Run a 5-day fundraising sprint

A round shape is: how much you're raising, what valuation cap (or post-money valuation if priced), what instrument (SAFE / convertible note / priced equity), what the use of funds is, and what milestone the next round happens at. Investors will not engage seriously until you can answer these in 30 seconds. Vague answers signal a founder still figuring it out and trigger 'come back when you're further along' passes.

Target investors who fund at your stage, in your sector, with a thesis match, and who write checks in your size band. Investors outside that intersection waste time. Sources: Signal NFX, Crunchbase Pro, your network, recent funding announcements in your sector, partner Twitter / writing.

Research this investor list before the sprint starts.

For each investor row in the Investors table:
1. Pull their last 5-10 investments (check size, stage, sector — flag mismatches with our round)
2. Pull the partner's recent writing / Twitter (last 6 months)
3. Identify 1-2 portfolio companies that look like us (use as conversation hook)
4. Flag any conflicts (they fund a direct competitor — we should NOT pitch them)
5. Score the fit 1-5 and explain in 1 line

Output: update the Investors table rows in place with these fields. Do not contact anyone.

The week before the sprint is for intros. You're asking 30-50 people for warm intros to your tier-1 + tier-2 list. Make it easy: a forwardable email they can paste verbatim. Anything that requires the introducer to write copy gets de-prioritized in their inbox.

The compression is the point. 25 meetings in 5 days creates urgency for investors (they hear about your other conversations) and for you (no time to overthink any one meeting). Block the week, send Calendly to confirmed intros, refuse to schedule calls outside the window unless it's a tier-1 partner who can't make it.

First meetings are 30 min. Open with 5 min mutual intro (their fund + you), 10 min deck walkthrough hitting the highlights (don't read every slide), 15 min Q&A. The Q&A is the signal — investors who ask hard questions about the wedge, the team, the next 18 months are interested. Ones who ask about TAM are doing pattern-matching.

Process the meeting I just had with {investor_name}.

I'll paste my notes. Output:
1. A 3-bullet summary of what they said + their level of engagement (low / medium / high)
2. The next-step commit they made (or didn't)
3. A draft follow-up email: thank-you, recap of one specific point they raised, the asset they asked for, the proposed next step
4. Update the Pipeline row's stage + add the meeting log line to the Brief

Constraints:
- The follow-up email is short (4-6 sentences max)
- If they asked for diligence material we don't have, flag it explicitly
- If they were a soft pass disguised as 'let me think', mark the row 'cooling' so we know to move on

Investors evaluate dozens of decks a week. The follow-up email reactivates memory and signals you're organized. Send within 4 hr of the meeting, before they've forgotten which startup you are. Reference one specific thing they said (proves you listened). Attach or link any asset they asked for.

By Day 3 you'll have 15 conversations open. By Day 5, 25-30. Without a pipeline you'll lose track of who's in which stage, who you owe follow-ups to, and who's quietly dying. The pipeline is the daily standup.

When the first investor signals strong interest (second meeting requested, partner pitch invite, soft term sheet), the dynamic shifts. Use it to compress everyone else's timeline: 'we have growing interest, we're aiming to close by date X — would love your decision before then'. This is honest, not pushy, as long as the interest is real. If you fake FOMO and investors compare notes, you torch your reputation.

When a term sheet lands, you have hours-to-days, not weeks. Read every line. Flag non-standard terms (board control, super pro-rata, MFN side letters, founder vesting acceleration on change of control). Use a YC SAFE template as your baseline for pre-seed / seed; for priced rounds, get a startup-friendly lawyer (Cooley, Wilson Sonsini, Gunderson, Orrick) to review.

The close is paperwork: SAFE / share docs signed by every investor, wires received, cap table updated in Carta, founder vesting docs filed if they weren't already. The post-mortem is the gift to future-you: write down what worked, what didn't, which investors to keep warm, which to never go back to.