Home / Start Here / Step 07
Step 07 / 08 · Raise the right capital
Capital is fuel, not a goal. Raise when it accelerates something already working, from people who make the company better, and know what you are giving up.
Why it matters
Many great businesses should never raise venture capital. Many others can’t exist without it. The real question is whether you need outside capital to win, and which kind: customers, grants, angels, venture, debt or revenue.
Investors become part of your company for a decade. The best bring networks, pattern recognition and calm in a crisis. The worst bring pressure toward the wrong plan, so choose them the way you chose your co-founder.
How to do it
What would the money make possible that revenue can’t? If the answer is vague, keep building.
Raise enough to reach the next proof point plus a buffer, at a valuation that won’t trap the next round.
Problem, traction, team, market, plan and use of funds, backed by clean numbers and documents.
A target list, warm introductions, a short window and parallel conversations. Momentum is your strongest negotiating position.
Call founders they backed, especially the ones for whom it went badly. Ask what the investor did when things got hard.
Common mistakes
You’re ready for the next step when
From the studio
As a founding partner of GDA Capital, Joaquim has backed 70+ companies, including 2 seed-to-unicorn outcomes. Alpaca Network raised $1.2M in 2 weeks, and his lesson was to raise the valuation when a round is oversubscribed. Depending on your company, stage and jurisdiction, capital comes from the studio, the Regenerate Syndicate or partners including GDA Group.
Where the studio can help
Fundraising readiness, investor mapping and warm introductions to angels, funds and family offices. Plus help structuring the round.
Experience · Backed 70+ companies as a founding partner of GDA Capital, including 2 seed-to-unicorn outcomes. Alpaca Network raised $1.2M in 2 weeks. LP at Holt Xchange.
Partnerships, corporate development and positioning: the relationships that open markets and doors.
Experience · Founding Partner of GDA Capital. Mentor and advisor at Techstars, Founder Institute, Outlier Ventures and FounderFuel.
Press, speaking and a clear point of view that make you easier to find and to trust.
Experience · Featured in the Financial Post, BNN Bloomberg and Authority Magazine. Speaks on scaling, web3 and AI.
Read next
Building a company
Peter Thiel
Building something genuinely new, and why monopoly-level focus matters.
Building a company
Ben Horowitz
The honest, unglamorous reality of running a company when nothing is easy.
Stoic and timeless wisdom
Ryan Holiday
Turning setbacks into material. Stoicism for people who have to act.
Work with the studio
Tell us what you’re building and what you need. We read every application, and every founder gets an answer.
