Runs the audit an investor will run before a founder starts pitching - scoring metrics, story, team, and legal/financial hygiene red/yellow/green and returning a go, fix-first, or wait verdict with the milestones that turn each red gate green. Use when a founder asks "audit my fundraise readiness before I pitch", "run the audit an investor would run on my startup", "score my metrics, story, and team before I raise", "am I ready to start fundraising", or wants a fundraise checklist before any outreach at any stage. Do NOT use for Series A-specific metric benchmarks (ARR bar, NRR, payback) and building the Series A data room - use series-a-readiness. Do NOT use for choosing the stage, amount, and instrument of the raise - use fundraising-stage-selector. Do NOT use for writing the pitch story itself - use fundraising-narrative.
Click to play with sound.
---
name: Fundraise Readiness Audit
description: Runs the audit an investor will run before a founder starts pitching - scoring metrics, story, team, and legal/financial hygiene red/yellow/green and returning a go, fix-first, or wait verdict with the milestones that turn each red gate green. Use when a founder asks "audit my fundraise readiness before I pitch", "run the audit an investor would run on my startup", "score my metrics, story, and team before I raise", "am I ready to start fundraising", or wants a fundraise checklist before any outreach at any stage. Do NOT use for Series A-specific metric benchmarks (ARR bar, NRR, payback) and building the Series A data room - use series-a-readiness. Do NOT use for choosing the stage, amount, and instrument of the raise - use fundraising-stage-selector. Do NOT use for writing the pitch story itself - use fundraising-narrative.
---
# Fundraise Readiness Audit
A raise that starts before the company is ready burns the best investors first - and a founder gets exactly one first meeting with each. This skill runs the audit a sharp investor will run, at any stage, so the founder finds the holes before the investor does. It is stage-agnostic: it decides go versus wait, not whether the numbers clear a specific round's benchmark - that is series-a-readiness territory when the round is an A.
## Operating procedure
Run it after fundraising-stage-selector sets the envelope (stage, amount, instrument) and before any outreach. Re-run it the week before going live to confirm nothing regressed.
### Step 1: gather inputs
- The stage envelope: round, target amount, and the milestone the money buys (from fundraising-stage-selector).
- Current metrics: the hero metric with its denominator, growth, retention or NRR, burn, runway, CAC/payback - with sources. Label any unreconciled or estimated figure as a guess.
- The narrative draft (from fundraising-narrative) and the deck if one exists.
- Cap table, option grants, prior SAFEs/notes, IP assignments, incorporation docs - or an honest statement of what is missing.
- Runway in months. Opening a process with under 6 months of runway means negotiating from desperation; flag it before anything else.
### Step 2: score the four readiness gates
Score each gate red / yellow / green with evidence. **Any red means delay, not push** - word travels in investor networks, and a botched first pass resets only by waiting.