor is the moment you need their money, because you’re negotiating from weakness and they can feel it. The founders who raise well have been quietly working on it for months, sometimes years. They meet investors when they’re not raising. They get on their radar early, then send short, regular updates, even to those who haven’t put in a cent. So when you finally open a round, you’re not cold-pitching strangers, you’re talking to people who already know you and have seen you deliver.
2. Run the raise like a sales funnel
Once you’re actually in it, the most useful reframe is this: fundraising is a sales process, and you are the product. It’s a numbers game, and it rewards organisation over brilliance. So run it like one. Put every investor in a CRM or a simple spreadsheet, track exactly what stage each conversation is at, what the next step is, and when you last followed up. Most will say no, and that’s completely normal, which is precisely why you need real volume at the top of the funnel rather than pinning your hopes on one or two dream names. Running lots of conversations in parallel does something else useful too: it creates momentum, and a bit of healthy competitive tension between investors that works entirely in your favour. Be consistent with the messaging to them all, as they’ll likely know and speak to each other about deals they’re working on. The founders who go in disorganised, relying on memory and a chaotic inbox, lose track of warm leads and let good conversations go cold.
3. Choose your investors like a co-founder
When you’re deep in the funnel and someone finally says yes, it’s tempting to take the money from whoever offers the best terms and move on. The people writing the cheque are going to be in your life for years. They’ll be in the room when things are going badly, not just when they’re going well, and how they behave in the bad moments matters far more than the valuation they offered in the good ones. Before you take anyone’s money, talk to other founders they’ve backed, especially the ones whose companies struggled or the ones who they don’t offer up as references. Ask how the investor was when the numbers weren’t so good. A supportive, straight-talking investor who understands your business is worth more than a big name who disappears the moment things get hard.
4. Raising money isn’t the achievement
It is always important to celebrate the wins when you’re building a company. That said, the right mindset is to celebrate signing a big new customer a lot more than closing a round. The reality is that when you finally close the round and someone has handed you their money, it’s because they believe you’ll turn it into more, and now the clock is running. The founders I admire don’t celebrate the raise in isolation. The external validation is great, don’t get me wrong, but what’s really worth celebrating what they build with it. The money is fuel, and fuel is only useful if you know exactly where you’re driving.
5. Hire slow, fire fast
Expanding tests two of the hardest disciplines a founder has, and they pull in opposite directions. Firstly, hire slowly. When you’re growing and drowning in work, every instinct screams to fill the seat with the next warm body, but one wrong senior hire early on does more damage than a few slow months ever could. Take the time. Be fussy, especially at the top, because those people set the standard for everyone who comes after them. The second is fire fast. When someone clearly isn’t working, we tend to drag the decision out for months, telling ourselves they’ll turn a corner. They rarely do. Acting quickly is kinder to everyone, including the person themselves, than letting it limp on. Your team notices who you tolerate, and nothing erodes the culture you worked so hard to build faster than keeping the wrong person around.
Raising investment feels like a marker of success, but that’s not the finish line. It’s the start of more hard work, here’s how to get it right, according to Conor Lyden, the founder and CEO of Trustap, a fintech firm helping to build trust with online transactions.
I’ve been through the process of raising multiple times and then trying to expand the company on the back of it. I learned a lot along the way, none of this is groundbreaking, and you’ll have heard versions of it before, but there’s a difference between hearing advice and feeling it, and I wish I’d properly felt some of this earlier. Here are the lessons I’d hand to a founder about to go down the same road:
