The VC Capital Raise Calendar

I get asked this question pretty frequently:

When is the best time to raise money from a VC fund?

And this question is not coming from basic-level people. The ones who are asking, are the Conversion Kings and Pro-level Optimizers. The people who can build funnels that will drive over $10M in sales.

So, we’ll give some advanced-level answers to you advanced-level people.

Most people will tell you that there are two capital raise windows: January-June, and September-December. But in reality…

There are two primetime Venture Capital raise deal windows, and they are early February until early July, and mid-September to the end of November.

Let’s look at the “why” of each window, and why that contrasts with the “common wisdom”.

The “start-of-the-year” deal season begins in early February because of business hangovers

Oh, the start of a new year. Diets we pray we’ll keep, gym memberships we swear we’ll use… appointments with founders we swear we’ll attend?

This is the hard truth:

No matter how interesting your business may be, unless you have an existing relationship and / or your meeting was booked back in December, it is highly likely that your meeting in the first 3 weeks of January will get canceled.

It’s not because you’re not interesting. It’s not because that VC Partner decided he or she had better things to do that day.

It comes down to the simple fact that even VCs have business hangovers, including:

• Closing the accounts from last fiscal year
• Dealing with all the tax-related items that we forget about every single year, but that we simply can’t ignore
• Pushing meetings around so we can have a chat with those prospective LPs we met at the holiday parties in December
• Attending board meetings for portfolio companies
• Making those intros we promised to make back in November (“jeez, has it been that long already?”)
• And don’t forget, getting the kids back in school

So, in spite of your best efforts, there are dozens of things that will bump your meeting out of January, and into February. And if you want a meeting in February, then those start getting booked up by the start of the second week of January. That lead time holds relatively constant, until roughly the 3rd week of January.

You do not want your deal to bleed into the Dead Zone.

On the back end of that timeline, the Dead Zone starts in early July.

It is called the Dead Zone, because that is where deals go to die (by being forgotten).

That’s when VC Partners, much like dominoes, jump on a plane one-by-one and head to their summer holiday destination. News flash? You’re not invited in their mental space during that time. Don’t follow up, don’t push to “just touch base.” It is not a good look to chase, especially when that person is with their family on vacation.

If you do find your deal in the Dead Zone, the best thing you can do is genuinely wish that person a quiet and pleasant vacation - while you deliver dynamite results that will motivate renewed interest come September.

But when September comes around, understand that you are under the gun and competing for attention like crazy.

…because you know what they say:

Once the kids are back in school, we take a deep breath, look around at our deal pipeline, and focus on the shiniest thing we can close before year-end.

Okay, maybe they don’t say that. But I never promised to quote things verbatim - I promised to tell you what’s actually happening.

It’s like pressing reset on the SNES before you hit “Save” - if you’re not the best thing going at that very moment, you’re going to be re-competing with about 100 other businesses jockeying to get their deal done before the holiday parties start (and I mean Thanksgiving!).

Because by the time you hit the December holiday parties, all bets are off, and you better have a clear “Next Steps” path for the new year, because otherwise you’re back into February!