The Perfect Pitch: The First 90 Days

5 strategies to tackle The First 90 Days after raising your Seed/Series A

Chip Meakem, Managing Partner

If you made it this far then, you delivered a solid pitch (7 Steps to Deliver the Perfect Pitch), ran a great diligence process (How to Run a Great Diligence Process), and survived negotiating the term sheet (Negotiating the Terms). Now it’s time to really get to work. The first 90 days after raising your Seed/Series A round is crucial in a company’s life cycle. Yet, most founders are not prepared for the early challenges that come after fundraising. Given our experience coaching founders, we wanted to share strategies for leveraging this period to set your company and team up for success. Here are 5 strategies to help you tackle The First 90 Days:

Establish three core milestones.

Establish three core milestones for each of the key areas of your business (e.g., Team, Tech, Customer Traction/ Revenue, etc.) and agree on them with your team, board, and investors. I usually do this exercise with my portfolio founders as the last step in the diligence process. They have all found it helpful in our look-backs.

Create a KPI dashboard.

Create a simple KPI dashboard for your business and use it to keep your board and investors informed. This requires some upfront investment of time by you and the team. However, it will save you lots of one-off update emails, texts, and calls in the long run.

Don’t overspend or overhire.

There’s a strange force in the universe that tries to suck cash out of companies that have just raised $. Try to avoid this.

Over-communicate with your team.

The vision in your head is not as obvious to the team as it is to you. Be intentional about setting team meetings and catch ups to ensure consistent communication with the team. A great way to start the week is with a team stand up and recap of key decisions, successes, and challenges.

Take care of yourself.

As an operator, I would often hit a wall at like 3–4 pm only to realize I had not had a morsel of food or drop of water since 7:30 am. I can’t overemphasize how important it is to take care of yourself. Running a startup is truly a marathon, and you want to make it to the finish line.