Reference check questions
What to ask a fund's existing founders, phrased so you get an answer rather than a testimonial.
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Investor meetings · Copyable template
Pre-meeting prep sheet
One page to fill in before a first meeting, covering the questions that reliably come up.
Investor questions are not a test of whether you can perform confidently. They are a way to locate the evidence, the assumptions, and the risks behind your story. Preparing means making the company clearer, not memorising a defence for every possible objection.
Listen for the decision underneath each question rather than the literal words. “How big is the market?” often means “could this become a venture-scale outcome?” “What's your burn?” often means “how much time and money does the next real proof point actually require?” Answer the decision.
This sheet is a question bank across the five areas that reliably come up. Four lines for each, filled in before the meeting rather than assembled in it.
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What is in it
- Company and customer
- Market and timing
- Evidence and metrics
- Competition and advantage
- Team, financing, and risk
- Your largest risk
- How you answer in the room
- After the meeting
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The template is ready. Add your email to open it, and you will also get The Raise Memo — a note for founders raising capital.
How to use it
Notes
You do not have to answer every question immediately. If one is genuinely unclear, outside the company's current scope, or effectively asking for confidential information, clarify, decline carefully, or offer a useful summary instead. And if investors keep landing on a problem you cannot address without harming the business, the honest reading may be that the round is premature rather than that the answer needs more work.
Where this comes from
The thinking behind it
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“No” follow-up template
The reply that turns a pass into something you can use, without arguing with the decision.
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From the publication
Read The Raise Memo
A note for founders raising capital—what investors notice, how conviction gets built, and what to do next.
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