Preparing for Your Next Round - What investors look for

“The answer isn’t 42. It’s a clean cap table and a working burn multiple.” — Hitchhiker-approved fundraising wisdom

Why this chapter exists

Once HEARTFELT has wired the first tranche, life speeds up. The next cheques—Seed extensions, Seed-plus bridges, and the eventual Series A—arrive only if the story, the metrics and you have levelled up in sync. Investors at each waypoint squint at slightly different dials, so let’s decode what they’re really hunting for and how to serve it up without losing your soul (or your towel).

1 Seed Stage – Proof of Possibility

Seed investors still bet primarily on people, but now they also expect proof that the machine can hum. Here’s the condensed shopping list:

Team completeness – The founding nucleus is joined by the first Hacker, Hustler & Hipster triad; competencies mapped to the next 12-month roadmap. Diverse skills beat cloned résumés every time.
Early PMF signals – ≥ 50 % M-1 retention, genuine repeat usage, maybe a sliver of paid conversions. Vanity MAUs are the new Beanie Babies—cute, worthless.
Momentum & narrative cadence – Show the Plan → Do → Observe → Adapt loop in action. Investors zoom in on your learning velocity more than on today’s ARR. Kill-log slides are welcome.
Coachability without subservience – Be open to input, but also present at least one politely declined piece of advice and why you ignored it. The eye-level dance is the only dance worth doing.
Values alignment – A three-word culture distillation (“Bold > Polite”, “Users before Slides”, whatever) filters out mismatched money early.
Fund-life fit – Ask point-blank: “How many years and reserves remain in this fund?” If a partner blushes, move on.

Side quest:

2 Seed-Plus / Bridge – Proof of Repeatability

Between the celebratory seed dinner and the Series A board deck lives the Seed-plus trench. The cheque is smaller, the scrutiny sharper.

Needle-Mover	What “Good” Looks Like
Net Revenue Retention	≥ 100 % on at least one early cohort. Expansion beats logo-churn every day.
Capital-Efficiency (Burn Multiple)	< 2× is healthy, < 1.5× is elite (cubesoftware.com)
Repeatable GTM Experiment	One channel with statistically reliable CAC payback < 12 months, or a documented A/B engine proving you know how to find it.
Org scaling draft	First VP-level roles defined, option-pool top-up pre-modelled.
Governance readiness	Board-observer rules, monthly investor updates already rolling.

3 Series A – Proof of Scalability

Series A partners have longer zoom lenses and fatter cheques. They need conviction that €1 today buys €10 tomorrow and that the machine won’t explode.