We’re excited to share these fascinating fundraising insights from Michael Goulden, Co-Founder of Kerbo Charge. Kerbo Charge has secured investment on Dragons’ Den, and enacted successful trials across the UK. Michael shares key lessons from their £500k fundraising round, which is currently 80% committed and closing on 18 April. Get in touch with Michael at michael@kerbocharge.com if you’d like to learn more or see their deck.
Five lessons learned from raising cash in 2025
Completely clear the decks for three months
Fundraising is not my MOST favourite startup activity. I like speaking to potential new investors, and closing deals is a great, but the drawback is you have to dedicate an incredible amount of time to it which means not focussing on growing the business.
The worst thing you can do though is to try and grow the business AND raise money at the same time – you’ll end up doing neither well.
So lesson no. 1 – clear the decks from everything else you possibly can and do no new initiatives for 3 months. You have to be ultra-disciplined. Launching a new product is more fun and tempting to work on – don’t do it.
Do this for a year before you actually raise
Having a warm investor list before you start raising a penny is absolutely key. Get a permanent banner on your website and socials saying “Register your interest in future rounds”. Ask them to specify the likely ticket size.
Going into this raise we had 270 possibly interested investors and the first port of call was to ping them to get the party started.
Keep them regularly updated well before the raise. Keep the good news going out and it should be a breeze to gain interest when you’re ready.
Sure we didn’t hear back from most of them, but those that did built the foundation for the round.
Lesson 2 – Spend a year before you raise money building up your warm investor list and keep them toasty throughout.
Find your lead investor first!
In our last raise we had Deborah as our lead investor. Crikey that made things easier. It’s so much easier if people know that a prominent investor has completed due diligence and agreed a valuation first (OK Deborah had a different valuation due to it being agreed 9 months previously on the TV show but you get the idea).
Finding a lead investor is HARD but well worth investing a month of time finding them before putting it out more widely.
Then you simply email everyone to say “Our lead investor is X, they’ve invested in Y, they’ve agreed the valuation of Z”.
In this raise we didn’t have a lead investor to start with and it made things harder.
Lesson 3 – Find your lead investor first before putting it out more widely
Create urgency and a deadline
Everyone likes to get a good deal, in the supermarket and also when investing. Set an early bid discount with a deadline – we offered a 15% valuation discount for investments confirmed by the start of March. It gives a good sense of urgency and a good reason to chase as the date drew near.
Lesson 4 – Set a deadline with a valuation discount
Who are your dream investors? And how to reach them…
Your network is your friend and is of course the place to start with new lead outreach. For our raise my Co-Founder Ben did a brilliant job starting conversations with other investors of a company he NEDs on.
Once your hot and warm immediate network is ticked off, it’s time for cold outreach! Cold outreach CAN work but you need to do it at volume and it needs to be truly personalised. Start by creating a list of 100 ‘dream’ investors – people who’ve invested in your sector before and have a great network.
Then it’s time to find out who can possible intro you to them – start by looking at your second degree connections on LinkedIn. If there’s no one then it’s time for direct cold outreach – recording a personalised 30 second video is worth trying as an alternative to relying on them reading your email.
Don’t send your deck outright, wait for them to ask for that, but drop in your top 3 traction proof points.
Don’t give up when you don’t hear back from the first few people you reach out to – you really do need to reach out to 100 people to hear back from 10.
Of course it’s so much easier if you know people already – so who are the people you’ve worked with in previous lives or other roles that would probably be happy to hear from you? Spend half a day creating that list and organise coffees. At the very least you’ll energise your network and maybe they’ll also write you a cheque….
Kerbo Charge is the UK’s leading cross-pavement charging channel provider and has grown by 60% month on month since 2023. They are raising £500k with 80% committed and the round closes on 18 April – get in touch via michael@kerbocharge.com if you’d like to see the deck.
