| name | fundraise-readiness-audit |
| description | Use before a founder starts pitching to check they are actually ready. Triggers on "am I ready to raise", "what do I need before fundraising", "will I pass diligence", "fundraise checklist", "what are investors going to find". Surfaces the gaps that kill rounds before the first meeting. |
Fundraise Readiness Audit
A raise that starts before the company is ready burns the best investors first —
and you only get one first meeting with each. This skill runs the audit a sharp
investor will run, so you find the holes before they do.
When to use this skill
Run it after [[fundraising-stage-selector]] sets the envelope and before any
outreach. Re-run it the week before you go live to confirm nothing regressed.
The four readiness gates
Score each gate red / yellow / green. Any red means delay, not push.
1. Metrics
- Can you state your one hero metric with a denominator, and is it improving?
- Are growth, retention/NRR, burn, runway, and CAC/payback current and
reconciled to the bank?
- Is there a cohort or retention curve that survives a skeptic? Weak retention
is the #1 silent round-killer.
2. Story
- Does the [[fundraising-narrative]] survive being read aloud in six sentences?
- Is the named risk answered, not hidden?
- Does the ask (amount, milestone) match the evidence? Misalignment reads as
not knowing your own business.
3. Team
- Does the team slide answer "why this team wins" without hand-waving?
- Are the obvious gaps named with a hiring plan? See [[fundraise-team-hiring]].
- Founder vesting in place, no absent co-founder holding dead equity.
4. Legal & financial hygiene
- Clean cap table, no handshake equity, all option grants documented. See
[[cap-table-manager]].
- IP assigned to the company (every contractor, every founder).
- Incorporation, board consents, and prior SAFEs/notes organized.
- Books close monthly; you can produce a data room in days, not weeks. See
[[data-room-builder]].
The kill questions
Ask these as an investor would. If any answer is a flinch, that is a red gate:
- "Show me the retention cohorts." (Do they exist and hold?)
- "Walk me through the cap table." (Any surprises?)
- "What did you believe a year ago that you no longer believe?" (Is there a real
insight?)
- "What breaks if I give you the money?" (Do they know their constraint?)
Anti-patterns
- Going out to "test the market" with a red gate, expecting to fix it mid-raise.
Word travels; you reset only by waiting.
- Confusing activity (signups, pilots) with proof (retention, revenue).
- A pristine deck over a messy cap table. Diligence checks the cap table.
Deliverable
A red/yellow/green scorecard across the four gates, a ranked list of the gaps to
close, and a go / fix-first / wait recommendation with the specific milestones
that would turn each red gate green.
