CEOs never stop fundraising

A former CEO of one of our portfolio companies complained to me recently that "we spent 60% of our time in the company marking time whilst we raised more funds", and he expressed great enthusiasm to raise a large round and then spend all his time on the business next time round. Certainly the founders at Me.dium will be glad that they've got $15m in the bank, but back in the real world I'd suggest that a CEO of an early stage company is always raising new money. My view is that the right time to put together the business plan for the next round is the Monday morning after you closed the last lot! Recently we've suffered a couple of follow-on rounds taking more than 12 months to complete- so to have a little headroom you need to plan a long way ahead.