If You Want to Raise in 2026, Start Now. Here's How

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Our pre-raise took a little over 8 months, but the first 3 months were absolute hell.

After each of the first 10-15 meetings, an investor would ask for something I wasn't ready for:

• "Do you mind sending over your financial model?"

• "How big is the market?"

• "Have you done the bottom-up math?"

• "What's your hiring plan looking like?"

Eventually, I addressed all these questions, and I was able to quickly follow up with investors because I had everything in order. But looking back at that raise, being unprepared like this is one of the worst things a first-time founder can do when raising VC.

In many cases, you only get one shot with an investor. It's not even about a first impression—it's your only impression. Something as seemingly minimal as taking a couple of days to build your financial model could cost you a second meeting with an investor, which could literally end up costing you $250K in investment.

We're 6 months away from the end of the year. If you're planning to raise in 2026, this is your complete week-by-week guide to make sure that by the end of this year, you're totally ready to go and have all your stuff together for your first investor meeting.

Note: This is a two-parter! Look out for part 2 in your inbox next week. In the meantime, you have plenty to do between now and then.

Get Your Documents Ready

Week 1: Narrative + Pitch Deck Foundation

Your narrative is your vision, simply put. Think about this as your answer to the question "What does the world look like if you're successful?" I learned this early on from a conversation with Christina Cacioppo, founder of Vanta (who raised $353M).

As a first-time founder raising pretty early, you probably don't have enough traction to warrant excitement from investors. Therefore, the vision needs to be the thing you lean into—that's your narrative.

If you need help crafting your narrative, here's a one-liner template that includes both what you're doing and the market opportunity:

"We're helping [number of target companies] achieve [outcome] with [your approach]."

The market opportunity is what you really need to lean into here. Ideally, you can convey to an investor that this is a truly untapped space and you have a line of sight to a pot of gold that others aren't seeing.

Week 2: Complete Your Pitch Deck

If you ask 10 different people what to put into your pitch deck, you'll get 11 different responses. My suggestion is that each pitch deck needs these core slides:

• Cover: Logo, tagline, founder name, data

• Problem: What problem are you solving?

• Solution: How your product or service solves this problem

• Market Opportunity: Bottom-up TAM/SAM/SOM breakdown (more on this below)

• Product/Demo: How your product works (screenshots, demo, or product walkthrough)

• Business Model: How you make money

• Traction: Growth metrics, key customers, and milestones

• Team: Key team members, relevant experience, and advisors

• Fundraising Ask: How much you're raising and the milestones you’ll reach

After these the core slides, populate your deck with additional slides that highlight your company’s strengths. Here are some slides you can consider:

• Competitive Landscape: Analysis of direct and indirect competitors, your unique advantages

• Go-to-Market Strategy: How you'll acquire customers and scale

• Product Roadmap: Future features and development plans

• Case Studies: Real examples of customer success stories

• Defensibility: Barriers to entry, IP, network effects

• Risk Factors: Honest assessment of challenges and how you'll address them

• Partnerships: Strategic relationships that enhance your offering

• Customer Testimonials: Quotes or feedback from early users

• Financials: Revenue projections, burn rate, and unit economics

Weeks 3-4: Financial Model + Market Calculations

Financial Model

Your financial model should project how you're going to spend money over the next 24 months. You don't need to go longer than that because VCs know you're making it up anyway, but you also don't want to go shorter because it's not thorough enough.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, I recommend following this guide from Troy Henikoff of MATH Ventures.

FYI, you should plan on this taking about a week. You can go heads down for one or two straight days, but I'd do it piece by piece so you have time to think between each section.

Market Calculations

This model illustrates the size of the market and its projected growth over the next 5-10 years, providing valuable insights for investors. This is optional, but from my experience, it helps build investor confidence that you're a founder who does your homework.

Always use a bottom-up approach: take the number of potential customers and multiply it by your average sale price. That's your serviceable addressable market (SAM). Once you have your SAM, make an assumption based on other market leaders' market share and calculate your serviceable obtainable market (SOM).

Here's how the bottom-up math worked for me with Chezie:

• of potential customers: 57k (total # of companies with ERGs)

• Average contract value (ACV): $45k

  • SAM = 57k x 45k = $2.56B

• Comparable market share for other leading HR tech companies: 20%

  • SOM = 20% of $2.56B = $513M

The bottom-up approach is preferred because it's specific to your business metrics. Will these be exact? Of course not. But they build investor confidence.

Weeks 5-8: Communications + Testing + Refinement

If you're fundraising, you'll send somewhere between 500 and 1,000 emails. Rather than draft these one by one, have them templated so you can copy, paste, update a few details, and send them out.

The three emails every founder should have are:

1. A forwardable email

2. A request for a warm introduction (with your forwardable included)

3. A follow-up email

Here's the forwardable I used for my pre-seed:

Hi <name> - Great catching up with you earlier today.

As discussed, I would love an introduction to <investor's name or VC name>. I'm including a blurb below that you can forward along.

All the best,

Toby

Toby Egbuna is the Co-founder of Chezie (www.chezie.co).

They're working to help 57,000 companies around the world create better products, grow sales pipeline, build more inclusive workplaces, and ultimately drive business results by reimagining what's possible with their most under-utilized asset: employee resource groups.

They've had some great early success since launching in Oct 2021. Some quick points on their traction:

1. $1M ARR

2. 37 enterprise customers including Acme, Dunder Mifflin, and SHIELD

3. 90% of sales through word of mouth

They're currently raising their pre-seed round, of which $750k is already committed. You can read through their deck here: https://docsend.com/view/link.

Here’s a template that you can copy/paste:

Hi [Name]!

Great catching up with you earlier today. I would love an introduction to [Investor’s Name or VC Name]. I’m including a blurb below that you can forward along.

All the best,

[Your Name]

[Your Name] is the Co-founder of [Your Company Name] ([Your Website URL]).

[Your company] helps [number of target companies] achieve [outcome] with [your approach]."

They’ve had some great early success since launching in [Launch Month/Year]. Some quick points on their traction:

1. [Annual Recurring Revenue or Key Financial Metric]

2. [Number of Customers] enterprise customers, including [Big Client Examples].

3. [Key Sales Channel or Pipeline Info].

They’re currently raising their [Round Name, e.g., pre-seed] round, of which [Amount] is already committed. You can read through their deck here: [Link to Your Deck].

Start Building Relationships Early

The best time to meet an investor is when you DON'T need their money.

To maximize networking opportunities between now and the end of the year, you should start building relationships today, while you're creating your materials. The longer you can nurture these connections before you officially fundraise, the better.

Week 1: Build Your Initial Target List

In part 2, I’ll cover why you need 300+ investors on your target list and how to create that list. For now, let’s focus on the high-priority funds that you’re targeting.

These are the top funds in your industry. For ease, I suggest conducting a ChatGPT or Perplexity search. Use this prompt:

You’ll get a list like this:

Using this list, identify 1-2 investors from each fund (most funds put their team on their fund’s website) and connect with each of them on LinkedIn.

Weeks 2-4: Start the Soft Approach

Now that you know who you want to build relationships with, here's how to get on their radar without being salesy:

LinkedIn Engagement (Weeks 2-3)

• Follow your target investors on LinkedIn

• Start commenting thoughtfully on their posts

• Share their content with your own insights added

• Goal: become a familiar name in their notifications

Ask for "Coffee Chats" (Week 4)

Reach out to any of the investors who have responded to your comments, liked one of your own LinkedIn posts, or engaged with you in another way.

Ask them for time to connect, but frame it as wanting to learn about the space and their fund, NOT as a fundraising conversation

Sample message:

Weeks 5-8: Continue Building While You Finalize

As you're working on communications and refining your materials, keep the networking momentum going:

• Schedule and complete those coffee chats

• Continue engaging with investor content

Optional, but potentially effective: attend in-person investor networking sessions in your city. It’ll be hard to find people who invest specifically in your space, but it never hurts to have local investor connections. They might invest, but they also might introduce you to people they know.

The Bottom Line

The biggest mistake I made during my pre-seed was thinking I could wing the preparation. Those first 3 months were brutal because I was constantly scrambling to answer basic questions I should have anticipated. Don't make the same mistake.

If you're planning to raise in 2026, your competition isn't just other startups in your space. It's the other founders who are already building relationships with the investors you want to meet.

The founders who get funded aren't necessarily the ones with the best companies. They're the ones who show up most prepared.

Start this week. Your future self will thank you.

Next week, I'll share exactly how to maintain and deepen these early investor relationships over the next 4-5 months, including the monthly update strategy that keeps you top-of-mind without being pushy.