Today I want to talk about fundraising and the corporate structuring that comes with it, because the real version of this story rarely makes it into anyone's post.

Starting with preference shares, as they look clean on a term sheet. What you're actually signing is a stack of rights that sit above your common/ordinary shares.

Liquidation preference, anti-dilution, board seats, veto rights. When the company does well and everyone wins, nobody bothers reading the fine print. But when it doesn't, those same clauses decide who gets paid first and what's left for you and your team after. Read every line and understand what you're agreeing to, because you live with it for years.

Raising from VCs is not for everyone, and it's definitely not for the faint-hearted. Investors back your vision, but they are also running a business. They have LPs, their own investors, and they have to return capital to them. That's the job. Sometimes you'll figure out along the way that you were never the right fit for a particular fund, and the most useful thing your company can do for them is become a write-off that reduces their capital gains. Sounds brutal but it's just how the ecosystem works out.

The model works on bets. A fund spreads cheques across many companies, and one or two of them return the whole fund at >2-20x. The rest get written off, and that's the design doing exactly what it's supposed to do. To the VC, you are one line in a portfolio. To you, this is the only thing you've got. Know that asymmetry before you take the money, not after.

So don't take any of it personally, as it's just math. And for those of you who have been venture funded, be straight with yourself. You probably would not be sitting where you are today, in size, in scars, in how much you've grown, without the people who wrote those cheques when nobody else would. They believed in you first. Don't discount that just because the relationship runs its course.

Life moves on. The numbers move on. You keep going.

As usual, still here, still rowing :)

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