# Fundraising

> Assess venture fit, pitches, investors, round plans, meetings, and diligence. Use when founders are deciding whether to raise, preparing a raise, or improving an active fundraising process.

- Skill: `tushaarmehtaa/fundraising` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add tushaarmehtaa/fundraising`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/tushaarmehtaa/fundraising/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- License: MIT
- Author: tushaarmehtaa (https://skillmd.com/u/tushaarmehtaa)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/tushaarmehtaa/fundraising

---


# Fundraising

Separate storytelling problems from company-fact problems. Build the strongest defensible case without turning investor folklore into doctrine.

## Choose a mode

- **Raise/no-raise:** test whether venture capital fits the company and alternatives.
- **Fundability assessment:** identify strengths, disqualifiers, and evidence gaps.
- **Deck or memo audit:** test narrative, claims, metrics, and consistency.
- **Narrative workshop:** develop a small number of defensible investment claims.
- **Round planning:** connect amount, runway, dilution, use of funds, and milestones.
- **Investor research:** verify firm and partner fit, conflicts, check size, and current activity.
- **Meeting/diligence prep:** objections, data room, difficult questions, and follow-up.

Use only the modes needed.

## Workflow

1. Inspect existing deck, memo, metrics, product/customer evidence, cap table, financial model, prior feedback, and repository context before interviewing.
2. Establish stage, amount, runway, use of funds, milestone, market, customer, traction, growth, retention, economics, distribution, competition, team, geography, and financing constraints. Ask only blocking questions.
3. Test whether venture return expectations and financing dynamics fit the business. Present bootstrapping, revenue financing, debt, grants, angels, or a smaller round when materially relevant.
4. Map every important claim to a metric definition, cohort, customer fact, product mechanism, or sourced market observation. Flag unsupported claims and inconsistent periods or denominators.
5. Pressure-test problem importance, wedge, market expansion, product advantage, distribution, evidence of pull, economics, timing, founder fit, and round-specific risks.
6. For investor research, use current official firm/partner sources and recent primary evidence. Verify thesis, stage, geography, check size where published, portfolio conflicts, partner involvement, and retrieval date. Do not infer active interest.
7. Build headlines and evidence before slide prose. Adapt length and order to stage, format, and audience; do not force a fixed slide count.
8. Red-team market sizing, cohort metrics, financial consistency, dilution/runway math, competitive claims, and the milestone the round buys.
9. Prepare honest answers, disqualifiers, requested follow-up material, and next actions. Never invent traction, logos, quotes, market size, investor interest, or commitments.

## Load conditional references

- Read [pitch patterns](references/pitch-workshop.md) for claim design, risk handling, deck headlines, and partnership-summary tests. Treat named historical frameworks as optional lenses, not current investor consensus.
- Read [founder frameworks](references/founder-frameworks.md) only when a market-pull, risk-reduction, dependency, or founder-reality lens helps. The reference states limitations.

This file remains authoritative for interaction, evidence, output, and verification.

## Output contract

Return the sections required by the selected mode, such as:

- candid fit/fundability assessment and financing alternatives;
- strongest defensible narrative and claim-to-evidence map;
- metric, market, and operating evidence gaps;
- round amount/use/milestone/runway logic;
- investor-fit shortlist with sources and conflict notes;
- slide headlines or memo outline;
- objection handling, diligence requests, and next actions.

## Verify

- Metric definitions, periods, cohorts, and denominators are consistent.
- Market sizing is triangulated and assumptions are visible.
- Round amount, use of funds, runway, dilution, and milestone agree.
- Investor-fit claims come from current primary evidence and do not imply interest.
- Every material pitch claim has support or is labeled as a hypothesis.
- Risks, disqualifiers, counterarguments, and financing alternatives are explicit.