Two Different Skillsets

Founders spend most of their time building. Product, customers, operations, hiring and simply keeping the business moving forward. These are the skills that get a company off the ground and keep it alive in the early days.

Then, often just as momentum starts to build, they find themselves faced with something entirely different. Raising institutional capital. Understanding how investors think, shaping a clear and confident story, bringing the right evidence together, running a structured process and answering detailed questions from people who see hundreds of opportunities a year.

It is a very different discipline. It sits alongside building the business, not within it.

A good example is Melanie Perkins, cofounder of Canva. In the early days she and her team were turned down by well over a hundred investors. She later said, “We were students with no idea how to pitch to investors.” The product was strong and the vision was sound, but the fundraising skillset simply was not there yet. It had to be learned.

This is the reality for many first time founders. You can be very capable at building a business and still be unprepared for the expectations of institutional investors.

Over the coming weeks we will share a series of short posts that break down the essentials of raising institutional capital for the first time. Psychology, process, clarity, pacing and preparation.

The intention is simple. To help founders approach institutional capital with a steadier hand, a clearer structure and a more grounded understanding of how investors actually think.