How to raise your A round in 3 weeks. This deck summarizes Benchsci's A round fundraising journey

1. Liran Belenzon, CEO liran@benchsci.com
How to
Close Your
A Round
in 3 Weeks

2. You are not
raising money,
you are selling
your company.

3. To run a successful fundraising process,
one needs to adopt the enterprise sales mindset
Prepare your story
and supporting
materials
Identify
your targets
Understand
the internal
approval process
Work with a champion
to align the rest of the
organization

4. Investors just want to hear a great story
You should spend
around 200-300 hours
on your deck
Should be more detailed
than your Seed Deck
(mine was 35 pages)
You should present to
each of your investors
separately to gather
feedback
You are probably
going to think you are
done 3 times before
rewriting everything
200-300
hours

5. Create a business data
room (Google Drive)
with the following
Your job is to
make it as easy
as possible for a
VC to make a
decision
Full deck with
appendix
Team
profiles
All market
reports and blogs
Contracts
Cap Table
Reviews and
user feedback
Revenue
projections
User growth
projections
18-24 month
budget
Appendix
10

6. Build a VC target list to ensure you
get multiple term sheets
On average, for every 10 VC meetings, you will get 1 term sheet
Start preparing a targeted
VC list from day 1
Ask your existing investors
to contribute to the list
Identify potential champions
and contacts

7. VCs have a straight forward process
to evaluate an investment
Partner
meeting
If a VC is interested, this process should not take more than 3 weeks
You will hear
back within
48 hours if yes
Meeting will be set up
within a week if yes
The VC will need
7-14 days to
conduct DD
1 -1.5
months
Email
reach out
Meeting with a
second partner
1
All partner
meeting
Money in
the bank
Due-
diligence
Term
Sheet
2 3 4 5 6 7

8. Your champion wants you to be successful
Once a partner brings you in to a partner meeting, they are
taking a professional risk and want you to make them look good
Ask what is missing
in your story?
Work together to
understand who needs to
say yes in the room
Build relationships
with the other partners
T
YES!

9. 2 months of prep Send out full batch of emails 3
weeks before kick off
3 weeks of
non-stop meetings
Prepare to disengage from your
company for at least 3 months

10. Some additional
tips to make this
successful
Have someone
from your board
you can call 15
times a day
Use a CRM system and
share with your investors
(I used Asana)
Meet the ones you
don’t really want to
raise from first
From a signed term sheet to money in the bank it can only
go wrong (get your legal DD ready before the raise)
Align 3-5 customers to talk
to investors (refer them only
after a partner meeting)
1 2
3 4
5

11. Once you get a terms sheet…
Expiry dates
do not matter
Investor backchannel checks
Stay calm!
The term sheets
are not going away
?

12. T
This system has benefits and drawbacks
You will get a higher valuation
(you create competition)
You won’t be able to get to know your
future investors very well
Some investors won’t be
able to move as fastYou will get it done fast
youinvestors

13. Thank you!
liran@benchsci.comLiran Belenzon, CEO