Being a startup CEO is tough. Work life balance, as nice as it is, is not easy. Many leadership gurus - who invest in or mentor startup founders - often find CEOs struggle with the pace. 

One of the biggest challenges faced by startup founders is balancing the continuous need to raise capital while running the business. Raising capital requires pitch preparation, networking, meetings with investors, potential investors, meetings with accountants, lawyers, internal meetings with the leadership team to decide valuations and on and on. What is a startup CEO to do? Let’s first decide on the premise that there is no such thing as balance. Balance is a fallacy. However, all is not lost. CEOs look at raising capital as a siloed event away from running the business - the two activities are not necessarily mutually exclusive and at times should be considered one in the same. Let’s consider it a combined activity and separate at the same time.

While focusing on the running of the business, startup CEOs are consistently monitoring revenue traction, product growth. Investors and potential investors are looking for the same thing. Investors focus on startups CEO’s ability to execute on company goals that are generally centered on revenue growth. CEOs are constantly thinking about the business - they pitch all the time. 

Let’s look at “Fintech Startup A”: There was a CEO who was running a SaaS based fintech startup that did not like pitching. This CEO wanted to focus instead on running the business, growing the startup by attracting more customers. As the platform began to achieve product market fit, the CEO suddenly found the need to raise capital as there was a lag between releasing new product features that the market required and the expected new customers which were expected but had not come yet. The CEO found that attending networking events with investors, participating in panels, interviewing venture capital firms, and generally networking with potential investors was not a good use of their time. As a result, when the capital requirements became evident, the CEO was not prepared. 

Meanwhile at another startup, let’s call them “Fintech Startup B”, the CEO understood the need to always be networking. They attended every possible investor networking event while keeping tabs on the business. Their healthcare app was gaining traction and investors were happy with the progress of the company and positive reviews it was receiving. They looked at their investors as ambassadors, champions, and door openers. When the time came to raise their seed round, they went back to their carefully cultivated network and were able to quickly fill their investment round. The CEO of Fintech Startup B knew the importance of building a network - they constantly refined and perfected their pitch because they were attending events, they aligned their business development goals with their investment attraction goals, and they were able to achieve growth in both. 

The startup CEOs key to success is learning to combine activities that can achieve different but equally important outcomes. CEOs must always be raising capital and always be thinking about the business. Sometimes a CEO may not be actively raising because the capital requirements are met but they should always be thinking of future capital requirements and therefore should be attending any events that put themselves in direct contact with future investors. At the same time, nothing attracts investors more than revenue traction.

Investors or potential investors admire a startup founders’ ability to constantly network as well as lead revenue attraction. Branding and constantly pitching to investors and customers are critical activities. Talking about your business regardless of audience should be a constant activity. Customers have become investors and investors have become customers. There are many failed startups who collapse as a result of insufficient capital, and a portion of the failure can be directly attributed to the inability for founders to understand the importance of combining revenue growth and capital fund raising activities. 

Always be raising, always be closing, always be talking about the business. 

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