Fundraising Will Take You 3 Months

There's an important difference between a fundraise actually taking 6 months, and a fundraise that you started several months before you were ready (ie, before your company has a "market-clearing" offer).

If, in parallel to fundraising, you are spending months demonstrating traction, preparing decks, modelling out potential outcomes, launching a product, or whatever, the problem isn't "fundraising takes longer than it looks on tv", but rather, "fundraising requires clearing higher standards that it seems to on tv".

It is probably because I'm not in the valley, but I would have loved to have been finished in 3 months. We closed our seed round 6 months after pitching our first angel group. Granted, we had a few bridge notes to get us through and we were pretty picky about the money we took, but still. Fund raising takes forever.

I have to admit I found myself wanting to tell the author that his article about the unrealistic expectations about the time it takes to raise funding had some very unrealistic expectations around the time it takes to raise money!

All good points. I would just add that I'd double the time here. Secondly, time is to some extent on the investors side. A lot of folks burn out quickly so seeing you still dedicated and (mostly) telling the same story 3 to 6 months later is important.

Couldn't agree more! I constantly see startups underestimate the amount of time it will take to raise and then make suboptimal decisions because they are in a rush

3 Months would be great. Raising angel money in Canada is a little slow. (I'm being kind)