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How to Handle Partners Afraid of Leveling Up?

I’m CTO of a small fintech startup.  We raised a decent amount of seed funding, enough runway for most of next year, and the product launches next month.

We have enough financial runway to break even and start building positive cashflow, in theory.

I feel like we should be talking to follow on investors and those conversations have started.  We’ve had calls with serious fintech angels who can invest their own money along with making warm introductions to VC’s.  We have the opportunity to raise a little more money now – when we’re not almost out of cash and desperate.

My CEO and our lead investor are nervous about the playing in the kind of big leagues some of these investors would put us in.  My CEO even told me that he isn’t qualified to be the CEO of the company if it scales the way these new investors envision things.

I can’t tell if my partners are just greedy (focused on dilution) or are too insecure to let other people inside our bubble.  What should we do here?

  • My suggestion is to get to profitability before you take any investor’s money. Your bus will be worth a lot more and if you are mistaken and it takes significantly longer than expected, and it will, you will be less likely to lose your company.

    I think your CEO is really smart. Admitting that she is not experienced enough to scale with external funding is way better than bullshitting people into believing you know what you don’t know is dangerous.

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