Love it or hate, obtaining external funding is often a key part of growth for many startups. 

And fundraising is tactical and strategic, but it’s also energetic in nature.

If you’re currently fundraising or considering it, this two-part guide will make your life easier by arming you with the ins and outs of a fundraising process AND sharing the personal development tools that will help you cultivate the energy that will make your actions more successful.

WHAT WE’LL COVER

PART:1 THE OUTER WORK

1. Should I Fundraise or Not?

   • What VC’s Are Looking For

   • Pros & Cons of Raising VC

   • Questions to Consider

   • Talk to Other Founders

2. Types of Funding

   • Non-VC Funding Options

   • How We Used a Combination of Funding Types at my last startup

   • SAFEs vs Convertible Notes vs Equity Rounds

3. How to Run a Fundraising Process End to End 

   • Build Relationships Ahead of Time

   • Clarify Your Why

   • Create a Clear, Compelling, Concise Pitch Deck

   • Prepare your Materials

   • Build Your Investor Pipeline

   • Line Up Warm Intros

   • Time Your Outreach

   • Pitch & Follow Up

   • Create FOMO (Ethically)

   • Negotiate Terms & Close

PART 2: THE INNER WORK

Refer to Part 2 of this guide

1. Manifesting a successful fundraise

   • Why It Works

   • How to Manifest

   • Visualization for Fundraising

2. Expanders & Mentors

3. Building Unshakeable Confidence in the Face of No’s

   • Why Showing Yourself the Evidence Works

   • Daily Journaling

   • List of Praises & Success

   • How to Deal with a No

4. Changing Your Fundraising Story

   • The Work of Byron Katie

5. Your Nervous System’s Role in Fundraising

6. Tapping Into Your Intuition

7. Protecting your Time and Energy 

8. Working with a Coach While Fundraising

👋 HI, I’M ROSLYN

I’m an executive coach and founder at Within, where I help purpose-led founders scale their impact without burning out. 

Prior to Within, I co-founded The GIST, a women-run sports media brand making sports more inclusive, accessible and fun for underserved sports fans. While there, I was recognized as Forbes 30u30 in their media category and accelerated and funded by global brands like Facebook, Comcast NBC, Techstars and Billie Jean King’s Trailblazer program. 

As the former Head of Finance, Ops & Growth, I raised $2.5m for the company from a variety of sources — from grants, loans and accelerators to SAFEs, convertible notes and an equity round.

Ultimately I ended up burning out from my company and had to transition out, which is a whole other story. But that event motivated me to want to support founders in building outstanding companies with more fulfillment, ease and connection to themselves.

While I’m here to share all the tactical advice around fundraising, I’m even more passionate about sharing what I wish I knew on the inner work side of things that would have made fundraising less overwhelming and more successful.

If you want to approach your fundraising round with more magnetism, self-assuredness and effectiveness, this guide is for you.

By the way, if you want tactical AND personal development advice on all types of startup topics beyond fundraising, you can sign up for the Within Newsletter and follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn.

The Outer Work

SHOULD I FUNDRAISE OR NOT?

While the media makes it seem like fundraising is a prerequisite to startup success, in reality only about 5 in 10,000 startups receive venture funding (less than 0.05%). 

In startup culture, we’ve come to view raising capital as the goal we’re working towards, when in reality, building a profitable, lasting business business should be our goal, with fundraising merely as a tool to support that goal.

And many startups are actually a much better fit for bootstrapping or choosing an alternative funding source to venture capital. 

Venture capitalists (VC’s) are typically looking for companies with high growth potential and a clear path to significant returns. More specifically…