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.