What you actually need in place before raising a Series A: metrics, data room, team, references, and the six-week process most successful rounds follow.
Series A is a different game from seed. Investors underwrite metrics and team quality, not narrative alone. This is the concrete list of what needs to be true before you open the round.
SaaS: typically $1–3M ARR growing 3× YoY with net revenue retention above 100%. Consumer: strong retention curves (D30/D90 clearly above category benchmarks) plus a monetization signal. Marketplace: >30% take-through, GMV growth, cohort retention.
Financials (last 24 months + 24-month forecast), KPI cohort data, cap table, customer contracts, employment agreements, IP assignments, board consents, prior round documents. Investors will find gaps — better to surface them yourself.
Full-time senior hires in the top 2 functional gaps (usually go-to-market or engineering leadership). References that investors can independently reach. A hiring plan with named roles for the next 12 months.
Five customers who will take a 20-minute reference call with an investor. They should be able to describe the problem before you, the alternatives they considered, and why they still use you.
Week 1–2: warm intros, first meetings with 15–25 firms. Week 3–4: partner meetings. Week 5: term sheets. Week 6: negotiate and select. Compress the top of the funnel — parallel first meetings, not sequential — so all term sheets land in the same window.
Growth deceleration in the two quarters before raising. Missing metrics no one asked for at seed (retention, payback, LTV). One heroic founder with no bench. Reference customers who describe you as a nice-to-have.
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