How long does it take to fundraise?

Funding is the number one priority of any growing start-up business, whether you’re at idea stage, making early progress and winning customers, or more established and beginning to scale.

However, one of the biggest issues that we see for female founders is leaving it too late to start working on your fundraising campaign. You might keep putting your fundraise off for as long as possible because you're afraid of or don't understand the process, are worried you don’t have everything ready, are constantly trying to do everything perfectly or are just caught up with the day to day (i.e. firefighting) of running your business without enough resource, along with dealing with life in general. All of this is super stressful, but adopting a head in the sand approach to funding isn’t the solution. If you need funding to make your business a success, it can be extremely dangerous to procrastinate.

The dangers of leaving it too late

If you leave raising investment to the point when you’re out of cash and at the point of desperation, you’ll be in a much weaker position; like a rabbit in the headlights, giving off the scent of fear that an investor can smell from a mile off.

You simply won’t have enough time to do a good job of it, risking taking the wrong deal, or getting no funding at all. And that can lead to your business either stagnating or having to close.

How long does it take to raise investment?

If you try and go it alone, without the right support and advice along the way, it’s easy for a fundraise to suck up all your time and energy, and you can find yourself still out there trying to raise money after 12 or 18 months.

However, if you follow a structured professional approach, a well-run fundraising campaign should take around four to six months from start to finish, sometimes a little longer.

Is fundraising seasonal?

Bear in mind that certain periods in the year can impact the timescales on raising money, as the investment industry tends to go a little quiet in the school holidays; meanwhile, the weeks towards the end of the accounting financial year are also busy times for investors, so be sure to plan accordingly.

Do the groundwork and preparation in the quieter months, then hit the ground running when investors are back at their desks. January, May and September are great times to start your investor outreach, so give yourself a good couple of months in advance of that to work on your fundraising strategy, pitch assets and all the preparation.

What's the first step to take?

The sooner you start empowering yourself with the strategy, skills and support you need to be successful in fundraising the better.

The very best entrepreneurs are decisive and resourceful. If you need to raise, make a decision to do it, then do whatever it takes to make it happen.

Explore all our free resources to learn as much as you can about fundraising - including Fundraising Insights, Investability Scorecard (TM) and our market leading Fundraising Stories with Female Founders podcast. You might even want to get your hands on a copy of our CEO and Founder's best selling book on the subject: RAI$E: The Female Founders Guide To Securing Investment.

Then it's time to take the leap and make this fundraise happen! Join our Fundraising Academy, and we'll take you through the whole process. You'll be in safe hands.