Welcome to Raise Like a Pro reader! ; a new newsletter to help you do exactly that.

I'm David, and unlike most people giving fundraising advice, I don't just talk about raising money – I’ve been there as a founder and now I spend my day raising money for startups all over the world from investors all over the world.

I've closed millions in new investment in the past few months alone for startups - and I’m going to teach you how to do it without needing someone like me. This is my playbook; the operational, tactical and yes - sometimes boring stuff you need to do each and every day to raise your round.

No nonsense, no fluff and definitely no fuzzy sheep.

Table of Contents

• The reality check

• Yet Another Ideal Pitch Deck (YAIPD)

• 💰 Deals done this week

• The ONLY Pitch Deck Structure You'll Ever Need

  • 1. HeyGen – Free Your Time and Create Social Media …

  • 2. Intercom – Automate Customer Support Without Br …

  • 3. Infographix – Turn Your Ideas Into Designs That …

• 📖 Interesting things I’ve been reading….

The reality check

Raising a funding round isn’t rocket science. It’s not even brain surgery. But it's incredibly time-consuming, HARD and emotionally challenging.

As a founder, your time is better spent building product, finding product-market fit, signing up customers, and building your team. Yet fundraising demands an enormous amount of your attention and energy.

I've witnessed countless founders struggle with this balance. They get stuck in the cycle of endless pitch meetings, confusing feedback, and the dreaded "no's" that seem to pile up without explanation. Even successful companies like Canva, now valued at $25.5 billion, started with their CEO Melanie Perkins hearing "no" over 100 times before getting that crucial first "yes."

What this newsletter will give you

I'm going to share my exact playbook – the same one I use to raise millions for startups across the world. This isn't about theory or inspiration. Instead, you'll get:

• The actual processes I use to close deals.

• Step-by-step morning routines for effective fundraising.

• Real email templates that get responses.

• Meeting scripts that convert to term sheets.

• Pipeline management techniques that close deals.

• The stuff you really need to know so you don’t get screwed by investors.

My days are spent navigating negotiations with every type of investor: angels looking for their next big win, syndicates pooling capital for bigger deals, and VC firms conducting thorough due diligence.

I'll share insights from all these perspectives, helping you understand how each type of investor thinks and what they're really looking for.

What's coming up

In the next issues, we'll dive into a whole bunch of stuff including:

• How to structure your fundraising for maximum efficiency

• The exact outreach strategies I use to get investor meetings

• Common terms to watch out for (and how to negotiate them)

• Ways to create competitive tension in your raise

• Due diligence preparation that speeds up closing

My promise to you

Every piece of advice in this newsletter comes from actual experience: deals I've closed, terms I've negotiated, and strategies I've refined through real-world application.

I'm not here to give you startup platitudes or generic advice. Instead, you'll get practical, actionable tactics that you can implement immediately in your fundraising journey.

The goal? To help you raise money faster, at better valuations, while protecting your interests and your time.

– David

Yet Another Ideal Pitch Deck (YAIPD)

I know right?! Someone has magically cracked the best deck structure you could possibly use to get investors interested and over the line.

Truth is - raising money is soooooo much more than that. It’s about the business, the team, the market, the trajectory, the way the sun shines upon your smiley face as you wax lyrical about changing the world one hot-towel at a time as you gaze upon the investor’s gilet-clad torso.

A deck’s purpose is to get you that meeting and to help convey what you and your business is about.

So I’m going to share with you what works for me and the startups I work with. Like most things in fundraising it’s neither rocket science nor brain surgery.

But it works. Like really works. And often I don’t even bother with a full deck (at least as a teaser) and instead just use the structure below. Go take a look!

💰 Deals done this week

• Cambridge-based Cambridge GaN Devices has secured a $32 million (£25.4 million) Series C funding round to expand its data centre and automotive operations. The University of Cambridge spinout develops gallium nitride (GaN) power devices, offering greater efficiency than traditional silicon chips. The round included a £5 million investment from British Patient Capital, alongside Cambridge Innovation Capital, IQ Capital, Parkwalk, Foresight, and BGF. The funding will support growth and energy efficiency advancements, with the global market for its technology projected to reach $5.2 billion by 2032., read more.

• London-based IONATE has secured a $17 million (£13.6 million) Series A funding round, led by AlbionVC and joined by In-Q-Tel, JGC MIRAI Innovation Fund, Santander InnoEnergy Climate Fund, and Antares Ventures. Founded in 2019, IONATE has developed a Hybrid Intelligent Transformer and Aurora software platform to enhance power grid efficiency, real-time control, and AI-driven smart grid capabilities. The company is already working with energy giant EDP and NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator, positioning itself as a key player in modernizing electrical infrastructure for utilities, manufacturers, and data centers, read more.

• Cambridge-based Luminance, a legal AI firm, has secured a $75 million Series C funding round led by Steve Cohen’s Point72, with participation from Forestay Capital, RPS Ventures, Schroders Capital, and existing investors. The funding will accelerate US expansion, hiring, and innovation at its Cambridge R&D hub, extending its AI platform into procurement and compliance. Luminance, which serves 700+ organizations across 70 countries, reported £9.4 million in revenue, a 60% YoY increase, and has expanded its North American presence with new offices in San Francisco, Dallas, and Toronto, read more.

The ONLY Pitch Deck Structure You'll Ever Need

I meet with founders EVERY SINGLE DAY who are absolutely bombing their investor meetings because their pitch decks are all over the place.

There are as many "ideal" pitch deck templates as there are pubs in Ireland (being Irish, I've been to a few!). But I'm going to share the structure I use when I'm raising money for businesses each and every day. This isn't theory - this is battle-tested and I KNOW it works.

Sometimes I don't even bother with a formal nice-looking deck; I get the founders to use this structure as a blank document. No fancy graphics, no hours spent on Canva or hiring designers. Just pure, raw content that answers the questions investors actually care about.

The Square Peg Problem

One of the most effective things a founder can do is step away from their existing pitch deck they've spent hours lovingly crafting and START FROM SCRATCH using this template.

Why? Because otherwise all they'll end up doing is changing what they've currently got and trying to shoehorn a square peg into a round hole. You can't just move slides around and expect a coherent story to emerge!

I've seen founders spend WEEKS tweaking their existing decks only to end up with something that still doesn't answer the fundamental questions investors need answered. Your beautifully designed slides with the perfect drop shadows aren't going to save you if the structure is wrong.

So here it is - the 10-slide framework I use with founders that actually gets results:

1. Here's what we do

Keep this SIMPLE! "We are a SaaS/AI/whatever platform that does a thing in order that/so that the customer sees a particular benefit".

No jargon. No buzzwords. Just plain English that my granny could understand. If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. I've seen founders spend 10 minutes trying to explain what their business does and by then the investor has already checked out mentally and is thinking about lunch.

The most important thing here is the “in order that/so that” clause. It’s the benefit. It tells people why they should care. What do you do that makes life easier/better/cheaper for them? Give them a reason to love you for the rest of their lives.

2. This is why it's hard/not been done yet

Why now is the time. What technology or market change has happened that makes this possible NOW when it wasn't possible before?

This is where you show you understand market timing. Investors love this slide because it shows you're not just another me-too business but you've spotted a genuine gap created by some shift. Maybe AI has just got good enough, or maybe regulatory changes have opened a door. Whatever it is, make it concrete.

3. Here's why it matters

Illustrate the problem and why it's a painkiller not just a vitamin pill.

Danial Kahaneman and Amos Twersky showed in 1979 that the negative impact of a loss is felt far more intensely than the potential pleasure from a gain; they called it loss aversion but I prefer to think of simply as Painkillers vs Vitamin pills.

Look, nobody pays for nice-to-haves in a recession. They pay for painkillers. If you're not solving a genuine hair-on-fire problem, you're going to struggle. I need to feel the pain you're solving through your words. Make me FEEL it.

"Wouldn’t it be nice if…?" "This could improve your workflow…"

Nice-to-have. Optional. Easy to ignore.

But investors buy painkillers. Urgent. Critical. A must-have.

Kahneman’s research shows people are twice as motivated to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. That’s how investors think.

So, is your startup solving a real, painful problem? Or just making things a little better?

If it’s not a painkiller, it’s a hard sell.

4. Here the people who will need it and how they're currently solving it

Identify your Ideal Customer Persona (ICP) and illustrate how they're already solving this using far inferior tools to what you are proposing.

Remember: if people aren't already trying to solve this problem in some way, it probably isn't a real problem! Show me the workarounds, the Excel spreadsheets, the manual processes they're using now. This proves demand exists.

So many founders I work with have no idea who their buyer is. They might know the type of company they’re selling to, but rarely the actual person. What’s their job? What are they measured on? Where do they work? Do they live on X? On LinkedIn? On Reddit? On GitHub?

Identify them. Understand them. Work out how they buy, why they buy and whose permission they need to ask before they buy.

5. Here's how we get in front of our customers

What's your Go to Market strategy? Your low-level, operational, task-oriented plan to getting in front of customers and persuading them to pay you.

This is where most founders fall down HARD. They think "we'll do content marketing" is a GTM strategy. It's not. I need to see the actual channels, the unit economics, the CAC, the conversion rates you're targeting. Get specific here or investors will assume you haven't thought it through.

6. Here's why we're the ones to build it

What have the team done before that means they're the right people to do this? Focus on experiences and achievements - not pictures.

No investor cares what you look like! They care what you've DONE! I've seen founders put their entire life story on this slide with professional headshots. Skip the glamour shots and focus on the concrete achievements that prove you understand this market and have the skills to execute.

And please? PLEASE do not just use pretty pictures with your title. It means nothing. Tell me why you and your colleagues are the ones to smash your mission. I want to know what you’ve done that tells me you can do it again.

7. Here's how it works

High level (10k view) of how the technology works.

Keep this simple but specific. Investors need to understand the mechanics enough to believe it works, but this isn't the place for your entire technical documentation. One clear diagram is worth 1,000 words of explanation here.

8. Here's the evidence that our startup hypothesis holds true in the real world

Traction; it validates that people want to pay you in the way you want to be paid.

Numbers, numbers, numbers! Revenue is king here, but even if you're pre-revenue, show me user growth, engagement metrics, pilot results, LOIs - anything that proves people actually want what you're building. Every day I see founders with no traction wondering why investors aren't interested. Evidence beats promises EVERY TIME.

9. Here's how big the market can be

This is not about how big the market you're operating in is. It's about how big can you grow YOUR revenue to.

I don't care if the global market is worth £500B if you can only realistically capture 0.001% of it! Show me a bottom-up calculation of how many customers you can acquire and how much they'll pay. That's what investors care about - not some massive TAM figure you pulled from a Gartner report.

Just go and read this article and do it exactly like this.

10. Here's how much we're raising, what for and what commercial milestone we'll be at when the money is spent

Never raise a range. Lay out in detail what you're going to spend it on where the business will be when the money is spent.

This should NEVER be "for 18 months runway" but a real commercial inflection point in the business. Investors want to know what meaningful milestone this money gets you to. Is it £1M ARR? Is it 100,000 users? Is it proof of a new market? Be crystal clear here.

Final Thoughts

I've used this framework with hundreds of founders and it works because it answers the questions investors ACTUALLY have, not the ones founders think they have.

The beauty of this approach is its simplicity. You can literally start with a blank Google Doc, use these 10 headings, and fill in the content. No fancy design needed at the start - get the content right FIRST, then make it pretty.

If you're struggling with your pitch, try this exercise: Start completely fresh with this structure and see what comes out. I bet it'll be clearer and more compelling than what you have now.

Shoot me a message if you try this approach - I'd love to hear how it works for you!

Catch you all next week,

David

🤖 AI in fundraising

Fundraising is a high-stakes process, and standing out in a crowded market requires efficiency, traction, and compelling storytelling. These three tools can help you streamline your efforts and maximise your chances of securing investment:

1. HeyGen – Free Your Time and Create Social Media That Drives Traction

Investors look for startups that demonstrate momentum, and engaging social media content is a powerful way to showcase traction. HeyGen allows you to create high-quality AI-generated videos, saving time while maintaining a strong online presence. Try it here

2. Intercom – Automate Customer Support Without Breaking the Budget

Investors want to see scalability, and a startup’s ability to manage customer inquiries efficiently is a key indicator. Intercom helps early-stage companies automate customer support, ensuring that leads, users, and potential investors receive timely responses—even when the team is stretched thin. Try it here

3. Infographix – Turn Your Ideas Into Designs That Stand Out

A well-structured pitch deck can make or break an investment round. Infographix transforms complex ideas into visually compelling designs, helping you craft pitch decks, one-pagers, and data-driven visuals that capture investor attention. Try it here

📖 Interesting things I’ve been reading….

• Meta is planning a subsea cable project spanning 50,000 kilometres that will connect five continents. Read more.

• Meta is planning to invest heavily in AI-powered humanoid robots and has brought on former Cruise CEO Marc Whitten to run the operation. Read more.

• X, Elon Musk’s social media company formerly known as Twitter, is in talks to raise money from investors at a $44 billion valuation. Read more.Raise like a Pro is what David Levine does every single day though this business Glenluna Ventures. An exited founder, he raises money each and every day for founders all over the world from investors all over the world.