Questions, answered.

Not in the standard engagements. The Audit, Refine, and Round-out tracks all assume a working draft — even a rough one. The reason is structural, not preference: a ground-up build is a different kind of work, mostly archaeology. Three weeks of customer calls, narrative dev, wedge selection, then the deck. Trying to compress that into a two-week sprint produces a polished deck on a wrong foundation, which is the worst possible outcome — the deck closes meetings until partner Q&A, then unwinds in front of the room. Ground-up builds are application-only, start at $25k, and run six to eight weeks. If you have nothing yet, apply for that one. If you have a draft, even a bad one, the standard tracks are faster and cheaper.

Usually within five business days. Audits often start the same week, because the kickoff is a single 90-minute call and a written read; everything after is asynchronous. Refine and Round-out engagements have a three-to-five-day onboarding because the working sessions need to be scheduled and the existing materials read in detail. Capacity is two founders a month, so 'when can you start' is sometimes 'in three weeks' — that's typically when the wait is. I'll be specific on the first call.

The current deck (whatever state it's in — drafts are fine, half-decks are fine), any GTM model or dashboard you're working from, three to five customer call recordings or notes if you have them, and one paragraph on what isn't working. The customer-call material is the single highest-leverage thing you can send; it's how the wedge slide gets written in your customers' words instead of yours. If you don't have customer calls yet, that's also useful information about where the engagement should focus.

I'll read the model closely, pressure-test the assumptions against the deck, and tell you which numbers belong on the slide and which need to live in the appendix. What I won't do is rebuild the seven-tab model from scratch — that's a CFO project, and I'm not the right person for it. The interaction between the model and the deck is the thing that breaks rounds: the deck claims a story that the model can't defend in partner Q&A. My job is to close that gap, not to be the model's owner. If you need a model built, I can refer two people who do that work well.

Yes. Partner-meeting prep is included in Refine and Round-out — typically two role-play sessions before the first partner meeting, and one debrief after. The role-plays are not friendly. I play the partner who's read the deck twice and is mid-meeting deciding whether to fund. The debriefs are where the deck gets revised based on what actually came up in the room, which is usually different from what we planned for. The pitch and the deck are the same artifact rendered in two media; coaching one without the other leaves money on the table.

Half on kickoff, half on delivery. Stripe invoice, net-zero. No hourly billing, no retainers, no scope creep. Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed end date — written into the engagement letter on day one. The reason for fixed-price is structural: hourly engagements reward me for staying expensive and you for not finishing. A fixed scope means the work ends on the date we agreed, and any new work after is a new engagement with a clean delta.

Neither. Equity creates cap-table noise that becomes a tell at the next round; advisor shares from a fundraise consultant read poorly to Series A leads who are diligencing your structure. Success fees from non-broker-dealers are legally fraught (it's regulated activity in most jurisdictions) and ethically muddier — my advice on the third call should not change because your round is closing hot. Same fee whether you raise in three weeks or six months. Cash is cleanest for both of us.

You do. Full IP transfer on final payment, including editable Figma files, all model artifacts, and any written deliverables. No watermarks, no 'designed by' slide, no portfolio rights without your written permission. The case studies on this site are published with explicit founder consent, and the default is that I never name a client publicly without asking.

Mutual NDAs after the first call, yes. One-way founder NDAs at the cold-deck stage, no. The reason is practical, not adversarial: I read three to five decks a week, and a one-way NDA from a stranger is unenforceable in any jurisdiction I work in, so the document is signaling rather than protection. Once we've had the first call and decided to engage, mutual NDAs are standard and I sign them. If your IP requires more than that — patents, regulated data, defense work — let me know on the first call and we'll sort the structure before any deck changes hands.

Yes, after the first call once it's clear we're a fit. I don't share founder names cold because the references are doing me a favor and I won't burn them on first meetings. After the first call I'll send three to five names with permission, and you can speak to any of them directly. The references are typically founders who closed rounds in the last 18 months; some are listed in the case studies on this site and some aren't, by their preference.

No. Anyone who guarantees a round either doesn't understand fundraising or is selling something else. What I can guarantee is the work product: the deck will be defensible against partner Q&A, the narrative will hold under pressure, and you'll leave the engagement able to defend every line yourself. Whether the round closes depends on the company, the market, and timing — variables that aren't on my side of the table. The right way to think about the engagement is that it raises the floor and the ceiling of how the round goes; it does not guarantee the outcome.

Tell me on the kickoff call or the first working session. If the read isn't right or the direction is off, we recalibrate before the second working session — that's almost always when it gets caught. If we get to delivery and you're unhappy, I refund the second half. The first half (kickoff) is non-refundable because the audit work is done in the first 48 hours and the read is the read whether or not you act on it. In four years of running this practice, the second-half refund has happened twice, both for fit reasons that were obvious in retrospect.

Yes. About 30% of engagements are non-US — UK, EU, Israel, Canada, occasionally LATAM and APAC. The deck conventions are largely the same; the investor mix and round structure differ. For non-US rounds I'll tell you on the first call whether the audience for the deck is US investors (in which case the structure is what's on this site) or your local market (in which case there are tweaks, mostly around how the ask is framed and how traction is denominated).

Yes, with your permission. The working sessions are recorded so you can re-listen to the wedge discussion or the partner-meeting role-play; that's where most of the framework lives, and re-listening is high-leverage. Recordings are stored privately, deleted on request, and never used for marketing or training material. If you'd rather not record, that's fine — most founders end up wishing they had.