Fund-raise the bar: Is your startup ready?

TOGETHER WITH

A founder’s workflow: Less friction, more answers. That’s what Fidelity Private Shares®’ Fundraise-Ready Startup Kit wants to help founders achieve. Check out detailed templates, decks, and checklists made to support your big biz moments.*

Founders are known for their vision and ambition. But a can-do attitude can quickly devolve into a can’t-do one when fundraising enters the to-do list.

The problem is, founders aren’t really given clear instructions for the dos and don’ts of fundraising. It's always been a nebulous concept marked by success stories, but not so much about the actual nitty-gritty it takes to nail it. They struggle because the mechanics of fundraising can be unclear, fragmented, and learned too late.

So instead of looking up “cap table template” at midnight or treating diligence like a future problem, we teamed up with Fidelity Private Shares® to create this explainer. It leverages The Fundraise-Ready Startup Kit by Fidelity Private Shares (FPS) to give you real, actionable steps to find your footing in the fundraising phase. Just think of this as a sort of Build-A-Fundraise Workshop.

As for our teammate, Fidelity Private Shares is a trusted equity management platform for growing private companies. From early rounds to IPO, they bring clarity to complex ownership, connecting cap tables, 409A valuations, data room, and modeling tools for next-round and exit planning.

Their kit and this explainer aims to remove friction from the most common founder workflows around capital: tracking ownership, telling your story, communicating progress, and getting through diligence without chaos.

Let’s get started—and break a leg out there, founders.

1: Keep equity clean and future rounds smooth

As Fidelity Private Shares aptly puts it, fundraising is a series of ongoing workflows, not a one-time event. Cap tables, pitch decks, investor updates, and diligence are all connected.

To start, let’s get the pieces aligned with a Cap Table Template.

The FPS Excel template is designed to help you understand and manage your company's equity. The built-in formulas calculate ownership percentages and fully diluted shares. It’s a massive time-saver, not to mention a cause for a massive sigh of relief.

The data in FPS’s template is entirely fictional and based on a hypothetical company in the later stages of growth, post-Series B and C funding, to give you an idea of what your cap table might look like as you grow. All the details are right in the template so you can clearly envision potential scenarios.

Peek at a summary of shares and cash raised, a capitalization table, stock incentive plans, stock classes, and a common stock ledger. You won’t have to guess what this data should look like because you’ll be looking right at it as you build your own.

Starting with ready-to-use templates reduces rework, helps you avoid common mistakes, and makes future rounds clearer to manage. So plug and play, and see where it gets you as you ramp up to the real deal.

2: Your story has impact—tell it correctly

Storytelling is a key factor in the world of founder-isms. If you can’t explain what makes your product/brand/idea worthwhile, why should anyone else think so?

The crucial differentiators: clarity and timing.

Telling a story and telling a story well yield very different impacts. To help ensure you’re falling into the latter category, take a look at Fidelity Private Shares’ Pitch Deck Template.

This deck template comes preprogrammed with considerations of what each slide in your deck should contain. This can help you hit the right points at the right moment to ensure storytelling that keeps investors focused and intrigued.

For instance, right out of the gate, you’ll want to start with your problem statement, who this impacts, and why current solutions fall short. Follow this slide up immediately with your solution slide and explain it in concise, simple terms. You don’t want investors’ eyes glazing over at a wordy slide.

Then, you’ll jump into metrics to display the traction you have. From impressive revenue numbers to growth metrics, share them here, and share them clearly enough to be memorable.

For the rest of the Pitch Deck Template, Fidelity Private Shares has you covered.

3: Communicating your progress

Communication builds trust. Yep, the cornerstone of any healthy relationship applies to you and your investors, too. So once you have the storytelling deck, you then have to work on consistency. You want to remain top of mind, after all.

And right on time: What’s that, swooping in? It’s Fidelity Private Shares’ Investor Email Update Template! Because, of course, they have that ready for you, too.

This PDF outlines what an investor newsletter or update email could look like, and how you can say it all in one page. If there’s one thing investors love, it’s brevity.

Copy and paste the template into your email and fill out the TL;DR, Pitch Refresher, Updates and Lessons Learned, and close with the Ask. Here’s a sample Ask from FPS’s imaginary email example:

Ask:

We’re looking for 3–4 CISOs or heads of security for short product interviews. If you know anyone, please reply or intro them directly.

Thanks for the continued support.

Founderella

Founder & CEO,

BestCompanyEver

Looks like you’ve got some emails to send, and with all of the above, it’ll probably take less than 30 minutes.

4: Do your due diligence

You have your cap table, you have your deck, and you have your follow-up emails. Now, it’s time for a crucial part of the process: the double check.

Fidelity Private Shares’ Due Diligence Checklist goes through multiple categories, item by item, to help ensure you’ve completed the right steps. Items include:

A: Actions and minutes

• all stakeholder actions and meeting minutes
• all board actions and meeting minutes

B: Character documents and organization

• organized chart reflecting all of the company’s subsidiaries (wholly and partly owned)
• The company’s current certificate of incorporation and bylaws, including any amendments
• Confirm the Company is or intends to become foreign qualified in any states where it is required to do so. If the company is foreign qualified, please provide the registration.

Yes, it’s that specific. And it’ll also feel that good when you can finally put a ✅ next to each item. The Due Diligence Checklist is a touchstone for feeling prepared. It’s a concrete place where you can ensure that you haven’t forgotten anything small yet crucial. Because preparing for the process only makes it quicker.

Founders just wanna have fun(ds)

As a founder and business owner, knowing that you’re ready for the next phase can be a big moment. Jitters are normal, but nerves can definitely be tempered by preparation, and that’s exactly what this explainer—and Fidelity Private Shares’ detailed templates—are here to help you do.

Spend less time wondering and more time building.

Get all of the templates here, and remember us when you reach the moon.