Raising a $250 million Series D round may seem like a distant and unnecessary distraction to startup founders pitching investors for that first $1 million in seed money. But it shouldn\u2019t be, according to several founders and venture capitalists. In their view, founders should be charting out a strategy for those later stage fundraises from the beginning. <\/p>\n
Aven co-founder and CEO Sadi Khan said while onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt that startup founders should start thinking about their later rounds before they raise their first financing. This strategy allows founders to determine how much capital they\u2019ll likely need throughout the growth of their startup.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a very capital-intensive company; we provide asset-backed credit cards to consumers,\u201d Khan said. \u201cWe require large amounts of capital to scale up, and we\u2019ll require large, large amounts of capital to grow. From day zero, we knew that we needed to have an intensive pipeline of investors that we want to work with over a long period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Founders who understand how much capital they need can focus on finding the right investors for an early-stage round while building relationships with later-stage investors of the same flavor.<\/p>\n
Lila Preston, head of growth equity at Generation Investment Management, said startups should start building these relationships at least two years before they need the capital.<\/p>\n
Starting these relationships early gives investors time to get to know the business and the market it operates in, Preston added. It also gives investors a peek into the company\u2019s growth. <\/p>\n
Some later-stage investors \u2014 like Generation Investment Management, Preston said \u2014 can add value to a company long before they invest, if they think an idea is promising.<\/p>\n
Techcrunch event<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we show up, even at Series A or B, we\u2019ve done the homework so that we\u2019re an additive worthwhile conversation,\u201d Preston said. \u201c\u2018What are your milestones?\u2019 \u2018What does success look like to you?\u2019 As the entrepreneur, [if you are] able to articulate that, you can come back and say, \u2018Yes, you\u2019ve been able to hit the milestones you set out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Zeya Yang, a partner at IVP, agreed and added that later-stage rounds are closing quicker than ever. Giving investors time to learn about your company in advance helps both sides, Yang noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely helps to get to know those people earlier than you think you need to,\u201d Yang said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re actually raising, you\u2019re talking to folks, one that you know you probably get along with, two who\u2019ve already thought about your business a bit, etc. So it\u2019s definitely helpful to think about it well in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yang added that when early-stage companies start talking to later stage investors they don\u2019t have to necessarily share all their numbers or metrics quite yet. Instead, they can share the general direction of the company and the overall vision of what it\u2019s building.<\/p>\n
Startups looking to find these late-stage investors should start by turning to their existing cap table, Khan said. A company\u2019s existing investors can connect the founder to other VCs \u2014 his early investors introduced him to Khosla Ventures, which led the company\u2019s Series E round \u2014 that would be a good fit or have worked well the investors on the cap table in the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt any given stage of fundraising, we always thought about what the next set of investors would be,\u201d Khan said. \u201cWe try to build relationships in the previous round with an investor who really focuses on the next stage round. And sometimes we would let them come in on like a symbolic check to really start establishing a relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raising a $250 million Series D round may seem like a distant and unnecessary distraction to startup founders…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[64,63,99,198,60376,55516,162439],"class_list":{"0":"post-280614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-entrepreneurship","12":"tag-startup-fundraising","13":"tag-techcrunch-disrupt-2025","14":"tag-vcs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}